Saturday 21 November 2015

Making SWZ Northampton more accessible

In an effort to try to understand what I might be able to do to make the Zen group more accessible to people, I've put a very short online survey up that I'm asking people to complete. Would like to hear from anyone connected to SWZ Northampton, but especially people who've considered coming but never got around to it for whatever reason.

You can find it at goo.gl/forms/qniD77vEFN - it's only a few questions and won't take more than a minute or two... unless you very generously decide to give a more substantial response in the last, 'open' question.

Hope you can find time to respond...

Monday 16 November 2015

Minor schedule change

As I'm away this week, we will swap the sessions of 18th and 25th November so that we'll have a dharma talk on the 25th, and tackle some more of the Heart Sutra on the 18th. Remember we've abandoned Old Pine's translation & commentary, and are working through Bernie Glassman's Infinite Circle (which meant we started from the top last month).

Beginners' sessions

Andy Scott demonstrating half lotus posture
Find zazen instructions
at StoneWater Zen
From 2016 onwards, instead of inviting anyone to join us for their first visit on any given week, we'll hold monthly introductory days, probably on the second Wednesday of each month.

These will start at the regular time: so instead of asking people to arrive early, I'll spend the first period of zazen (7.30-8.00pm) with beginners, finding out a bit about each other, and given some instructions on both zen meditation and the particularities of how we do things in our group ("form").

Dates for these sessions for the whole year will be posted on this site (and the meetup.com group) in the next few weeks... they may of course be subject to change.