Day of Zazen - 25 June

In addition to our new "Second Saturdays" (including this coming Saturday, 11 June), we'll be having our first zazenkai or day of Zen practice later this month: Saturday 25 June. More info on this on Facebook and on Meetup.com.

Our practice lives are usually built on daily (mostly!) Zen practice at home with weekly or monthly group practice if we're lucky enough to live close to a group that meets up regularly. This is as it should be - regular practice is our absolute bedrock. However it has always been that practitioners are encouraged to spend some more substantial periods of time in practice, removing ourselves from the busy-ness of our regular lives and purposefully making space for more intense practice.

The schedule of retreats that the StoneWater Zen Sangha run are, of course, ideal for this, especially the two annual retreats at Little Crosby where for 5 or 6 days we adopt a strict monastic timetable and live in community outside of our regular lives.

A half-way house to this commitment is a zazenkai or Zen practice day, a commitment to practice single-mindedly for a day, and I'm really pleased that we're able to offer this opportunity for the first time through SWZ Northampton - hopefully the first of many to come.

I'll say more about zazenkai and deepening our practice in a later post - in the meantime, check your diaries and cancel your trip to the in-laws on June 25!