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...

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

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.

Retreat dates...

Two dates to consider - these are already advertised elsewhere, but bear repeating here...

The autumn sesshin (traditional Zen retreat) in Little Crosby, Lancs., is one of the main events of the year for the StoneWater Zen community, lead by both Keizan Sensei as well as StoneWater's patron, Tenshin Roshi who comes over each year for this from Yokoji Zen Mountain Center in the US. Details on the main SWZ site at www.stonewaterzen.org/event-dates. Runs 25-31 October (soon, but still a few places available I believe...).

In November, there will be the first of hopefully a future series of day retreats in the south of England, from 10.00am to 5.00pm near Bromley in Kent. This will be lead by Tony Shinro Doubleday, who leads the SWZ London group. Folk from Northants are particularly invited, though it is a fair way, I realise. Details for this can be found at swz-northlondon.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/day-of-zen-in-kent.html, plus click flyer below...

Haibun by Ken Jones

I was away last week at a transpersonal psychology conference near Scarborough, and we spent some time on the Saturday night entertaining each other with music and song and story and even a magic trick or two. I wanted to contribute but hadn't thought to prepare anything, so quietly googled away until I found one of Ken Jones' haibun from a journal he edited (which is still going strong), Contemporary Haibun Online.

Haibun is a literary form developed in Japan that combines haiku and prose, and Ken was a widely recognised authority - I know many of us (including me!) picked up a copy of his collection Bog Cotton that he brought to sesshin a couple of years ago. He'd refer to his haibun in talks and occasionally even give an example... though as I found out last Saturday, they do lose something when spoken aloud as the layout is important and switch from prose to poetry and back isn't always immediately obvious.

Still, it went down well (except for the guy who had met Ken but didn't know he'd died... oops...) and thought I'd post it here, too, as this is one that Zennies will have particular resonances with.

Who
Ken Jones

I turn up the flame
from the snaking wick
coiled in my flammable heart

Although he is my lifelong friend I’m in two minds about him. Sometimes I don’t recognise him at all, with his ugly old face. Or I don’t like the way he can behave.

Perched on the wing mirror
robin preens himself
and shits

Then I play at being top dog and growl at him. But when he’s being helpful and kind, now there’s a man after my own heart. And isn’t it strange how other people seem to like him more than I do? The best of times is when he lets his shoulders drop and we’re drawn in together and lost, in a landscape, another person, a poem or whatever. Beyond all that neediness and choosiness, like this oak which shelters us from the autumn rains.

Branching without a thought
this way and that
for two hundred years

The trouble is that every morning there’s the two of us, grimacing in the shaving mirror. Tomorrow I’ll offer a smile.

Guttering
my smoky flame
muttering to itself

Source: http://contemporaryhaibunonline.com/pages84/zz_Jones_Who.html

Back from hols! And new routines...

OK so I'm back from family hols now, and getting my head back into my normal routine!

As I'm back, it's a good time to come for your first visit if you've not been before. Byul & Nancy came for their first visits last week; think my head was slightly still on vacation so the talk at the end was a bit scatty & unfocused. [Hope haven't scared you off entirely...!]

I wanted also to reiterate that we've agreed on a bit more structure in how the monthly sessions are organised so that we can fit all we want to do. We recently started having a monthly service on the first Weds of the month, I've started to give a monthly talk too, and we also want to fit in some sessions looking at traditional texts - should be some interesting stuff to have a look at, yet not let some of the more difficult material completely bamboozle people new to this sort of thing.

So new structure is that after the usual two periods of zazen, we'll do the following every Wednesday in the month:

Week	Session
First Wednesday	"Formal night" - Service (wear robes if you have 'em), with short reading afterwards (or possibly Q&A, or pointers on form & ritual... or anything else that people want to do). Oh - and this isn't a great week for first visits if at all possible!
Second Weds...	Contemporary reading - currently we're looking at Shunryu Suzuki Roshi's Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Third	Talk by Alasdair - my "dharma internship" :-)
Fourth	"Sutra study" - Don't want to make this too formal or scary! We'll start with Red Pine's translation & commentary on the Heart Sutra*
Fifth	Contemporary reading again - not many months have five Wednesdays... but Sept 2015 does!

* A PDF file of the translation itself is available at appamada.pbworks.com/f/Heart%20Sutra-Red%20Pine.pdf.

Nothing's set in stone here - we'll do this for a couple of months and see how it goes.

If anyone has texts they're keen to be covered, bring it up one evening as suggestions are always welcome.

Summer sitting

Just a quick note to say that we've made arrangements to ensure that sittings continue as per usual throughout the summer, even as people take time away etc.

I'd like to ask that people who haven't attended before try not to come for their first visit during the first two weeks of August, as I'll be away with family at that time (though the group will continue to meet). I'll be back for the sitting on August 19th and will be able to do introductions again from then onwards.

Enjoy any summer breaks you might be taking!