In the fog of my mind that is this winter cold, it has been occurring to me over and over to revisit this old blog and to see about putting some life into it, and so here goes my latest attempt at doing a bit of writing. Each Ango, we take up ways to deepen our practice of the BuddhaDharma. This deepening can take many forms. In fact, it can take on as many forms as our lives take, but to access that freedom it helps to draw a magick circle and proclaim to ourselves and the world "This is Practice!" This helps, because if we try to simply go right away to 'everything I do is Zen' inevitably we miss it. So one of the magick circles that we make is Art practice, and I love it. In fact, Art practice was one of my main entry ways into the BuddhaDharma. As a Jazz musician I could see the resonance between what I did with the music and what my teacher was pointing to, but beyond that I learned from his pointers how to realize this for myself. Now most z...
Last weekend we tried to make it out to participate in a Boundless Way Zen sesshin but had to turn back as our daughters health wasn't up to the journey. It seems that the days of us packing our family in the car and making our way to the East for retreat are over, and it its place I suppose Rev. Do-on and I will take turns flying out. This feels a loss to me on many levels, one of which is the time together. Another of which is how much I'm going to be able to meet with my teacher James Ford in Dokusan - seems like it will be roughly about half as often as it has been over the past several years. Humph. And this weekend we hosted Bill Gleason Sensei at Shobu Aikido of Ohio in what felt to me to be another end of an era moment with one of my teachers. The teaching and practice with Sensei were great as always. We have been fortunate enough to be able to bring Gleason Sensei here every 3 months to guide our practice for the past many years - maybe 10 or ...
My kidney stone seeking surgen went in through my out door yesterday, but was unable to get the scope all the way into the target zone, and so I am left with a stent in place for a week that will open things up and give him a clean shot at these mini asteroids. In the meantime it seems that I'm fine, but I'm not going to be good for much more than lying around stinging and aching. At least for awhile... And for the record the outpatient folks at St. Lukes Hospital were just great, and I loved having family all around before and after. Rev. Do-on is doing an amazing job taking care of me AND Isabella today as they both make their way to Cleveland for what I think is the final infusion for the next 6 months. And Do-on has a strained ankle in the mix! No fair... Each sunday we recite the 5 remembrances, one of which is: "I am of the nature to have ill health, there is no way to avoid having ill health." This can seem abit pessimistic, or obvious, or many ...
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