Words From the Teachers - January 2025

Dear Sangha friends,

More than fifty people, in both locations and on Zoom, sat and chanted together to welcome the New Year with peaceful hearts. This was the first time since the pandemic that we opened the New Year's sitting to drop-in without pre-registration, the way we had done for years. It was also an experiment to do it at both locations. 

Having both the Wall St. zendo and Bright Stream Temple is an ongoing exploration, which has entailed both blessings and challenges. This April will mark the completion of two years since we move into Bright Stream, and we will conduct a thorough review of how things have gone and consider how to shape our path forward. For now, we will continue to work together to utilize both spaces in complementary ways, with your help and patience. 

We want to express our deep gratitude to all of you for your support of Mountain Rain Zen in so many ways: volunteering, serving in zendo practice positions, on committees and council, baking and cooking delicious offerings to share, and most of all for giving your sincere practice to the world. The earth and all beings need us to maintain wisdom and compassion, patience and kindness, stability and a joyful heart in these precarious times.

Warm bows and wishes for well-being and heart's ease in the coming year, 
Myōshin Kate and Shinmon Michael

p.s. Another experiment you will notice in the New Year is that rather than having monthly half-day retreats with lunch at Wall St. we will have monthly day-retreats, scheduled through April, for now. Each one will be paired with a regular Sunday morning practice on the same theme, so if you wish you can make a weekend of practice. (Don't worry, there will still be periodic potlucks at Wall St.)

Soji - a deeply satisfying practice

Soji is a period of mindful work, often following zazen: sweeping the walkway, raking leaves, shaking out zendo cushions. In Soji, you enter a task for a set period of time, attending to it as fully as possible.

“When you study Buddhism, you should have a general house-cleaning of your mind. You must take everything out of your room and clean it thoroughly. If it is necessary, you may bring everything back in again. You may want many things, so one by one you can bring them back. But if they are not necessary, there is no need to keep them.”

— Suzuki Roshi, from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

The framework of soji can allow us to enter a task that might feel otherwise difficult, wth a refreshed sense of engagement and curiosity.

On December 22, we will have an O-Soji - a big clean-up of the Wall Street zendo, to wipe the karmic slate clean before New Year’s Day, as is the tradition in Japan. We hope to offer the opportunity to participate in soji practice on a monthly basis, transforming what we might normally consider as mundane tasks into ceremony.

“ ...cleaning is not drudgery, some pain in the ass job you have to get done. Rather, it’s a very rich sensory experience. It’s a meditation. And just as cleaning is meditation, so everything can be meditation. This is part of what Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche called ‘meditation in action’.”

— Jon Bernie