Category: General

Last night, we finished our week long meditation retreat. It was my first time on retreat as the “Operations” role which includes being the sit leader and taking care of everything. The sit leader keeps time, correct people’s posture, wakes up sleepy folks, and so on. And, there’s just a ton of random stuff in…

Knowing others is cleverness. Knowing one’s self is wisdom. Conquering others is mighty. Conquering one’s self is true strength. My recent meditation retreats have been very special. I don’t know how to describe them. I’m not even sure if I remember them. Back in June, I did a Hollow Bones Mondo Zen retreat at Dai…

Followup to A Modern MonK: My Next Life So, what’s my life like these days? What’s a modern monk? For now, here’s an average non-retreat day (Tuesday – Saturday): 4:50 AM Alarm is going off. It’s very cold and very dark. I used to think about my old bed in a warm apartment instead of…

A few days ago, we rotated our formal roles at the monastery so that I am now taking on the role of Operations. Operations has the most power in the monastery and community side. The only area it doesn’t have oversight over is the business work. Operations includes many tasks. Let’s see, there’s being in…

If I reveal myself, will you judge me? Will you stick around if it starts getting tough? Can I trust you with my real self? When we go into a circle, when we do a sharing circle, when we have a “talk”, who is going to open up first? Are we going to keep it…