April Day of Practice at Tahoma
Continuing our regularly scheduled day of practice we will devote Saturday April 20th to zazen. As we move into spring our efforts turns to preparing the garden for the monasteries needs. Thus for this Day of Practice we will follow closer to a Samu Sesshin Schedule and devote several hours in the morning to work practice in the garden. People are welcome to come just for the garden work as this is also one of our Garden Saturdays for the month of April.
This year for the reading and study portion of the practice day we are going to be focusing on the Diamond Sutra. We will be utilizing the Red Pine translation and along with the commentary by the Sixth Patriarch Hui-neng, in The Sutra of Hui-neng, if you’d like to engage in this with your own copy. As always one is welcome to come before evening zazen on Friday and stay through Zazenkai on Sunday for a full 36 hours of practice. Further details on practice at Tahoma over this weekend can be found at the end of this post.
The Schedule for this day will be:
| 4:50 | Seated in Zendo; Gosei |
| 5:00 | Choka (Sutras) |
| 5:40 | Zazen |
| 5:55 | Kinhin |
| 6:00 | Han; Zazen; Zazen |
| 6:55 | Breakfast Breakfast Cleanup |
| 8:15 | Samu (Clappers; meet at deck) |
| 10:40 | Samu ends (Clappers) |
| 11:00 | Seated in Zendo; Gosei |
| 11:10 | Zazen; Zazen |
| 12:00 | Lunch Kitchen Cleanup |
| 1:50 | Seated in Zendo; Gosei |
| 2:00 | Reading; Zazen; Zazen; Kinhin; Zazen; Zazen* |
| 4:00 | Supper (optional, free-style)* |
| 5:20 | Seated in Zendo; Gosei |
| 5:30 | Zazen; Zazen; Kinhin; |
| 6:30 | Zazen; Zazen; Kinhin; Zazen; Zazen |
| 8:30 | Kaichin in kitchen Yaza |
The Monastery’s regularly scheduled periods of zazen from 5 am to 7 am and 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm will still be observed and anyone can drop in for either of these or any of the other zazen periods. You are also welcome to arrive on Friday before the Practice Day and/or stay though Zazenkai on Sunday, if you’d like to extend your practice. In all cases it is expected that the monasteries schedule will be followed.
Please email us If you’d like to attend, especially if you will be coming early or staying later or if you have any questions:
tahoma@whidbey.com
* Note
In the case that the only registered participants in the Day of Practice are Monastery Residents, the 2pm to 4pm period will be freestyle zazen. Drop-ins are welcome to sit in the zendo, just know that it will be unstructured until Zazen at 5:20pm.