Fall Sesshin 2021 - Spring Green Dojo

Fourteen people gathered in late September to train in an in-person sesshin, our first in too many months. Vaccinations were checked, windows were open, masks were on, and the weather easily allowed us to eat outdoors. Our senses were bathed in the light streaming off the red and yellow foliage of early fall. And the owls were with us during the evening sits.

The question being asked of us during the sesshin was, “How do we use training in Spring Green to prepare people for the severe limitations in resources that the climate crisis is bringing closer to our doors?” One answer is to find the grace and elegance available when facing constraints in resources. For example, we have long used the traditional forms of bathing and eating to demonstrate that elegance.

But this time we also eliminated use of electricity in the Dojo, using only candle-light. This meant that okyo was done with that one candle and the small light used by the person hitting the mokugyo and the person leading with the bells. And that meant that participants could not use their eyes to read the syllables in the okyo books. They could only use their ears. And they had to use more breath to push sound through their masks.

Few people have the sutras memorized so they had to draw upon something new in order to participate meaningfully. As a result there was an elegance of reverberation coming out of the darkness. You could see the impact of that something new in the shodo training that followed. By then there was enough light in the morning sky to see, but it wasn’t sight that was driving the characters brushed. Good learning for all of us.