snowfall on snow
becoming
silence

-by Santoka

In addition to the regular weekly schedule of zazen, chanting services, and dharma talks, Treetop Zen Center’s calendar for the coming year will include the following special events, open to all. Preregistration is requested. Please call 207-465-7563, or email treetopzen@earthlink.net for more information, or to register.

Saturday, Jan. 16, 6 a.m. – Noon
Saturday Intensive Sit
A silent practice including meditation, breakfast, teacher interviews and work.

Saturday, Feb. 6, 9:30 a.m.
Poetry workshop: “The Music of What Happens: The Zen of Emily Dickinson and W.S. Merwin”
Although Dickinson never heard of Zen, her poetry is shot through with Zen-like insights and language. By contrast, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner, W.S. Merwin, a Zen student, refuses any attempt to label him as a ‘Zen poet.’ We’ll read, talk, and write a little. No experience necessary.

Saturday, Feb. 20, 6 a.m. – Noon
Saturday Intensive Sit
A silent practice including meditation, breakfast, teacher interviews and work.

Saturday March 6 – Monday, March 8
Paradise Below Zero Deep Ecology weekend
An experience of the vastness and solitude of winter in the Maine woods.

Saturday, March 20, 6 a.m. – Noon
Saturday Intensive Sit
A silent practice including meditation, breakfast, teacher interviews and work.

Saturday, Aprril 17, 6 a.m. – Noon
Saturday Intensive Sit
A silent practice including meditation, breakfast, teacher interviews and work.

Saturday, May 15, 6 a.m. – Noon
Saturday Intensive Sit
A silent practice including meditation, breakfast, teacher interviews and work.

Saturday, May 22 – Friday, June 18
Shuso Peter Joryu Harris Personal Monthlong Retreat
Peter will be living at Treetop Zen Center for the entire month, and will be sitting daily, mornings and evenings. People of the sangha are invited to join him. One of the Teachers will be offering daisan every evening. A schedule of the month-long retreat will be prepared and available.

Saturday, June 12 – Friday, June 18
Spring Weeklong Retreat
An extended silent practice, including services, meditation, interviews with teachers, formal meals, work practice and dharma talks.

Friday, June 18, 8 p.m.
Shuso Hossen Ceremony of Peter Joryu Harris
This wonderful ceremony will culminate in a Dharma Talk given by Peter, after which he will engage in Dharma Combat with people of the sangha. Sangha people will challenge Peter’s understanding of the Dharma with their questions. Sangha people are strongly encouraged to participate in this ceremony and especially in the Dharma Combat.

Friday, July 24 – Sunday, July 26
Quiet Waters Deep Ecology Weekend
Paddling on the ponds, marshes and bogs, where stillness is only interrupted by the cry of a loon, the splash of a frog.

Friday, August 28 – Sunday, August 30
Nahmakanta Deep Ecology Weekend
Moving quietly on the trails of this reserve in the Maine north woods, we will enter deeply into the experience of wilderness.

Saturday, Sept. 11, 6 a.m. – Noon
Saturday Intensive Sit
A silent practice including meditation, breakfast, teacher interviews and work.

Friday, Sept. 18 – Sunday, Sept. 20
Acadia Deep Ecology Weekend
The wonderful national park on the Maine coast, where mountains and ocean meet is the setting for this weekend experience of intimacy with nature.

Friday, Oct. 2 – Sunday, Oct. 4
Debsconeag Deep Ecology Weekend
Paddling on ponds in this remote north woods eco-reserve will take us far into deep connection with wildness.

Saturday, Oct. 16, 6 am – Noon
Saturday Intensive Sit
A silent practice including meditation, breakfast, teacher interviews and work.

Saturday, Nov. 13, 6 am – Noon
Saturday Intensive Sit
A silent practice including meditation, breakfast, teacher interviews and work.

Saturday, December 4, 7 p.m. – Friday, December 10, 5 p.m.
Rohatsu Retreat
An extended silent practice, including services, meditation, interviews with teachers, formal meals, work practice and dharma talks, honoring Buddha’s day of enlightenment.

The Snow Man

One must have a mind of winter
To regard the frost and the boughs
Of the pine-trees crusted with snow;

And have been cold a long time
To behold the junipers shagged with ice,
The spruces rough in the distant glitter

Of the January sun; and not to think
Of any misery in the sound of the wind,
In the sound of a few leaves,

Which is the sound of the land
Full of the same wind
That is blowing in the same bare place

For the listener, who listens in the snow,
And, nothing himself, beholds
Nothing that is not there and the nothing that is.

– by Wallace Stevens

Loving wishes for a safe and happy Christmas and Holiday Season for you and your family.

We look forward to another year of sitting and practice with you.

The schedule for 2010 will be finalized soon. The major difference will be a change from the weekend retreats that were held from Friday evening at 7 pm to Saturday afternoon to around 4 pm. Instead, we are calling a monthly Intensive Sit beginning Saturday at 6 am, ending at Noon. No lunch will be served. We hope this type of intensive focus and sit will sharpen our practice together, and still provide you with weekend family time. If you wish to come on Friday evenings to sleep over to get an early start, you will of course be welcome.

The first Intensive will be on Saturday, the 16th, from 6 am to Noon.

Also as a reminder, there will be no sitting on Saturday, the 26th of December, but there will be sitting on the next two Wednesdays, the 23rd and 30th. And there will sitting on Saturday, January 2nd, 2010.

Be well, and have a safe and happy New Year.

Peter, Margaret, and Stef

Blue Cliff Record, Case 16

A monk asked Ching Ch’ing, “I am breaking out; I ask the teacher to break in.”

Ching Ch’ing said, “Can you live or not?”

The monk said, “If I weren’t alive, I’d be laughed at by people.”

Ching Ch’ing said, “You too are a man in the weeds.”

Reflections
The heart of this koan is the metaphor of a mother hen and her chick about to hatch from its eggshell. The way this works is that the chick tap, tap, taps on the inside trying to get out. The chick is unable on its own to tap through the shell, so the mother hen must be present and alert to when the chick is tapping. She then taps on the outside. Together tapping, the shell cracks and the chick emerges. It’s important that the mother hen taps exactly when the chick on the inside taps. If the mother hen taps too soon and cracks through the eggshell before the chick is ready to come out the chick will die. If the mother hen is too late and the chick is stuck in the shell, the chick will die. And if the chick begins to tap too early, before it is time to come out, the mother hen will not respond and the chick will die. Continue reading →

During the week leading up to December 8 – the date celebrated as the anniversary of Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment – Treetop Zen Center will host its annual Rohatsu Sesshin. The first week in December has traditionally been a period of intense practice for Zen monks in Japan, and the annual Rohatsu Sesshin continues to be an important focal point of practice at Treetop.

Several Treetop students will participate for either the entire week, or just a few days. Those not attending the retreat are welcome to drop in during any sitting period throughout the week.

A donation of $25 per full day, or $10 per meal, is requested to cover retreat costs, though no one will be turned away due to inability to pay. If you plan to attend during meal times, please call ahead to ensure that enough food is prepared – 207-465-7563.

Thursday, December 3 – Monday, December 7
6-8 a.m.: Zazen
8-9:30 a.m.: Breakfast and Jundo (Chanting at various Zen Center altars)
9:30-11:30 a.m.: Service and Zazen
11:30-12:30 p.m.: Samu (Work practice.)
12:30-2 p.m.: Lunch and Jundo
2-3:30 p.m.: Rest
3:30-5:30 p.m.: Zazen
5:30-7 p.m.: Supper and Jundo
7-9 p.m.: Zazen, Daisan, Dharma Talk

Monday, December 7
7 p.m.: Jukai Ceremony for Deborah Kelly

Tuesday, December 8
6-8 a.m.: Zazen
8-9 a.m.: Breakfast & Roundup
9-9:30 a.m.: Service
9:30-11:30 a.m.: Zazen
11:30-End: Lunch & Closing Celebration

For more information, email treetopzen@earthlink.net.

Zen of Housework

I look over my own shoulder
down my arms
to where they disappear under water
into hands inside pink rubber gloves
moiling among dinner dishes.

My hands lift a wind glass,
holding it by the stemand under the bowl.
It breaks the surface
like a chalice
rising from a medieval lake.

Full of the grey wine
of domesticity, the glass floats
to the level of my eyes.
Behind it, through the window
above the sink, the sun, among
a ceremony of sparrows and bare branches
is setting in Western America.

I can seethousands of droplets
of steam–each a tiny spectrum–rising
from my goblet of grey wine.

They sway, changing directions
constantly–like a school of playful fish,
or like the sheer curtain
on the window to another world.

Ah, grey sacrament of the mundane!

– by Al Zolynas