I had the deluded idea this week that I would be able to put other things aside and just devote my attention to the Mountain Seat, but that really hasn't happened yet. The practice period is mostly launched now - people are in their doan jobs, we have done several rounds of noon service training - but there have been other things taking time these past few days: organising new protocols to send out to various groups of people in an attempt to cut back on our incense use for those with sensitivities; sending out invitations to tangaryo, which will be the week after the Mountain Seat; working out with the other resident leaders what response to have to the embarrassment of riches we are currently experiencing with Young Urban Zen, where bumper attendance levels are now making the conference center a bit of a squeeze; not to mention the usual rounds of meetings and floods of emails; and we have to fit in a few ceremonies before next weekend as well: Suzuki Roshi memorials tonight and tomorrow, the Bodhidharma ceremony on Tuesday morning, the Full Moon ceremony on Wednesday night, for both of which rehearsals need to be scheduled before we embark on the many Mountain Seat rehearsals; I have also been thinking ahead to Parinirvana, scheduled for the 15th...
So I haven't got completely on top of details for the big day itself - let alone the Stepping Down, which would be big enough in itself - though I did manage a rewrite of the main script after folding details from the 2007 script into the 2003 script I had been basing my ideas on. Now, having reviewed some of that with Steve, and made changes, I need to check this version against the hours of footage, which I will probably do over the weekend so as to have some uninterrupted time. Then we should have a working document with which to conduct rehearsals, after which is confidently predicted that Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi will come and suggest that we do things slightly differently. But then if I have learnt anything as ino, it is that the ceremony will happen, just not exactly as planned.
And then there are moments like going out to hit the umpan to mark breakfast time just as the sun was peeping over the roofs of houses lower down Page St, when it is easy to exhale and say, just another beautiful day.
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| It is blossom time here - these quince are in an arrangement on the stairs |
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| These are in the courtyard |
12 comments:
Yikes - that sounds like quite a full schedule Shundo. I wish I could help. When is the Mountain Seat ceremony?
Thanks Shonen; we are at nine days and counting. I later realised that I forgot to mention compiling the January attendance record, which also takes a while...
happy ino-birthday! the flowers are busy too, all that blooming takes work!
I think it comes naturally to them you know. Feel free to offer a birthday toast if you are out and about this weekend - I doubt I will be...
Happy Ino birthday, Shundo. See you next week.
Excellent. I will try not to press-gang you into doing anything.
Shundo, the photographs are great and you are making me miss zen center. I don't like to put my name on blogs but you might be able to guess who I am. I volunteered a lot in the kitchen when you were tenzo.
And hey you published my comments in the Steve Jobs post. I thought they were being cut off because they weren't just empty affirmation, but they are there. That restores a little my faith in zen center :).
Well thank you, and perhaps Zen Center misses you too. I confess that, since I had quite a number of volunteers in the kitchen, I am not completely sure who you might be.
I haven't deleted any comments that weren't obviously spam; it's not that kind of blog.
Shundo, perhaps this will help. I started volunteering around the time you began being tenzo and sometimes I would do a half stint: work in the kitchen for the first period unitl the break and then go sit for the second period to practice my sitting.
If there is an ino email that is publicly known I can email a hello.
You can email ccino at sfzc.org to fully enlighten me
I've read your last weeks blogs in reverse and come back to where you were taking a breath before diving into preparations.
For all the average Brit (me)(and probably American too for that matter) is mainly versed in the goings on of Hatches, Matches and Dispatches and not so much in your own ceremony, you still convey much of the feel of the more common ceremonies in your words and pictures. There is the air of family event about it all, especially with the rolls for the girls and there flowers, and people meeting people they perhaps haven't seen for a while.
No doubt it's all back to normal all of a sudden, maybe there's a bit of clearing up extra, and you be able to see what the blossom's done in the last week.
Hi Sandy, That would make for interesting reading that way I would guess. I didn't really stress the family side of it - it was an enormous family gathering, with many people from my early days at Zen Center and before back in attendance. Unfortunately I barely had time to say more than hello to most of them.
I think it's going to take a week to get everything back where it belongs, and in the meantime there is stuff going on too...
The quince is still going fine, and the camelia is really coming into its own this week.
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