This past week I have been meaning to sit down and write a personal post, and have not managed to do so. One reason is the general continuing business and concomitant down time, where I haven’t felt the spaciousness I like to feel before I start to write (this Hallowe’en morning, because I did not have to go downtown for an early meditation, I have been moving slowly and taking care of loose ends). Another, more prosaic reason is that the space bar on my laptop has once again become intermittent, which makes relaxed writing difficult, and any composition more of a chore.
I also said to myself that I had little to write about beyond the weather. That is partly true. We had the gloriously warm day, and, like other recent weather systems, this one got tripped up sooner than expected, so we had some grey and cool days before a week of more stable weather, sunny, but with a cold edge to the wind befitting the season. Now we have a little rain in the forecast, which is welcome, though I do wish it would not blow in right when I am commuting on my bike, as it is supposed to.
Sunday’s roam was classic San Francisco weather: I left my place in warm sun, and three stops of the streetcar to the west, I came out in a thick undulating mass of fog, which accompanied us all the way around St Francis Wood and Pine Lake. I had had the reverse journey on my morning bike ride – through thick fog that became ever denser as I approached San Bruno Mountain, even from the more reliably sunny east side. I did not expect, half way up the summit road, to emerge above that into a cloudless sky with early sun warming the slopes. The transition moments were breathtakingly beautiful.
The other thing I intended to note was the class on the Tenzo Kyokun. There were a healthy number of sign-ups, even though only half of them have been attending live. The first class was very lively, with many questions about the text, the role of the tenzo, and the role of food in all of it; the attendees ranged from someone who had met Suzuki Roshi to someone who was very new to all of this, and it was a wonderful conversation (from my end at least). I worried only that we didn’t get as far through the text as I had intended. This past Saturday we did make more solid progress, and I hope I didn’t lose people with my explanations. With any luck we will wrap the text up nicely next time.
Shundo David Haye 