Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

The continued clear weather has been good for morale, even as the week held various challenges. Not least, we had to spend a fair amount of time and energy dealing with the loss of Ruth’s car, which was deemed to be a write-off. We bought a replacement online, but ran into a particular problem in that Ruth has changed her name on her driver’s licence, but not yet her auto insurance or credit card; I had to step in as a co-signer and pay the deposit. If all goes well, we will pick the new one next weekend, once it has been shipped across from another state, from a “vending machine.”

I have mostly continued to enjoy my sitting – Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday at least. On Thursday this week I led the Zen Center online group, but I was uncomfortable on the cushion for that session. The questions from the group were very engaging, as is often the case; I recorded my little talk, as it was discussing a passage from Suzuki Roshi that we had talked about in the Monday group. I will probably post a transcript of that to Patreon next weekend (this week I have more pictures like those below).

This is a weekend without roams, so I am planning to continue catching up on things I didn’t quite manage over New Year when I got sick: sewing, reading New Yorkers (I did totally catch up over the holidays for the first time in many months) and continuing to try to rebuild my old road bike – I keep running into unexpected problems, but I will keep trying, to the best of my limited ability. 

Hopefully there will also be plenty of time outside, during the middle of the day, when it is warm enough for short sleeves. No matter how many years I live here, I will always marvel of this quality of California.