A two year daily meditative record of morning meditations, & attendance at extended sesshins, by an American Soto Zen practitioner. The journal I have in mind here can be phrased in ways that are sometimes derivative, irritatingly hermetic, even banal. The people I've heard speak strongly from a Zen perspective -- my first teacher Sekiun Koretsune, & later, Dainin Katagiri, Tozan Akiyama, Masao Abe, Shohaku Okamura, Jakusho Kwong -- often sound hesitant and awkward. & yet, because words are so intimate to their lives, their speech, even about silence, is invariably another do, another way to encounter the world without disabling dread.
From a Zazen Journal is about seventy pages long. We strongly encourage you to download a copy to your own hard drive and read it locally. To download, right-click on the link below (or, if you're on a Macintosh, click and hold down the mouse button).
Neil Myers has released the second volume of his journal :A second, informal, 4-year journal of zen meditation, daily & in extended sesshins, as it weaves through ordinary events that are the final material of our lives."Wind picks up, the suddenly full-leaved yard tree & towering shrubs heave & plunge, then a low crack, & a big branch is lying in the street. Distracted, I keep losing focus until I remember that samadhi isn't a target, cross-haired in the front-center of my brain, but a matter of staying wholly in mind/body while everything rattles incessantly."
--5/6/99
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