Monday Eve. Discussions in the New Year

Greeting a new year of Mondays on this day of soft light, gusty wind and the dripping of melting snow off the roof, there’s a sense of the breath of possibility; and I write to tell of a new approach Andrew and I will be bringing to the 5:15 Dharma discussion time at Shove Chapel, every Monday evening.
We’ll start the year by spending time with Joan Sutherland, Roshi’s book, Acequias and Gates.  Each Monday, we’ll take up together one of the assays in Acequias.  You can download the book online from Blurb.com for about $20, and it’s more than worth that investment.  It’s also available in book form from Blurb.
We’ll bring a selection from each assay to provide some focus for the discussion.

The first Acequia is called “Koans as Art.” Andrew and I will be alternating Mondays as leaders for this series, and I’ll begin this Monday with the first assay, “Golden” (p. 13).  You’ll also want to read the introduction, but we’ll dive right in here.  Please don’t hesitate to come even if you haven’t read any of the book. We’ll be choosing bits that can stand alone.
Here’s some of what Joan says about the book:

Acequias is named after the vast network of irrigation canals that have sustained life in much of northern New Mexico, where I live. These simple ditches spread water from the snowmelt and rivers across the high desert; I can follow several of them between my home and the meditation hall where we meet. Created and maintained by various communities, acequias are occasions fro both collaboration and struggle. In this landscape even along city streets, they’re a constant reminder of the possibility of living in a more intimate and mutually nourishing relationship with the rest of the natural world.
I wrote and compiled Acequias with a sense of wanting to help open the koan gates, releasing their potent wisdom across the landscapes of our lives. Walking these koan acequias, we become like the women of ancient Rome, going barefoot through the streets on the festival of Vestalia, touching the ancient contours of the land—marsh and field and woods—under the paving stones. Living a life with the koans is going barefoot as they did, aware of the earth’s deeper rhythms, and refreshed by the waters of the rio abajo rio, the river under the river, which is the vastness itself. This is the great project of the koans to connect us with the larger life we sometimes lose sight of amid the concerns of our ordinary days and our ordinary psyches—the larger life that is our birthright and can be, to use an old-fashioned word, our salvation.

And here’s the section we’ll begin with this evening:

“….someone asks about the relationship between form and emptiness, and someone else answers, “It’s like a donkey watching a well,” and there I am, sitting in the gallery, looking at the paintings, just like that donkey. But then the first someone flips it over and says, “It’s like a well watching a donkey,” and suddenly the paintings are gazing back; there’s an interpermeation of consciousnesses, and the ground and the air we share become sentient and alive to us.”

So, please feel free to come to these sessions on any Monday when you can, and to bring your own life and questions to the discussion.  The koans have an uncanny way of meeting you where you are.

Sarah Bender