Posted inHenry's Messages, Koans

Message from Henry: Pointers

August 22, 2017

A few pointers for new students — and reminders for students of long standing:

  1. Please keep a journal of your practice – as brief and irregular as you like. Anything that feels significant at the time could be jotted down.
  2. If you are working on koans, please keep a record of each dokusan, and the main points covered.
  3. Please be a member of Mountain Cloud – this is a board policy. If you’re living remotely but having regular dokusan, then please be a “remote member.” If you are a koan student, Sanbo Zen requests that you also join Sanbo Zen – on sanbo-zen.org. If either presents any kind of difficulty, please let us know.
  4. Please do not talk about dokusan with others: it’s confidential.
  5. Please don’t talk in detail about your practice with other practitioners – eg. which koan are you on, etc. And don’t ask others either. Don’t ask, don’t tell.
  6. As a rule of thumb be cautious about discussing Zen with non-practitioners. We don’t seek to bring others to practice or encourage them in that direction; we might inadvertently discourage someone who would otherwise find their own way in their own good time. Nor do we hand out unsolicited guidance. We just try to practice the Way ourselves as thoroughly as we can.
  7. Thank you.

******

Religion: O Father, please… O Mother, please…

Spirituality: O Father… O Mother…

Zen: O…

Message from Henry is from our August 21, 2017 Newsletter.
Image: Hummingbird by Nicman, CC0 Public Domain, Pixabay.com

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