Dear All,
Roshi Joan Hogetsu Hoeberichts is the author of the wonderful essay we are now visiting in our Treeleaf 'No Words' Book Club, on the many changes and trials of this life: birth, sickness, fear, old age, death and loss, love. She recounts the place of Zazen and Retreat amid it all. Please have a look: (LINK) She is coming here Sunday to talk about it. Please try to join us. I would really like to get LOTS of members of our 'Digital Sangha' to attend this event via ZOOM ... And even if you have not been joining in our readings! Come anyway! (And the chapter is available at the above link too.)
Roshi Joan Hogetsu Hoeberichts is a priest and the Spiritual Director at the Heart Circle Zen Sangha, and will be visiting us on this Sunday, September 10th at 8:00AM, California Time, to offer a Netcast Talk and Chat about her essay ...
“Love and Fear”
... published in the book we are currently reading, "Zen Teachings in Challenging Times."
More about Rev. Hoeberichts:
Joan Hogetsu Hoeberichts, Roshi LCSW, LMFT, MBA is a teacher in the White Plum lineage. She studied with Roshi Bernie Glassman, Roshi Taizan Maezumi, was Ordained in 1995 and received Dharma Transmission in 2004 from Roshi Nicolee Jikyo Miller in the White Plum Asanga. She founded and is now Abbot of Heart Circle Zen in New Jersey (although she lives in California).
She is also a psychotherapist in private practice where she specializes in trauma and family therapy. She has published chapters and articles on Zen practice and psychotherapy in various publications, and has taught courses on Healthy Boundaries for Buddhist Leaders.
She received two awards for Outstanding Women in Buddhism for her work in Sri Lanka following the tsunami of 2004. She is also a wife, mother, grandmother of five and a hiker and kayaker.
She is also a psychotherapist in private practice where she specializes in trauma and family therapy. She has published chapters and articles on Zen practice and psychotherapy in various publications, and has taught courses on Healthy Boundaries for Buddhist Leaders.
She received two awards for Outstanding Women in Buddhism for her work in Sri Lanka following the tsunami of 2004. She is also a wife, mother, grandmother of five and a hiker and kayaker.
Old age is already here. I sit with this, facing it, living with it and allowing it to guide my choices. Now, my meditation practice has a greater urgency. Everything in my life is colored by this awareness. The Buddha describes this prospect as,
I am grateful for my fifty-plus years of practice to remind me that birth and death are a flow, an endless cycle of energy, and that I have been only temporarily trapped in this body from the beginning. It seems that all my practice has simply been to bring me to this point in life. ...
... Nothing to do but return to my cushion, my breath and this moment, full of love, joy, fear, life, and death. This is my life.
Just as mountains of solid rock,
Massive, reaching to the sky,
Might draw together from all sides,
Crushing all in the four quarters--
So aging and death come
Rolling over living beings--
There is no escape.
Massive, reaching to the sky,
Might draw together from all sides,
Crushing all in the four quarters--
So aging and death come
Rolling over living beings--
There is no escape.
I am grateful for my fifty-plus years of practice to remind me that birth and death are a flow, an endless cycle of energy, and that I have been only temporarily trapped in this body from the beginning. It seems that all my practice has simply been to bring me to this point in life. ...
... Nothing to do but return to my cushion, my breath and this moment, full of love, joy, fear, life, and death. This is my life.
It can also be viewed "one way" at the time, or later, at the following screen:
Even if you do not have the book, you can read a PDF version here from PAGE 107 (please consider to purchase the book if the remainder looks interesting to you):
Zen Teachings For Challenging Times - Second Half (PDF DOWNLOAD LINK)
There will be a Q&A after her talk, at which you can either ask a LIVE question, or email me a question which I will read (email your question to Jundotreeleaf[a]gmail.com)
I would really appreciate a BIG TREELEAF TURNOUT for this event, and I assure you that it will be worth your time to attend.
DONATION:
The event is free, but we ask those who can afford to make a voluntary donation, whatever you might afford and feel's right, to her Sangha which they work hard to maintain, via this link at their web page (please indicate that Treeleaf sent ya, and it is for this event
):
Thank you.
Hogetsu' essay is part of an AMAZING book which I cannot recommend highly enough to all, a very unique collection of short essays by a group of women Soto Teachers, focused on Zen Wisdom and Compassion applied to real life problems. The book deserves to be better known, and is not to be missed. We are currently reading and reflecting on it in our "No Words" book club (LINK)
Gassho, Jundo
stlah
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