Living at Green Gulch Zen Center for a month

I can’t believe how fortunate I am to have been practicing Zen at Green Gulch Zen Center since 1984. This year I left the cold January of New York to spend three weeks at Green Gulch outside of San Francisco for the January 2015 Intensive led by Tenshin Reb Anderson. We spent most of our time in silence with much zazen – meditation sitting.

I lived in the authentic style Japanese tea house with tatami mats, shoji screens, and fusuma. On occasion I walked to Muir Beach, just a 45 minute hike away. Here are some visual  impressions of my immediate environment.

I felt at home – like these last two phrases from Dogen’s Zazen Shin :

“Clear water all the way to the bottom,
A fish swims like fish.

Vast sky transparent throughout,
A bird flys like birds.”