The onset of warmer summer weather and the beginning emergence from our long COVID sequestration is a perfect time to join in a zazenkai. This is what we call a brief, one-day Zen retreat into silence and concentrated practice. We sit zazen, chant, engage in work practice in our immediate setting. We approach eating lunch and walking, group sanzen and sharing with a simplicity of mere presence and complete engagement in just the one activity at hand.
One of the challenges of coming out of this Covid era is how to use our practice to ease into an increased and more complicated daily round; coming back again and again to silence and simplicity in just this moment; a moment of refreshment, rather like a sabbath moment, where we breath, relax again, and remember to be present in appreciation for whatever is at hand.
The mind does not need to scatter all the time. Sometimes we do need to be thinking about what happened before or what comes next. But not always. A lot of the time we can just be present with what is and function with our full attention right here and now. This is the approach to our life of Zen practice that is modelled in zazenkai.
Mushin