Dear Sangha,

After spending the summer at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, I have been thinking about what it means to me to practice in this city.

Since returning, it’s been a challenge adapting the pace of life. In the city, it is so easy to allow time to slip into a haze. Rushing from one thing to the next, the temptation is to never really stop and be with what I am doing at the present moment. There is always something that needs to be done or that I want to do just over the horizon, which is trying to pull my attention away from the present.

This pace is such a contrast to my summer. It’s not that there is nothing on your mind, there is plenty that needs to get done, but at Tassajara I was forced to slow down because there are rituals for everything. The way you eat meals, how you bathe, even how you walk around the grounds, all of them have small rituals I had to perform as part of doing the activity. Each one of these was an invitation to bring myself back to the task at hand. Yes, there may have been several other important things to do that day, but each ritual was a reminder that those were concerns for the future and not the present moment.

Now, back in the hectic life of the city, I’m asking myself what rituals I can create to help me slow down. It might be harder to slow down here since there’s more to do here than in the mountains back in California, but what’s the point in doing any of it if the whole time I’m more concerned about what I’m going to be doing next? The city is full of an unbelievable myriad of things that are worth taking the time to slow down for.

I’m curious what small rituals are helping you slow down?

Bows,

Owen