On Saturday I took a break from weight-lifting to go to the Kwan Um School of Zen’s Dharma teacher retreat at the Providence Zen Center. During a semester where my days are overloaded with the mundane details of college teaching–classes to prep, papers to grade, emails to answer–Zen teaching is a welcome respite, something that requires no preparation, only careful attention. On Saturday morning, my longtime Dharma friend Ji Hyang and I led a workshop on “Zen & the Arts,” which we planned about five minutes before the session began. In college teaching, flying by the seat of your pants is a neglectful thing. In Zen teaching, it’s all but expected.
Although I had to leave before my fellow Dharma teachers started telling jokes, the half-day I spent in the company of other long-time practitioners reminded me why any trip to PZC feels like tapping into a mighty power source. Being prepared is a good thing, but sometimes it’s necessary and proper to drop the reins and trust yourself to the wide open meadow of your own creative mind.
Oct 16, 2007 at 1:20 pm
Aaaah, how sorry I was to have to cancel. Missed doing that workshop and flying by the seat of pants with you.
What a welcome photograph.
Oct 16, 2007 at 1:43 pm
Ah yes. Seat of your pants. Every time is the first time. I used to plan things to pieces, and then worry over something forgotten. I’ve gradually eased off that way of doing things, and now I err on the side of overadlibation. [Yes, that's a word.;-)]
The first time I gave a reading without rehearsing beforehand it turned out to be the best one I’d ever done. Now I rehearse the poem after I’ve written in, and that’s it. Before readings, it’s more giggling and poking each other in the ribs than whispering into a bowl, speaking lines in a foreign accent or reading into a mirror.
Your workshop sounded good, worth doing.
Teresa
Oct 17, 2007 at 6:38 pm
We missed you, Mumun, as always. But I trust you’ll have plenty of opportunities to fly by the seat of your pants without me.
Compared to professors who give prepared lectures, I tend toward “adlibation” myself, too. But college teaching, unlike Zen teaching, requires assignments, and grading, and other kinds of prep-work. So like it or not, I can’t just waltz into class with a lit book and wing it.
Oh well…
Oct 20, 2007 at 10:13 am
Those mealy fruits are great photographically. Its nice in the way that rusty warehouses used to seem to me before I overdosed on the city here in Brooklyn. I copied your photo of red apples lying in the grass under the tree and may use it in my powerpoint when my biology class gets up to reproduction in January.