Dear Zen friend

1)  July sesshin :   from 07/07 to 07/11.

2)  There is no sesshin in August. There will be Summer Lecture instead on Aug. 13th Sunday  11 am.

This year we invited Mr. Pike Messenger to share his knowledge about environments of American land. Mr. Messenger is a retired teacher, who has continued studying nature and leading natural conservation group.

More details will be announced by next dharma mail.

3) There is one day zazenkai at Shantigar in Rowe from 9 am to 5 pm on Aug. 26th Saturday. Eishin will be there.

Shantigar is located on the beautiful hill in the neighbor village of Charlemont.

More details also will be announced in the email at the end of July.

4) My jet lag lasted long. For 2 weeks I was in Japan and Los Angeles under fine weather. When I returned it was rainy and chill. Zendo almost needed stove heating.

There were many things to do. Stacking firewood, mowing grass, planting trees and vegetables, upgrading zendo. For a month I felt I was working in a dream.

At 5 O’clock this morning I checked weather, thunder storm would come in the morning. So I started working with chainsaw and a shovel at 6 O’clock. (Usually I start working outside at 10 am.) All the work was done by 8 am. Rain started at 9 am. Finally I could catch up to a pace of normal life.

5)   I heard president Trump used social media network for his presidency. I know nothing about twitter. But blogs seem to work like newspapers. Some are popular, some spread fake news.

A few days ago I had a beautiful experience through comments of a blog. A person made up by typewriter and paper like me tends to be pessimistic for the future of internet age. In fact, we may not need to worry about the tech future, I thought.

Regards.

Eishin Ikeda

Valley Zendo