Our paid subscriber monthly gathering is this Wednesday, November 5th, 12pm ET. Never recorded, always evocative, we’ll write and discuss this prompt: I AM BECOMING… Your link is in our Subscriber’s Chat.
With a paid subscription, you’ll be able to view all posts, comment, attend Live Gatherings, and access archives. Subscriptions will be donated to support local food depots for the foreseeable future. If you have financial need, I offer a handful of scholarship subscriptions each month; message me. Thank you for being here.
The point of meditation isn’t to change us, it’s about befriending who we already are. —Frank Ostaseski
Several months ago I signed up to sit the Fall Sesshin, a six-day silent retreat, at Upaya Zen Center at the end of October. Strange choice given the timing (three weeks prior to book launch); turns out taking time to be still right now serves my mental clarity and enriches everything.
Sesshin (接心, or also 摂心/攝心 literally “touching the heart-mind”) is a period of intensive meditation (zazen) retreat in a Japanese Zen monastery.
Frank wasn’t there, but his words are sufficiently inhabiting my heart. The point of meditation isn’t to change us, it’s about befriending who we already are. In this sesshin, the process of befriending who I am actually came to life. And I can see that it will never end, this will never be done, but I’ll always be in this process.
Also, get this.
On day two, after the first two days in practice with an usually noisy fellow practitioner across the room from me, I finally arrive at a sense of compassion for myself and for him around the middle of the second day. And then it comes to light that this person is someone I know, and have known for forty years. 40 YEARS. Someone on whom I’d had a fleeting crush when I was 16, and he was 20. And the last time we’d seen one another, we were making out in a movie theatre in upstate New York.
So there’s that, in the zendo, during sesshin.
Back to the practice. Over seven hours a day sitting, mostly facing the wall, this project of befriending who I am, even the total numbskull I was back in the eighties and nineties: hair, attitude, smoking, sluttiness. Back to the practice, images flooding my consciousness in every sit, a too-long list of other humans I’ve conveniently forgotten, who’ve touched my body, my heart, my mind, my longing. Quite the experience.
Also.
There were feasts for the senses every day. The scarlet runner beans we’re shelling for our food on grounds samu, lapiz, lavender, periwinkle, cotton candy pink, spread out across a low basket like so many little candies, mesmerizing me every morning.
The way people’s faces transform by day four as we melt in the chrysalis and are reconstituted by practice. I know I’m not supposed to be looking.
Studying the writings of Dogen, each afternoon we’re chanting the Bendōwa (辨道話), Discourse on the Practice of the Way or Dialogue on the Way of Commitment, sometimes translated as Negotiating the Way, On the Endeavor of the Way, or A Talk about Pursuing the Truth.
“Grass, trees and lands which are embraced by this teaching together radiate a great light and endlessly expound the inconceivable, profound dharma.” (Tanahashi, 1985)
The dharma talks of the trees, via the shadows during midday walking meditation, a glorious coda for the actual talks at 11am each day.
The sunflowers on their last stands; their wilting magnificence.
This sesshin was one of my more easeful experiences of practice. Not because there wasn’t strife or weirdness—there was. But because I was actively letting go in most of the moments, not needing to be liked, seen. Stopped making and receiving extra food and just ate what was given. Noticed when I was grasping and then practiced releasing.
Receiving the dharma of disharmony, disappearing again into the safety of this chrysalis to be transformed, eyes in little slits, just being.
In these days since, on daily virtual book tour, soon to leave on the actual book journey, I keep coming back to this whenever I’m struggling:
“When even for a moment you express the Buddha’s seal in the three actions by sitting upright in samādhi, the whole phenomenal world becomes the Buddha’s seal and the entire sky turns into enlightenment.” (Tanahashi, 1985)
Just sit upright, take another breath, receive what’s next.
Closing with three reminders, cobbled together as our practice this week, with gratitude for teachers Sensei Sokaku Kathie Fischer, Sensei Jose Shinzan Palma, Chris Senko Perez, and Sensei Monshin Nannette Overley.
Deeply grateful for the support of James and my kid who keep showing up so fully.
Cultivate a stable body to experience a more stable mind.
Accord with things as they are, not as mind wants them to be.
Stay with the situation.
Befriend who you are.
Have you been working with any of these instructions?
Are you similarly in a befriending project along with me?
References
Lichtenberg, G. C. (1990). The Waste Books. New York Review of Books, 31.
Tanahashi, Kazuaki, Ed. (1985). Moon in a Dewdrop. North Point Press, 147.
Coming soon to the art shop, 3rd Edition of the Daily Ceremony Deck
HOLD NOTHING BOOK TOUR
Florida
November 9th-13th
Hold Nothing: Retreat at ChoZen
November 13th-16th
Eudēmonia Summit
New York
November 18th | Launch Day
Yoga Class + Signing at Souk
November 20th
Evening at The Strand with Yung Pueblo
Virtual
November 23rd
Conversation with Carrie-Anne Moss via Banyen Books, Virtual
November 25th, 1230pm-2pmET
Hold Nothing: A Workshop for Real Life
Virtual offering for those who purchase 3+ books, link coming soon;
once you’ve purchased, fill the form at the bottom of the book page.
Santa Fe
November 23rd
Reading and signing at Folklore - link soon
California
November 29th
Reading + signing at Godmothers
November 30th
Reading + signing at Light and Space Ojai
December 3rd
Reading + signing at Alila Marea
December 5th
Reading, practice, signing at Unplug Meditation
December 6th
Asana + meditation at Sol Seek Loft
December 6th
6pm Reading + signing at Vroman’s - link soon
Co-hosted by Jennifer Pastiloff and Annabeth Gish
2026
United Kingdom
May 10th-17th
Retreat at Broughton Sanctuary
Also,
and I had a wonderful talk about what it means to hold nothing.
Thank you for being here.
With a paid subscription, you’ll be able to listen and view all meditations, comment on posts, attend monthly Live Gatherings, and access the archives. Subscriptions are donated to support women, children, and food depots for the foreseeable future.
