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Cover: Snow monkeys come down from the hills near Nagano every morning to enjoy a hot spring — Jay Tuttle.

Midwest ZenIssue 7 | February 2025Editors: Kristin Roahrig Mark J. HowellAddress all correspondence to:Midwest ZenGreat Wind ZendoPO Box 681Danville, Indiana 46122-0681MidwestZen@greatwindzendo.orgMidwest Zen is published and distributed at no cost from Great Wind Zendo’s website at greatwindzendo.org/mwz.This magazine is provided at no cost by volunteers. You can support this eort by making a donation to Great Wind Zendo, a 501(c)3 nonprot organization. Your generosity will help defray the costs of websites, software and other direct costs of publication.The creative works and opinions expressed in this magazine are those of the individual contributors who are solely responsible for their contents. Their works do not necessarily reect the opinions and positions of Great Wind Zendo.Hyperlinks appear in this color and are not underlined where the full URL is given.Midwest Zen © 2025 by Great Wind Zendo is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/. All rights revert to the contributing authors and artists upon publication.Published in the USA.ISSN: 3066-6376 (online)

ESSAYSDaishin McCabeFrom Stillness to Expansion: Dogen and Cosmogenesis7David WhyteZen 13Ed Mushin RussellJoyous Wonder 11Eliza Brown The Listening Year 21Jack KorneldThe Return of Joy 22Gyoshin Laurel M. Ross Shaving My Head 26Samuel Peach In the First of Winters 30Tonen O'Connor Taking Delight in the Dharma 33POEMSDiane Webster Calming Rain 32Donavon Daiki Jack Young Untitled poems 34–37Fūmyō Michaela Robošová Haiku 38Janina Aza Karpinska PinnacleThe Urban Fox4041Mark J. Mitchell Small SutraUpayaZen Piece434445Michael Goldman PrayerInka Seed4647Michael Minassian Autumn RainLetting Go4849O. P. Jha Even NowIt’s the TimeThe Engrossed505152Peter Cashorali GardeningProgress5455CONTENTS

AUDIOEliza Brown The Listening Year52 weeks of eld recordingsOvertureAudio LinkAudio LinkJack KorneldThe Return of Joy Audio LinkARTJay TuttlePhotograph CoverSuperchilimLovenbreen Ice Cave 4Daishin McCabeSun Face Buddha,Moon Face Buddha6Else Siegel Photograph 11David Whyte Photograph 12Simon Matzinger Resilience 17Kirill PershinPhotograph19Eliza Brown Big Walnut CreekPhotograph2042Warren Griths Tree 25Jorgen Hendriksen Morning! 28Rik Hopkinson Inside Blue 31Fūmyō Michaela Robošová Falling LeafAutumn Path3839Rudi Karner Incense bundled for drying 46Vincent Van Gogh The Starry Night 53BIOGRAPHIES56

– 4 –– 4 –Lovenbreen Ice CaveSuperchilum, 2012, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0> via Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lovenbreen_Ice_cave_5.JPG.

– 5 –– 5 –Joy and WonderWhen originally planning this issue, my intent was to focus on the topic of Joy because I wished to create a calm space amid the din of world events. We received a variety of submittals that addressed joy directly and indirectly. What I did not anticipate was the emergence of a second theme, that of Wonder. Without prior intention, works in this issue explore the places we experience in our practice, among one another, alongside a path or a river, in the snow and within the cosmos. Tonen O’Connor writes on the delight of the dharma and Daishin McCabe relates the wonder of space and time through the context of Dōgen’s Uji. Ed Mushin Russell identies joyous wonder as the true nature of all being.Audio les make their debut in this issue. Jack Korneld’s The Return of Joy is oered both as an audio le and its written transcription. I am especially pleased to share Eliza Brown’s project The Listening Year. In this project, they recorded the soundscape at a single place along Big Walnut Creek, one recording for each week for one year. Eliza composed an Overture which encapsulates the year’s soundscape into a single piece. Try listening to recordings from dierent times of the year to get a feel for the creek’s change of voice with the seasons; then listen to Overture. Headphones are encouraged.Mark J. Howell, editor

Daishin McCabe– 6 –Sun Face Buddha, Moon Face Buddha

From Stillness to Expansion: Dogen and CosmogenesisIn 1924, exactly 100 years ago, Edwin Hubble peered through the darkness of the night sky using the most powerful telescope on the planet and discovered something that astonished the scientic community, including Einstein. Hubble was the rst human to witness not just that there are multiple galaxies like our Milky Way, but that they are moving away from each other! This observation forever changed the way we see ourselves in relation to the world.Prior to Hubble’s discovery we saw the universe as a static place. With Copernicus and Galileo that understanding began to shift about 500 years ago when we learned that Earth is not the center of the universe. However, we still largely understood ourselves as living in a universe that has always existed, relatively unchanged, from its inception.Cosmogenesis is the revelation coming out of modern science that says the universe is not a place but an ever-evolving mystery that continually creates and recreates itself. While this is an amazing discovery, do we see it? Can we feel cosmogenesis in our bones? Most likely not, unless we take time to study this revelation and then meditate upon it.What world are we meditating in and on? An unchanging static universe? Are we sitting in a world of constant change? This is how the Buddha described it – all things are in ux. Nothing is xed. Everything is impermanent and interdependent.Are we sitting in a world that has an origin that reaches back 14 billion years to a singular point?Our answer to these questions directs how we experience zazen!The universe is expanding. That’s what Hubble saw through a telescope. This completely ies in the face of the cosmology that was most convincing at that time, namely that the universe is xed and that we live on a planet that has been around from the beginning in a Universe that has always been the way it is.And, while the Buddha’s view is similar to the view of an expanding universe, the new understanding from science boggles the mind. We can get our heads wrapped around constant change, but not as easily around cosmogenesis, namely that the universe is not a place but a continual creative process that came from somewhere and is going somewhere, that is NOT directionless or pointless.– 7 –Daishin McCabe

Daishin McCabe– 8 –Charles Darwin, even earlier than Hubble, theorized the idea of evolution, that the creatures on earth, including us humans, are not xed forms, but have evolved over vast periods of time, beyond what we can easily imagine.Darwin, Hubble, and other scientists have rocked our worldview – literally and metaphorically! We’ve learned that we live in an expanding universe and that the human species is part of a world that is evolving, and that we – Humans - are also part of that evolution!Pierre Teilhard de Chardin writes, “Has evolution … stopped in the human being …? Not at all. But without compromising what could be continuing to develop imperceptibly in the depths of nervous systems, since that date evolution has freely overowed its anatomical modalities, to spread, or even perhaps emigrate, by what is most vital in itself, into the individual and collective zones of psychic spontaneity.” (Appleton-Weber)What world are we meditating in? Cosmogenesis and evolution are not simply thoughts among other thoughts that we need to let go of. They’re not simply more data or concepts. Rather, to see these processes active here and now is to live in a world that is strikingly dierent than the static world our ancestors assumed, and this has ramications for our Zen practice.Seeing through the eyes of cosmogenesis can help us understand, or perhaps interpret Dogen’s writings. Uji – “Being-Time” – hints at cosmogenesis. Knowing the empirical data of an expanding universe can give us great condence in what Dogen intuited and wrote in Uji in the 13th century and can enliven our feeling for the expansion.“For the time being here means time itself is being, and all being is time.” (Dōgen)Time only comes into existence with being, and they are inseparable. There was no such thing as time before the big bang. Time came into being with the primordial aring forth. It’s hard for us to see this because we’ve placed so much stock in clock time. But Dogen didn’t live in our world. He saw time in nature, in light and darkness, as well as in life and death, perhaps not too unlike our ancestors.“Because the signs of time’s coming and going are obvious, people do not doubt it. Although they do not doubt it, they do not understand it.” (Dōgen)We need to bring doubt to our understanding of time. Time is not separable from being. There is no such thing as objective time. This is a human fabrication. While clock time is a useful tool in helping us organize our life, it

also creates tremendous stress trying to squeeze ourselves into often unnatural rhythms. Consider how our ancestors moved and lived according to the seasons.“The way the self arrays itself is the form of the entire world. See each thing in this entire world as a moment of time.” (Dōgen)Can we feel the world moving around us? Do we feel that this world is our Self moving, that we are the whole world, each one of us? My teacher, Daien Roshi, often said, “the only way we can see how much the world moves is for us not to.” If we’re really still, we can feel that movement. At this moment we’re moving 90,000 miles per hour around the sun. Can we feel it? Maybe we need to put our seatbelt on! The seatbelt is metaphoric for the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha that help to ground us in the reality of impermanence.“Know that in this way there are myriads of forms and hundreds of grasses [all things] throughout the entire earth, and yet each grass and each form itself is the entire earth. The study of this is the beginning of practice.” (Dōgen)Wow! The universe sets out in the Big Bang, everything is expanding away from everything else (the center is everywhere), and what happens in the human (itself a process of the universe) is that the universe becomes aware of itself. Thus Dogen says, “each grass and each form itself is the entire earth. This is the BEGINNING of practice.”“When you are at this place, there is just one grass, there is just one form; there is understanding of form and beyond understanding of form; there is understanding of grass and beyond understanding of grass.” (Dōgen)Seeing things from an objective perspective misses the point. When we look at the universe objectively, we have not entered into reality completely. We become an outsider looking at an object that is not us. We’ve left ourselves out of the observation, as if this were possible. Zen practice, however, is about dissolving the subject-object dualism and entering fully into life as it is, including ourselves.“Each moment is all being, each moment is the entire world. Reect now whether any being or any world is left out of the present moment.” (Dōgen)We’ve got to enter into cosmogenesis, a worldview we’ve just learned about 100 years ago, but haven’t nearly digested. That’s going to aid us to see what Dogen says (and understood intuitively) that, nothing is left out of the present moment.– 9 –Daishin McCabe

Daishin McCabe– 10 –The big bang is not just something that happened 14 billion years ago, it’s continuing right now…. BOOM!PSarah Appleton-Weber, The Human Phenomenon: Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, 2nd ed. (Liverpool University Press, 2022), 140.Eihei Dōgen, “The Time Being — Uji,” in Moon in a Dewdrop: Writings of Zen Master Dōgen, ed. Kazuaki Tanahashi (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1985), 76-83. – 10 –

Daishin McCabe– 11 –– 11 –Else Siegel, 2022, Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/photos/moss-wet-dewdrop-waterdrop-7580533/.

David Whyte– 12 –Image © David Whyte.

ZENis a great, big, magnicent, all-embracing seduction of a word. Zen is a beguiling and charming philanderer of the rst order, that good looking stranger who lets us fall in love, and then runs o with someone else, so that we can fall out of love with the word and be let alone in our grief, to fall in love with reality.Zen is a centuries old, glamorous, disguised, cover-up: inviting us in, in each succeeding generation, so exquisitely, so quietly, so subtly, so seductively into its grip, that we do not, to begin with, have any understanding of what we have become, so innocently, ensnared by; we do not have a clue as to the way we are being taken in so swiftly and so unerringly into the currents that lead to the edge of our own necessary, physical and emotional breakdown. Amidst our hopes for polished wood, serene surroundings, the sound of bells and the whispered shue of bare feet, we always nd, to our consternation, that Zen always begins and ends in tears.The rst tears in Zen practice are for our bodies and our restless minds: for our backs, our knees and for our legs, trying to sit upright on those strangely necessary black cushions. The next tears are for our hearts, our emotions and our previously imprisoned minds. The last tears are for a joy and laughter that still, to our amazement, keeps a friendship and an understanding with our previous griefs. Zen is the journey we take through heartbreak. At the last heartbreak, Zen retires from the eld, Zen generously disappears and lets us alone, refusing to let us use the word so freely again, refusing to let us be fooled by what we originally needed to be so enticed by. Drawn toward Zen practice, we almost always fall in love with the word itself. Zen beguiles us with that barely breathing vowel sound that lives so eternally and so glamorously at its centre, between the dashing capital Z and that oh-so subtle brushstroke of an ‘n’. The word itself seems to be clean and rested, insightful and eternally hip, something inspiring: something that conjures light and space, and a welcome order amidst a dicult world of besiegement, chaos and successive, never-ending experiences of grief.We fall for the word as we fall for the deep silences that swim dreamily through the rst pains of our practice, Zen welcomes us through its presence we rst saw in the clean, perfectly proportioned spaces inherited so seductively from Japan - but then, as Zen breaks down the divisions in our mind and body, we nd our sense of self breaks down too, rstly from the inside out and then, at the end, from the outside in. We learn to bow in the Zendo, not knowing what – 13 –David Whyte

David Whytewe are rehearsing: unconsciously preparing as we are, to duck through the achingly low doors of abasement our heartbreak will provide.We pass through those low doors as we pass into the diculties of marriage or intimate relationship. Like the raw vulnerabilities we nd in the commitments of marriage or in a long, intimate partnership, Zen begins with the honeymoon of getting to know, graduates through dicult and unwanted surprises and then culminates in a slow breakdown, day by day, through the trials and invitations of intimacy and heartache itself.As in a marriage, in Zen we learn that the line between this body, another’s body and the body of the world, is not where we thought it was. As in a love relationship, we learn that what we thought we knew is not equal to what we are discovering. As in an intimate relationship, we learn that who we thought we were is not who we are now in the midst of all the disappearing boundaries. Almost always in relationship, what we think we have to give is not what is needed; what we thought was love might not have been love at all, and what we thought we had to give up is not, after all, what is being asked for.Tellingly, as in relationship, the hardest thing to do in Zen practice is simply nding a way to breath freely while staying connected to the world, or the world of another. Breathing is foundational to both coming to know and letting go of what we think we know. Like the things we think we know about relationship, all the things we thought we knew about Zen will have to be given up at the end and even then, Zen and the intimacies of relationship both ask us to give up the very last thing, the very thing for which we thought we had already given everything up. Like the essence of intimate relationship, the very essence of Zen might be giving up and giving in, not to our partner but to what the essence and heartache of the partnership calls us to.Zen is surprising under its subterfuge: Zen’s biggest surprise is that it seems to have more condence in the incoherent life we rst brought to it than the one we are trying to replace it with. We nd ourselves seen at the core as one who generated diculties not because our essence is diculty but because diculties were what we thought we needed: in order to get through; in order to be worthy of something better, diculty was our needed friend, dicult is how we thought things should be. Dicult is what we thought we were.In the attempt to give our old life away and have it replaced by the newly spacious clarity we rst glimpse in Zen, we nd it constantly returned to us, in a voice that says we will never need anything more than what we already had. We are told in no uncertain terms that we were more miraculous in our simple wish to nd a way than any abstracted spacious place we could reach through – 14 –

sitting in silence. And yet, sitting in silence is how we will nd this out.Zen frustrates us, wants us to nd the way just by being the very essence of things that nd their way. Zen, in the old cliché, because it is so true, wants us to be the way itself. It might be that Zen as a word would like us to understand this one simple thing so it can go home and have a good rest. Zen begins by being the hand seemingly raised to keep us at bay and then slowly and imperceptibly is seen to be the hand that rests on our shoulder, telling us we might be ne, just as we are. When we actually glimpse what we are: we and that hand seem to disappear altogether, simply because there is no need for a hand when the reluctant body that needed it has disappeared.Zen is indeed, an old fraudster, but one with a heart of gold. Just as we are taken in, it relents and to our relief, gives us our money back. Zen, we realise in the end, is much humbler in its aims than we thought it was, Zen we realise is more realistic than we thought it was, Zen in the end, is always surprisingly practical, and helpful, and just wants us to do the simplest, most obvious thing. Zen doesn’t waste its energy by choosing too early in the game and waits for things to make their own choice unimpeded by interference. Zen refuses to choose between light and dark, restlessness and order; between not knowing or having answers. Zen has a well-cultivated sense of humour and carries its own hidden cargo of amusement at all our self-deceptions and false choices, Zen is a true comedian at times, its most hilarious proposition being that you might not, after all, have to believe in your own thoughts.We walk toward Zen as if toward a door of light but Zen practice moves us just as much and unerringly toward a door into the dark, into what until now we could not see or discern, so that we might better understand what we might have hidden there, but also so that we might better understand the underlying miracle of light itself.Zen leads us on like the very best kind of guide, as if we are equal to what we will eventually nd. Zen is the ultimate kind of guide, in that it disappears in the moment of our understanding, to leave us with what we have found, and more importantly and to our astonishment, what comes to nd us.If Zen asks us to begin with, to follow the thread of heartbreak: then to begin with, heartbreak is the only thread we need to follow. Heartbreak has many dicult doors, almost all of them leading where we hoped and prayed we did not need to go.Reading between the lines, the old Zen teachers seemed to think that one heartbreak is as good as another - so many doors! All heartbreak is giving up: – 15 –David Whyte

David Whyte– 16 –but the mercy that lies in the path of heartbreak is that, in the end, we will have to give up even our precious, well-guarded memories of heartbreak itself.In real heartbreak something else always comes to nd us. On the other side of heartbreak there is an experience of timeless radiance that cannot be described from this side of heartbreak: so for now, sitting Zen, and carrying the silence from sitting into our lives, heartbreak is all we need to know.Our breath in true heartbreak is faithful to the literal ease or the stress in our physical heart, and in following the path to heartbreak faithfully - whether we are black-clad Zen students facing a wall, or broken down unrequited lovers facing being left - in the raw grief of feeling abandoned, the breath becomes deeply even, spacious and self-healing. Weeping wholeheartedly is a rare experience in a human life exactly because weeping wholeheartedly to the point of breakdown might be the only experience of enlightenment most human beings experience.Zen is a word that asks us to do nothing more than what it has to do so generously itself: get over itself, get tired of itself and in the end get rid of itself. Zen is a word that generously arranges for its own disappearance just as we ourselves have to arrange for our own going. Zen leaves us in the end saying we might be just as much alive and just as much deserving and just as much enlightened in the midst of the mess we brought to it as we are now, under its beguiling inuence, with our straight backs, our fully remembered sutras and our perfect breathing.No, what you wanted from the word, you already had, you had just forgotten, and it was the forgetting itself that was most painful, more than what you thought was the pain itself, so you came this way as the only way you could, by allowing yourself to be fooled, as we often do, by a great romance, by a great long drama of a journey, by that beautiful, beguiling temptress of a word, Zen, so that it could unerringly and kindly lead you back to the door of heartbreak again, so that you could enter it fully this time, so that your grief this time could be let alone to be its own beautiful self and its own beautiful cure, so that you could nd yourself as you wanted, just waiting in the full vulnerability of waiting, or breathing, as you always somehow knew it was possible to breathe, in the full amplitude of breathing, so that you could enter at last the hallway of love, and then in turn, beyond that, be entered by the place you thought it was never possible to reach.PThis essay appears in David's new book, Consolations II and is reprinted here with permission of David Whyte and Many Rivers Press. © 2024 David Whyte.– 16 –

David Whyte– 17 –– 17 –ResilienceLearning to live with ange? As long as you are, there is a way.Simon Matzinger, Resilience, 2018, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Resilience_(191883819).jpeg, Creative Commons Attribution 3.0. Photo cropped to t page by Great Wind Zendo.

Ed Mushin Russell– 18 –Joyous WonderJoko Beck, my "Dharma Grandmother", once said that, "Joy is everything that is happening right now, minus our opinion of it." Did she mean that we must try to eliminate our opinions? I don't think that it's necessary, or even possible, to not have opinions. They are a part of our human functioning. It is when we believe our opinions to be the truth that we miss the joy that is right here in this moment. Another way to say it is that the Awakened Way is our life as it is, unless we believe otherwise. So, let's take a look at this joy that Joko is talking about. What it is and what it isn't.When she uses the word joy, we might think she is talking about happiness. But happiness has an opposite and joy does not. We can't always be happy but we can always be joyous. Another word we might use for what she is talking about is wonder. When we realize the wondrous, unknowable nature of this life, we can experience the joy that Joko speaks of. Whether we are happy or sad we can experience the wondrous joy that is this moment just as it is. As soon as we divide our life between what we want and don't want, like and don't like, we lose touch with that joyous wonder that is the true nature of all being.This joyous wonder isn't something we need to seek out. If we look for it we turn it into a concept, something outside of ourselves that we search for. If we pay close attention to our life, however, nothing could be more obvious. Our practice is to simply pay attention to this moment and notice when we want to turn away and ignore or deny the experiences that we don't want or like. If the only teacher is our life as it is, then we must hear what it is telling us and see what it is showing us. The more we do that, the more we can realize the joyous wonder that is our true nature.Bodhisattva's Vow talks about the "Mysterious truth of the awakened life." This is the joyous wonder that Joko and I are referring to. We can't always experience this mysterious truth, this joyous wonder, but it's always there just below the surface of our busy life. We are easily distracted by the trials and tribulations of our daily aairs so it's not surprising that we tend to forget about the true nature that we always are. But in the course of our sitting or daily practice eort, every once in a while, the glorious light will shine through and we are reminded once again of the awakened life that is always right here now. It's not something we have to nd, it's who we are if we aren't preoccupied with something else.It's really not so mysterious, at least in terms of our experience. If you have ever gazed up at a clear night sky you know the wondrous, ungraspable nature of

– 19 –Ed Mushin Russellthis life. This mysterious truth is all around us. We just need to pay attention. A songwriter once said that all we are is dust in the wind and yet, that dust was created in exploding stars billions of years ago. How wondrous is that?Kirill Pershin, 2019, Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/blue-and-gray-oral-cloth-yvKrdNXGN9M.

Eliza Brown– 20 –Big Walnut Creek

e Listening YearThe Listening Year at Big Walnut Creek is a sound art project that explores the changing sonic ecology of a place.Every week from July 2022-June 2023 I made a eld recording at Big Walnut Creek in Putnam County, Indiana. I hiked to the same site in the DePauw Nature Park, determined which sounds were the “story” that week, recorded a verbal introduction, then listened while recording for at least ve minutes. The following year, I composed an hour-long piece of music for cello, percussion, and electronic audio that incorporates and responds to the recordings. Throughout, scientists, environmentalists, colleagues and community members helped interpret the site and its sounds. The piece’s form and instrumental parts reect the sounds, morphology and ecology of the creek and adjacent riparian and agricultural zones, as well as the transformative experience of a year-long environmental listening practice.Artists often think about what we will do, and why, when beginning a project: the actions of a creative process; the goals and values driving those actions. I wanted to learn through listening and collaborating, to explore and understand interconnections among the human and non-human sounds present at the site, and to create music from this understanding — perhaps as a form of science communication, as artistic experiment, as a way of combating environmental destruction. Artists less often consider how our projects will change us: there is no way to know. It is an inevitable surprise.Weekly environmental listening surprised me by becoming a sanctuary. Observing the site, and feeling curiosity about those observations, restored a connection to the earth I did not realize had grown distant. The site became a friend I got to know deeply, who gave embarrassingly generous gifts in return for my showing up and paying attention. I dissolved my consciousness into the sound of rapids after the March oods, and felt intense gratitude. In the end, The Listening Year is a love story, about a deep relationship with the earth borne of sensory attention and curiosity, that is open to all.There are many ways to hear and be part of The Listening Year. Embedded here is the audio from the piece’s rst movement, “Overture,” where clips from all fty-two recordings blend into one another chronologically — the year in miniature. A playlist of all fty-two eld recordings is also on SoundCloud. The Listening Year’s premiere live performance will be at DePauw University on May 1, 2025. And I invite you to go outside and listen.PListen to Eliza’s Overture at https://on.soundcloud.com/zvLr9Eb7EXQkCMKB8 and their weekly eld recordings at: https://soundcloud.com/eliza-brown/sets/the-listening-year-at-big-walnut-creek.– 21 –Eliza Brown

Jack Kornelde Return of JoyIf we cannot be happy in spite of our diculties, what good is our spiritual practice?There is an unquenchable human spirit born anew in each child. This spirit which has carried Nelson Mandela and so many others through hardship and storms can carry you. Inside you are a thousand generations of your ancestors, who learned how to survive storms and diculties. Do not be afraid. You too will nd your way.Trust your ability to turn toward your diculty with courage and compassion. Ground yourself in your body and nd the temple of healing within. By bringing your most beloved wisdom gures into your heart you will nd help as you navigate conict and loss. You will discover how to cultivate practices of balance and equanimity. And learn the art of forgiveness.When you learn to navigate your diculties with compassion and grace, you will also discover that joy will return. Your diculties and sorrows do not dene you—they do not limit who you are. Sometimes, during periods when your struggles overwhelm you or last for a long time, you can mistake them for your life. You become used to diculty, you become loyal to your suering. You don’t know who you would be without it. But your diculties are not the end of the story, they are one part of it—they are part of your path to great love and understanding, a part of the dance of humanity.When Siddhartha sat by the river at the end of the story by Herman Hesse that many of us read in high school, he nally learned to listen. He realized that all the many voices in the river comprise the music of life: the good and evil, the pleasures and the sorrows, the grief and the laughter, the yearnings and the love. His spirit was no longer in contention with all of life. He found that along with the struggles was also an unshakable joy. This joy can be yours as well.Maha Ghosananda taught all those he met—including in Cambodia, where almost every family suered unimaginable losses during the genocide—that in spite of our diculties, love can return. He taught how to meet sorrows with compassion and understanding, how to honor them, and, nally, how to transform them. It is important not to let your sorrows become your whole life. “When you go to a garden,” asks Rumi, “do you look at thorns or owers? Spend more time with roses and jasmine.”A Buddhist teacher and colleague, Debra Chamberlin-Taylor, tells the story of a community activist who participated in her year-long training group for people – 22 –

of color. This woman had experienced a childhood of poverty, trauma, and abuse. She had faced the death of a parent, illness, divorce from a painful marriage, racism, and the single parenting of two children. She talked about her years of struggle to educate herself, to stand up for what she believed. She described how she had become a radical to ght for justice in local and national politics. Finally, at the last meeting this woman announced, “After all the struggles and troubles I’ve lived through, I’ve decided to do something really radical! I am going to be happy.”No matter what you have faced, joy and renewal wait your return. When you remember you can open your eyes to the mystery of life around you. Sense the blessings of the earth in the perfect arc of a ripe tangerine, the taste of warm, fresh bread, the circling ight of birds, the lavender color of the sky shining in a late afternoon rain puddle, the million times we pass other beings, in our cars and shops and out among the trees without crashing, conict, or harm.Spiritual practice should not be confused with grim duty. It is the wonder born with every child. Maurice Sendak, author of Where the Wild Things Are, depicts this spirit in the story of a boy who wrote to him. “He sent me a charming card with a drawing. I loved it. I answer all my children’s letters—sometimes very hastily—but this one I lingered over. I sent him a postcard and I drew a picture of a Wild Thing on it. I wrote, ‘Dear Jim, I loved your card.’ Then I got a letter back from his mother and she said, ‘Jim loved your card so much he ate it.’ That to me was one of the highest compliments I’ve ever received. He didn’t care that it was an original drawing or anything. He saw it, he loved it, he ate it.”Yes, we need to carefully navigate through hard times. But the whole world is also our temple, to be tended with love and dignity no matter what. As Martin Luther King Jr. exhorted us all, “If a person sweeps streets for a living, he should sweep them as Michelangelo painted, as Beethoven composed music, as Shakespeare wrote his plays.”The world oers perennial renewal, in the grass that pushes itself up between the cracks in the sidewalk, in the end of every torrential rainstorm and in every newly planted window box, in every unexpected revolution, with each new morning’s light. This unstoppable spirit of renewal is in you. Trust it. Learn that it ows through you and all of life. The ultimate gift of our suering is to teach us how to properly grieve, heal, and learn compassion. But nally we come to the realization that in any moment we can step out of the body of fear and feel the great winds that carry us, to awaken to the eternal present. It is within our power to experience the liberation of the heart oered to all by the Buddha in these words:– 23 –Jack Korneld

Jack Korneld– 24 –Live in joy,In love,Even among those who hate.Live in joy,In health,Even among the aicted.Live in joy,In peace,Even among the troubled.Look within.Be still.Free from fear and attachment,Know the sweet joy of living in the way.May you be blessed.PThis essay appears with permission from Jack Kornfield. It is also found on his web pages along with a link to his audio presentation on SoundCloud. Essay: https://jackkornfield.com/return-joy/Audio: https://soundcloud.com/jack-kornfield/the-return-of-joyPJack is currently oering a wonderful array of transformational online courses diving into crucial topics like Mindfulness Meditation Fundamentals, Walking the Eightfold Path, Opening the Heart of Forgiveness, Living Beautifully, Transforming Your Life Through Powerful Stories, and so much more. Sign up for an All Access Pass to explore Jack's entire course library. If you would like a year’s worth of online meetups with Jack and fellow community, join The Year of Awakening: A Monthly Journey with Jack Korneld.– 24 –

Jack Korneld – 25 –– 25 –TreeWarren Griths, Tree, 2022, Pixabay, https://pixabay.com/photos/tree-reection-fog-water-nature-7403295/.

Gyoshin Laurel M. Ross– 26 –Gyoshin Laurel M. Ross– 26 –Shaving My HeadThis last hair is called the shura.Only a Buddha can cut it o.Now I will cut it o.Do you allow me to cut it o?YesThis last hair is called the shura.Only a Buddha can cut it o.Now I will cut it o.Do you allow me to cut it o?YESThis last hair is called the shura.Only a Buddha can cut it o.Now I will cut it o.Do you allow me to cut it o?YESI answered “Yes” three times when my teacher asked permission to shave o the last remaining scrap of hair on my gleaming head July 20, 2014. At that moment, in a room lled with loving witnesses, I had no qualms as the razor approached my head. Each time I answered “yes” I heard my voice grow louder and felt my condence swell. At almost 67, I was being ordained as a novice priest in the Soto Zen tradition. I had been preparing for this ceremony for many months. I had been preparing for this life transformation for many years. My teacher explained for all to hear why my head was being shaved: Traveling the path of Buddha, one must be in the state of renunciation. This is not for renunciation itself, but for the sake of realizing the Way. This form is common to all Buddhist Orders; a criterion for attaining freedom. To make body and mind one with the Way, nothing is better than renunciation.I had thought deeply about renunciation before this ritual and had come to

Gyoshin Laurel M. Ross– 27 –– 27 –Gyoshin Laurel M. Rossunderstand it not as giving something up, but instead, as unburdening myself. The words “attaining freedom” rang true.He continued:Cutting o the hair is cutting the root of clinging. As soon as the root of clinging is cut, your original body appears. Changing into monastic robes now, and leaving worldly passions, you are free.I was not reluctant, quite the opposite, and yet, undeniably, it felt like a radical action for a 21st century woman living outside of a monastic community where baldness is the norm.After this ceremony I would be a priest. Having retired from my day job, I would be serving our sangha in various ways, but I would live at home and continue to interact with non-Buddhists daily, wearing my new robes only at the temple. The rest of the time I would wear my regular clothes. I would interact with people who were not part of my Zen community, while I went about my business: shopping for groceries, volunteering in the Forest Preserves, singing in a choir, etc. I was uncertain about how this new commitment would change my life, especially since my newly shaved head made me feel conspicuous.What I saw in the mirror was both familiar and completely unfamiliar. My image was denitely dominated by this new “hairstyle”—it was hard to ignore.Because it was summer in Chicago, I had been cautioned to wear a hat to avoid sunburn on my tender scalp, so I usually wore a baseball cap outdoors, but even that head covering didn’t really disguise my hairless condition. I decided not to announce anything, but to respond if anyone asked. It was interesting to see how people reacted and how I reacted to their reactions. One casual friend asked if I had shaved my head in solidarity with women who had lost their hair from chemo treatments. I had never heard of that practice, but it sounded like a lovely idea. In one of my choirs a fellow alto I had never talked to before asked very solicitously whether I was “all right”. She assumed the worst. I explained to both of these people that my baldness was because I had decided to become a Zen priest now that I had retired. They both seemed unsettled by that information. A female priest? Zen? These ideas were outside of their familiar experience. I tried to talk about it in a way that normalized it. “Zen is mostly focused on meditation.” “I have been doing Zen for decades. This is just

– 28 –MorningJorgen Hendriksen, Morning!, 2021, Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/a-group-of-sheep-standing-on-top-of-a-grass-covered-eld-y2mAMidSI_Q.Gyoshin Laurel M. Ross– 28 –

– 29 –Gyoshin Laurel M. Ross– 29 –an added commitment.” “If you need someone to perform a wedding, just call me.” Neither of them seemed to want to talk more about it. I wondered if they thought I had fallen into the clutches of a cult. My grown daughter seemed utterly delighted. She is an artist and was impressed that I had sewn my robe by hand as has been the tradition since the time of the historic Buddha. It took more than a year to sew the many thousands of tiny stitches to make the large rectangular patched garment called an okesa that is worn by priests. She congratulated me both on my boldness and my baldness. Unlike a tattoo, a shaved head is not a permanent commitment. It was a requirement of ordination to shave my head, but it was left up to me whether to keep it shaved after that. Hair grows back quickly. In a couple of months it was an inch or so long—a length I have maintained for almost ten years. I do cut it even shorter whenever I participate in a meditation retreat, but I have never completely removed it all again. It’s simpler that way. Freed from my ancient karmaFreed from my worldly attachmentsFreed from form and colorEverything is changedExcept my deep desire to live in truth with all beings.

Samuel Peach– 30 –– 30 –In the First of WintersThis was a wilderness enveloped by a brilliant blanket of what might’ve been chalk dust; at and unwrinkled. Newly born and without the blemish of colour brought on by days spent in the evening sun. I reached down to run my hand over it and found that my ngers carved away at the powder eortlessly.What’s more, it was cold. More so than I thought possible. It seemed to have taken the biting howls of the wind and made them material. I marvelled as the tips of my ngers blued and the ne hair on my arm hardened to attention. Moments later – once all feeling in my outstretched hand had been stolen and frozen specks had come to lie among my lashes – the numbness began to scald beneath my skin. In small patches across my chest and shoulders, my skin burned but never blistered. Every piece of me beneath the ankles seemed lost, and I suspected my ngers might follow soon after.I raised my gaze to scour the landscape before me and spotted something familiar. The moon sat nestled in the crowded heavens, chipped but brilliant as she might’ve been when full. In her solar cradle, she watched my delight with the quiet pride of a parent, and I thought to ask her to join me once she’d retired for dawn.Through no small amount of eort, I ventured a step forwards and chuckled as my legs folded with the strain. A new burn ared from my ankle and I regarded its new shape with fascination. How the bone’s curve had unravelled into jagged bumps softened by a blanket of skin. It rather reminded me of the strange expanse before me, and I wondered then how mountains might look stabbing from a land such as this. Something akin to teeth, I might’ve thought. Sloped granite stained white and smothered.Flakes of ice clung to me as I sat; perched patiently in my hair while the breeze went on without them. I let them rest for the moment as my gaze trailed the landscape.‘You’re wonderful,’ I told it. ‘Just wonderful.’

S– 31 –– 31 –Inside BlueRik Hopkinson, Inside Blue, 2021, Unsplash, https://unsplash.com/photos/blue-and-white-abstract-painting-catA3Ukpwto.

Diane Webster– 32 –Calming RainThe reection triesto calm itselfin the puddlestill ringingwith raindrops.Tonen O'Connor– 32 –

– 33 –Diane WebsterTonen O'Connor– 33 –Taking Delight in the DharmaI'm nding it hard to write about joy. It's hard to capture that elusive emotion that rises on so many occasions and has so many expressions, from shouting out loud to quiet contentment. Joy is a feeling, a rising sense of lightness and happy gratitude. It's not something static that I can adequately catch in words.It's easier to talk a little bit about the sources of joy and where we nd it. Joy ows when we receive a gift, our gratitude tinged not only with pleasure at the thing received, but also with joy at the connection revealed by the giving. We feel remembered and appreciated. Our joy rises at the sense that the giver values our existence. Conversely, joy wells up when we give a gift as a sign of our appreciation for the life of the recipient. Joy is about connections. Sometimes these are intimate relationships with family and friends, but joy also rises when we give to those we do not know, such as oering food to the homeless. Joy is inherent in the sense of connection between giver and receiver, for giving and receiving signal our common humanity.We can make the mistake of viewing joy as a rare commodity. How can joy be present when there are so many things threatening us within today's society? So much rampant hate? This is where I remember to take delight in the dharma.And what is the dharma? First and foremost, the truth of how things are, empty of static existence, always changing thanks to the multitude of factors owing from others and upon whom our existence depends. Secondly, it is the Buddha's teaching that our suering rises from our ignorance of this truth and that, conversely, our happiness rises from our understanding of this unceasing process. Each and every thing in this universe, including thoughts and emotions, is called a dharma because each and every thing speaks the truth of how things are.It is this truth that we can delight in, for it oers us gifts at every moment. Some are painful and not welcome, and yet joy comes as we receive the gift of a new day. As I sit here and write, joy ows at the memory of the high school teacher who took his lunch hours to teach us touch typing. Joy ows at the sight through my window of the trunk of the huge tree that stands over this building like a protective kami. Joy ows at the sight of two sleeping cats whose purrs sometimes bloom under my hand.Above all, I take delight in the dharma of the inbreath that succeeds the outbreath, carrying with it the joy of this brief instant of life.

Donavon Daiki Jack Young– 34 –Sewing the robeI bow to everything,Everything bows back,Thread runs smooth,Cloth lies at.

– 35 –Donavon Daiki Jack YoungThoughts y like urries of yesterday,Today, I seek to sweep them away,Only to nd that tomorrow’s snow still falls

Donavon Daiki Jack Young– 36 –Winter winds shake chimesFaintly clung to ne tip branchesPaper thin quaking leaves

– 37 –Donavon Daiki Jack YoungAfter sitting, snow fallsWinter weather upon us nowSpring’s melt still looms near

Fūmyō Michaela Robošová– 38 –early mista quiet pop of a leafbecoming free

Janina Aza Karpinska– 40 –"Pinnacle"That name — emblazoned across the top framedumped between cobble wall and electric-boxby the Buddhist temple on Lansdowne Place –all that remains of what once was bike, nowreduced to a tubular, mountain-shape; derelict,a mockery of itself. Its missing wheels – spinningon other axles; the clank & pull of its crank-set teethbiting somewhere else. Who rides the saddle now?Who grips its absent handlebars? Where are themudguards, drivetrain, hydraulic lines, andall the other entrails?Stripped to its original form, its name proclaimsan irony of fate in a summit of silent expression; a peak of dumb deance; and, still, it modelshow to survive being wrecked by life –like an urban koan.

– 41 –Janina Aza KarpinskaThe Urban FoxThat sudden meeting – stopped us both waiting - stock-still hardly daring to breatheand I, not wanting to leave thisstrangely hallowed encounter had to move on as slowly, and as quietly as I could.Surprised, then, on looking back –to see it had settled comfortably;entirely at ease, much like a dog in front of a reon a rug not tarmac on a cold winter's night.

Eliza Brown– 42 –Mark J. Mitchell– 42 –

Eliza Brown– 43 –– 43 –Mark J. MitchellSmall SutraThe path of water is not known by water.—Dogen ZenjiMountains and Water SutraYou falllight as water.Water fallslightly on you.You look downa long hill.The long hillcalls to water.You singlike water on trees.Trees accepta gift of falling water.You don’t knowwater or trees.Trees and waterdon’t see you.But you, waterand trees make a river.

Mark J. Mitchell– 44 –UpayaThe BuddhaWould useSkillful meansTo shareThe Dharma.I’ll practicewith the toolsof childhoodhoping that’s whatskillful means.

– 45 –Mark J. MitchellZen PieceAll the Zen books tell us thatthey don’t hold Zen.The many ancientteachers all say,don’t ask me.Layman Pang readsin his hammockdropping one footon the ground.

Michael Goldman– 46 –PrayerThe incense burns down.Second by second.All I act on changes, disperses.The smoke vanishes.I am still here.Incense bundled for dryingRudi Karner, Quang Phu Cau, Vietnam, 2025.

– 47 –Michael GoldmanInka SeedIn Andean tradition, an energetic structure that sits in the center of our physical and mystical body. At the center there is nothing to fear.There is only what is, and potentialfor wholeness, for union.At the center there is no opinion,no right, no wrong, just unwaveringconnection, more than humanly possible.

Michael Minassian– 48 –Autumn RainIt’s been raining all nightand this morning the misthangs so low I could stepon the bottom of clouds.Rivulets run down window panesand sloping sidewalks,everything soaked, vibrant:the greens greener, browns browner,grays pressing down from the sky.In the hills, sounds muted,barking dogs a faraway noise,then a solitary cry from ablackbird or magpie. I wonder why the wind is so still, as if the earth’s breath pausesto let the sky nd relief.For everything in naturethere’s a reason, cause and eect,action without attachment—the rain continues, I remain,turn my mala beads, breathe.

– 49 –Michael MinassianLetting GoI see hills in the distancecovered in greentrees, brush, and vines.The blue skyholds only clouds.Nothing stirs except the wind.When I look again,the sky lets go,clouds move on.

O. P. Jha– 50 –even nowsometime you look like dew-drops even nowglittering on the petals till the tough noon even nowsometime you ow as an uncared silence even nowlling up some voids in this busy town even now sometime you fall as snow-akes even now giving time to lovers for living inside even nowsometime you sing a sweet note even nowreleasing a lovely cue for going ahead even nowsometime for someone you smell sweet even nowO innocence! You glitter even in dark clumps even now.

– 51 –O. P. JhaIt’s the timeWatching the spring around a bird seated on a thorny acacia forgot to see its broken wingsbefore the winter it had crossed many mile-stones and left many things behind during the winter it dwelt inside a cave, dwelt withinconnected with the core now it’s the time for apping wingsfor ying in the sky for loving inside the nest.

– 52 –O. P. Jha– 52 –e engrossedThe Earth doesn't dreamto touch the ickering stars it’s dancing on its axis and bathing in the moon-lightall the night.

– 53 –O. P. Jha– 53 –Vincent van Gogh, The Starry Night, 1889, Wikimedia Commons, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Gogh_-_Starry_Night_-_Google_Art_Project.jpg, Google Arts & Culture, Public Domain.e Starry Night

Peter Cashorali– 54 –GardeningReading the Book of Enoch,As before I read the Sefer Yetzirah,As before that Emanuel Swedenborg,Meister Eckhart, Pema Chodron,Carl Jung and Rilke, Taoism, Zen.Each new text bumps the previous Into the mulch pile behind the garage.Orphism is back there, and alchemy,And three dierent Books of the Dead,Santeria and Satanism and Catholicism.Such eort just to make soil.The blue ower in the front yard fades,Taking its meaning as it goes.

– 55 –Peter CashoraliProgressIn former lifetimes we took drugs—Cannabis to make us mellow,Lines of coke to sharpen joy,Psilocybin for a vision.Later, sunlight was invented,That makes raspberry bushes glow,And breezes curling through the yard,Culling incense from the grass,And from somewhere in the hedgeA robin’s casual remarkOpens all our doors and windowsSo what’s outside is what’s within.Wasn't this why we got highAnd this the high we always sought?That someday we would disappearAnd be replaced with afternoon?

– 56 –BiographiesDavid Whyte is a poet, philosopher and speaker. He grew up with a strong, imaginative inuence from his Irish mother among the hills and valleys of his father’s Yorkshire and now makes his home in the Pacic Northwest of the United States. David’s life as a poet has created a readership and listenership in three normally mutually exclusive areas: the literate world of readings that most poets inhabit, the psychological and theological worlds of philosophical enquiry and the world of vocation, work and organizational leadership. He hosts a live online series, Three Sundays, every other month. David’s most recent book, Consolations II: The Solace, Nourishment and Underlying Meaning of Everyday Words is available online.Diane Webster's work has appeared in Old Red Kimono, North Dakota Quarterly, New English Review, Studio One and other literary magazines. She had micro-chaps published by Origami Poetry Press in 2022, 2023 and 2024. One of Diane's poems was nominated for Best of the Net in 2022. Diane retired in 2022 after forty years in the newspaper industry. Her website is www.dianewebster.com.Donavon Daiki Jack Young is a lay-practitioner living in residence at the Lake Superior Zendo in Marquette, Michigan. Pursuing priest ordination under Reverend Tesshin Lehmberg they frequently spend time in retreat at Ryumonji Zen Monastery. Daiki is also currently studying under Reverend Seiko Wiken to learn the craft of sewing Zen monastic vestments; they are a lover of all things growing and crafted and are drawn to locales which are more densely populated by trees than people. Ed Mushin Russell is resident teacher at the Prairie Zen Center. He served as Elihu Genmyo Smith's attendant, completed koan study and became Genmyo's rst Dharma heir in 2015.The music of composer Eliza Brown, described as “delicate, haunting, [and] introspective” by Symphony Magazine, has been performed by leading contemporary music ensembles and released on multiple labels. Eliza’s work is frequently intertextual, referencing existing music, historical styles, eld recordings, and other artifacts. Deeply interested in the relationships between music and the other arts and humanities, Eliza has collaborated with practitioners of theater, dance, architecture, poetry, visual art, lm, and more, frequently taking on roles in these projects beyond “composer.” Building intentional, project-specic collaborative processes is an essential part of their practice. Eliza is currently Associate Professor of Music at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, where they teach courses in composition, music theory, and career development. For more: elizabrown.net.Eric Daishin McCabe (He/Him, Caucasian) is co-head teacher at Zen Fields, a Soto Zen Buddhist temple in Ames, Iowa, the interim minister at Nebraska Zen Center in Omaha, and a chaplain at Mary Greeley Medical Center. He has been teaching World Religions at Des Moines Area Community College the past nine years. In addition, he facilitates Trauma Sensitive Yoga at both Mary Greeley Medical Center and Broadlawns Hospital on the Behavioral Health units. His training includes fteen years of life as a monk at Mount Equity Zendo (and has the equivalency of a Masters of Divinity based in that training), formerly located in central Pennsylvania, ve units of Clinical Pastoral Education at Hershey Medical Center and Wellspan hospitals and a B.A. in Religion and Biology from Bucknell University. Daishin is also a 500 hour Registered Yoga Teacher and enjoys practicing art in his free time.Fūmyō Michaela Robošová lives in the Czech Republic. She practices life, Zen, poetry, calligraphy, and sumi-e painting. That's what you can nd at her website Rustling Leaves. https://rustling-leaves.blog/.Gyoshin Laurel Ross has practiced Zazen since 1999 and was ordained in 2014 by Taigen Leighton, Guiding Teacher Emeritus at Ancient Dragon Zen Gate in Chicago.Jack Korneld trained as a Buddhist monk in Thailand, India, and Burma. He holds a PhD in clinical psychology and is a founding teacher of the Insight Meditation Society in Massachusetts

– 57 –and Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California. He is one of the key teachers to introduce mindfulness practice to the West, has taught internationally since 1974, and is the author of sixteen books which have sold two million copies. Stay up to date with Jack's freshest oerings—articles, guided meditations, dharma talks, and his weekly Heart Wisdom Podcast at JackKorneld.com.Janina Aza Karpinska is a wild-mind artist-poet from the south coast of England, drawing on many inuences and writing in a variety of styles in the quest for creative resolution. Since achieving an M.A. in Creative Writing & Personal Development, with Merit, at Sussex University, her work has appeared in Poems in the Waiting Room;Aromatica Poetica; Willawaw Journal; Ekphrastic Review; Magma; Sein und Werd; Synchronized Chaos; Cold Signal, and Raising the Fifth among others.Jay Tuttle nds the mix of art and science in photography very appealing. Making photographs that others enjoy is a great pleasure in his life. You can view his work at https://www.jaytuttlephotography.com.Mark J. Mitchell has published seven books, his most recent is Something to Be. He was nominated for a Best of the Net award in 2024 and for The Best Spiritual Writing of 2025. Mark is fond of baseball and lives and sits in San Francisco.Michael Favala Goldman (b.1966) is an award-winning poet and translator of Danish literature. His third book of poetry, Small Sovereign, won rst place in the 2022 Los Angeles Book Festival. Among his eighteen translated books is Dependency by Tove Ditlevsen, which made the New York Times Best 10 Books of 2021 as book three of The Copenhagen Trilogy. Goldman lives in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he has been running poetry critique groups since 2018. https://michaelfavalagoldman.com.Michael Minassian is a practicing Buddhist following the teachings of the Dalai Lama, as well as a participant in Korean Zen meditation. He is a Contributing Editor for Verse-Virtual, an online poetry journal. His poetry collections Time is Not a River, Morning Calm, A Matter of Timing, and Jack Pays a Visit are all available on Amazon. For more information: https://michaelminassian.com.O. P. Jha writes on love, peace, environment and social issues. He is the author of Management Guru Lord Krishna. His works appeared in many journals and his poems appeared in anthologies We were Seeds (from Querencia Press) and We are Resilient (from Valiant Scribe). He is Assistant Director in Broadcasting Corporation of India and a practitioner of Buddhist meditation. X: @OPJha17.Peter Cashorali is a queer and neurodiverse psychotherapist, formerly working in HIV/AIDS and community mental health, currently in private practice in Portland and Los Angeles. Samuel Peach is a creative writing PhD candidate at Cardi University, South Wales. His writing often focuses on the experiences of the neurodivergent community and the potential for neurodivergent characters in ction. Professionally, Samuel works with secondary school learners on the autistic spectrum and enjoys encouraging his students to explore creative writing whenever possible. Tonen O’Connor is the Resident Priest Emerita of the Milwaukee Zen Center. Her most recent literary adventure was editing. and writing an introductory essay for Ryokan Interpreted, by Shohaku Okumura

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Contributed essays, poems, photographs, art and audio recordings are welcome at any time. We feature creative works from lay persons and professional alike. You can nd our submittal guidelines at https://www.greatwindzendo.org/mwz/submissions.Prepared and published by Great Wind Zendo, Danville, Indiana, USA.Mailing address PO Box 681, Danville, IN 46122-0681, USAGreat Wind Zendo is a 501(c)(3) nonprot religious organization funded by the generosity ofour donors. You can support our work and this publication with a donation at https://www.greatwindzendo.org/mwz.ggg– 59 –

Sky Above Great Wind — Ryokan