Tassajara Sangha Week: August 2024

The Tathagata’s Robe

August 27, 2024

Dear Bodhisattvas,

Last week I went to Tassajara Zen Mountain Center with the Monterey Bay Zen Center sangha from Tuesday through Sunday. There were twelve of us from MBZC with our two teachers, Robert Reese and Patricia Wolff. There was also a contingent from CHOMP of 25 nurses, doctors and others led by two chaplains, one of whom is a Zen priest, Shogen Danielson. Many were there for the first time, and it was a joy watching them adjust to the monastic life. Visiting the hot springs is a bit of a hero’s journey. You leave the normal behind and enter an intentional community of renunciants with rules of deportment, compelling schedules and lots of meditation and chanting. But going to Tassajara is not just a pleasant visit to the hot springs or even a spiritual retreat. It is a process of integration into another way of being present.

PLEASE READ ON… for Dennis Hamilton’s complete letter to the sangha.

And here… please enjoy these mostly very candid moments. (In Chrome, you can right click an individual photo to open in maximum resolution in another tab.)

Courtesy of Anne Muraski, Ingrid Aquino, and Clara Nieto.