Letters from the desk.
Weekly digests, field notes, and occasional essays.
- July 2, 2026
A year for a single word
The Dalai Lama's Year of Compassion closes on Monday, and two July retreats named for interdependence take the same insight in opposite directions.
- June 23, 2026
What they built
Robert Thurman died last week in Woodstock. The retreat calendar he helped make possible fills with offerings that would have been unimaginable when he was ordained.
- June 16, 2026
What attention becomes
Jane Hirshfield returns to the monastery where silence first shaped her writing, and a six-day sesshin straddles the solstice with a $10 online track for those sitting at home.
- June 7, 2026
The limit of hearing
A writing retreat at Green Gulch treats the page like a cushion, a day sit in Brooklyn takes up Ambedkar's Buddhism, and Great Vow marks the solstice with a day of zazen in Oregon.
- May 26, 2026
The same water
A Chan teacher arrives at a Soto monastery in Oregon, Denver offers sesshin in three formats at the same price, and a retreat in Minnesota pairs Dogen with Václav Havel.
- May 21, 2026
What listens
Three retreats take practice outside the zendo walls — into birdsong at Green Gulch, into the woods in Worcester, and into the longest light at a solstice arts immersion.
- May 14, 2026
What silence holds
A workshop at Great Vow asks what happens when the teacher-student relationship goes wrong — the same weeks Tassajara sends practitioners into the mountains and Hokyoji strips a retreat to its bones.
- May 5, 2026
The shape of the day
This month's calendar runs from first sesshin at Green Gulch to self-directed practice in the Catskills — the same form, held differently.
- April 28, 2026
The other shore of Zen
A Chan teacher arrives at a Zen monastery in Oregon — and the distinction between the two traditions turns out to matter less than you'd think.
- April 17, 2026
Nothing lacking
SFZC opens a month-long practice period titled after Dogen's most direct teaching — the same week Green Gulch plants trees and a Huayan scholar visits City Center.
- April 17, 2026
The first real question
Three retreats in the next three weeks ask the same question differently — what happens when you stop practicing alone?
- April 14, 2026
Moment to moment
A zazenkai series in New Mexico is recovering the stories of women who shaped modern Zen — this Saturday turns to a Swiss musician who wrote poems after sitting.
- April 7, 2026
What gets passed down
The Denkoroku maps fifty-two transmissions of the light from teacher to student — this month, three retreats carry that impulse forward in different forms.
- March 31, 2026
What words are for
Three retreats this spring circle the old question — what happens when you bring language into silence, or silence into language?
- March 21, 2026
The space between seasons
The equinox passed yesterday. Across the country, zendos are opening their spring practice periods — three sesshins this week sit right on the threshold.