'Spring Mind' Sesshin 2022 - online

Online home hermitage hybrid sesshin

Roshi Susan's invitation:

Spring comes with flowers, autumn with the moon,

Summer with a breeze, winter with snow.

When foolish things don’t stick in the mind,

This is your best season.

With Wumen’s words and Spring in the air, the great season of sesshin beckons once more.

And with a degree of Covid breathing space opening up at last, we’re breathing life back into our

home dojo, with a hybrid in-person/online Spring Sesshin – culminating in a Spring Jukai to

which all are welcome to attend in person, and share in a celebratory picnic afterwards.  

Sesshin rhythm and depth of practice found its way with considerable ease into online forms, in

these Covid years, drawing on what our bodies seem to know about how to come all the way

home in silence and attentive stillness, even when sitting ‘alone together’ online.   But at last it

feels possible to move carefully back into a limited degree of in-person sesshin once more, while

also opening the dojo wide open to an online space of practice ‘ beamed in’ to the dojo in hybrid

form.

Spring Sesshin has always been the deep well of practice from which all the other forms seem to

freely draw their power of transformation and strength of me-and-you connection.  Please join us 

for this Spring celebration of body and mind and the deeply quiet place where you are – which is 

always where practice begins fresh, over and again.

So ~ let no foolish thing stick in your mind and don’t delay. Secure your place online now!

Note: Online participation is open to all, however participation at Cloud Mountain is by invitation only.  

(Sadly) we have to limit the number of participants at Cloud Mountain to permit social distancing 

in the dojo. Invitations have been extended to the three people doing Jukai, experienced sesshin 

leaders, and participants with the skills needed to maintain sesshin form in its hybrid form. 

We will enter sesshin on Sunday evening. The timetable of silence, zazen, sutras,

dokusan (both online and in person), and evening teisho will closely follow the pattern found to

best fit online sesshin participation, with longer rest breaks built in.   Sesshin will close on Friday 

morning with a rest period on Friday. 

Part-time online attendance:.  Everyone participating online is asked to attend as if full-time, from

Sunday evening through to Friday morning, except where work hours require them to be absent 

during the daytime blocks of time.

We will regather for the Jukai ceremony at 10am on Saturday morning, followed by a community

picnic to celebrate the dojo reopening (ending 3pm). Everyone is warmly invited to attend the 

Jukai ceremony on Saturday November 5 in person, and the celebratory picnic lunch. 

The Jukai day is free to attend and open to all members. 

Dana:

You are asked to participate generously in the spirit and practice of dana that underlies and flows 

through the whole of this sesshin.  The practice of ‘Dana’ – unstinting mind - is the first and most fundamental ‘Paramita’, or ‘perfection of practice’.   From the time of the Buddha, the teaching has depended for its survival

on the generosity of all who value it and want to ensure it continues helping people find their path to awakening.  Teachers receive a modest honorarium from sesshin fees, that bears no real world relationship to the weeks of

work and the decades deeply devoted to teaching and sangha building that makes this sesshin possible. Your 

gesture of support means a lot and is truly appreciated.

COVID safe policy:  No in-person dojo attendance with symptoms, or within one week of testing positive 

with Covid. A negative RAT result before entry is greatly appreciated. Isolating on site will be necessary 

if symptoms appear during sesshin and Covid confirmed by RAT. Use masks indoors if unvaccinated or 

vulnerable in terms of underlying health issues. Take all appropriate care with social distancing, and 

Covid-safe sanitation practices in all food handling etc. Attendance on Saturday – also open to all on this basis.