LED BY PAULA JONES & SHINBO JOSEPH HALL
“A new person has to go beyond tradition, find a new element, find a new form. What is now an old form was considered new, just a moment ago.”
~ Kobun Chino Otogawa
Nehan-e Sesshin is a silent meditation retreat held each year in honor of the Buddha’s parinirvana. Inspired by Dogen's Bendowa, and Kobun's Embracing Mind, this year we will delve deeply into the forms of Zen, exploring how the still point of zazen can be borne into the movements of our everyday activity. Zen is an embodied practice, it's words no more than a finger pointing at the moon, and it's deepest teachings can only travel from person to person through a sometimes mysterious process we call transmission. Bowing to each other amongst the early Spring plum blossoms, we will study the ancient and silent language of Zen.
Paula Jones
Shinbo Joseph Hall
Paula Jones was an early student of Kobun’s and, decades later, was ordained and given transmission by Angie Boissevain. She is a co-founder and teacher of Floating Zendo San Diego. After years of teaching writing and literature in colleges and universities, she continues to write poems, create hand-bound chapbooks of her work and lead poetry workshops.
Joe Hall is the Tanto (practice leader) at Jikoji Zen Center. His energy is enthusiastically focused on the nexus between Lay Practice and the Monastic world and he is fascinated by the ways in which we interpret the world and the means by which physical motion trains the mind. He wakes up in the morning excited to witness the ongoing birth of American Zen. His favorite words are Sublime, Exquisite, and Ravissant. Joe was ordained as a priest in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki in 2010 and received Dharma transmission in the Lineage of Kobun Chino Otogawa from Shoho from Shoho Michael Newhall in 2016.