The Harmony of Difference and Sameness

I am just returning from my first in-person Zen sesshin here in Ohio. It was wonderful to practice the familiar rhythm of a silent, Zen-style meditation retreat so close to the place I currently call home. We practiced as the winds and rain from Hurricane Helene blew through South Western Ohio felling tree branches and power lines on the property of the Jesuit Spiritual Center where we were sitting our retreat. Despite a days long power outage on the property, we continued to practice and deepen into our shared vows and sense of interconnection. 

Our prayers and dedication of merit began to open up and include those living in areas that are affected by the winds, floods and destruction of the hurricane as well as those suffering in other ways all over our world—may they and we find relief from suffering and realize true happiness.

Sesshin has this way of amplifying our aloneness and our togetherness. With nothing to do but sit, walk, eat and sleep, we have the rare opportunity to really let-go of or soften the reification of some of the ordinary functions of the mind, such as naming, conceptualizing, narrating, story-telling, etc. 

One is free to just be. And what is that? Something we are invited to continuously discover. 

So we sit on the edge of knowing and not-knowing, the precipice of becoming, the mystery of appearance inchoate. Being nothing and everything at once. Stopping for times the need to define or find a foothold in such existential territory. 

For me, it has been a while since I sat a full sesshin completely as a student. 

I felt like I had permission to rediscover what this practice is, from the embodied source—ground up. And zazen also had permission to be nothing in particular. There wasn’t something to resolve, or fix or some insight to get. 

In a place of such permission zazen got to be so many things. At times a warm loving embrace, other times a sharpening stone, a quiet refuge, space, a place to explore fears + tensions, to make friends with myself in all its forms and manifestations, a hub of bodhicitta, the entire universe unhinged, rain + wind, a leaf falling, love of the ancestors through our teacher + guide, an iron yoke, a lover…nothing at all.

I am appreciating how the practice does practice us, and how over the decade and a half that I have been engaged in intensive practice, there are so many practices that visit me, offering momentary medicine in this process of living. I don’t need to take anything with me from moment to moment, I can trust that practice truly does continue. Though I do find myself drawn to creating the conditions to recognize the dharma in all times and places.

I left sesshin feeling humbled and full. Daniel Terrango, our teacher and guide kept reminding us that the dharma is generous. Ah, yes. Can you feel it too?

Right here is the heart of bodhicitta, a commitment to awaken together with all beings. Right here, all beings are awakening together in the sometimes maddening, sometimes heart-wrenchingly beautiful conditions of our current world-systems.

In the teaching realm, I have been exploring a Zen poem called the Sandokai or Harmony of Difference and Sameness. In this dharma talk I zoom out and look at how we encounter difference and sameness in our dharma practice as well as our daily lives. It was rich and enlivening for me to engage in this contemplation, and I would be curious for those who listen to the talk or read the transcript—how it is for you.

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I’m Amy Kisei. I am a Zen Buddhist Teacher, Spiritual Counselor, budding Astrologer and Artist. In my Spiritual Counseling Practice, I practice at the confluence of spirituality and psychology, integrating mind, body and spirit. I am trained in Internal Family Systems (IFS), Dream Work, Hakomi (Somatic Therapy) and Mindful Eating. Below are some of my current offerings.

Monday Night Meditation + Dharma

Every Monday 6P PT / 9P ET

Join me on zoom for 40 minutes of meditation and a dharma talk. We are currently exploring the freedom, spontaneity and love of our original nature through the teachings of the Zen koan tradition. Koans invite us into the mythos of practice awakening, gifting us with the ordinary images of our lives, they help awaken us to the wonder, intimacy and compassion of life as it is!

All are welcome to join. Drop in any time.

Zoom Link for Monday Night

Beyond Mindfulness: Deepening Your Meditation Practice Class Series

This workshop style course is designed to provide a map of the meditation path as well as:

* Introduce you to the five main styles of meditation (calm-abiding, concentration, heart-based practices, inquiry and open-awareness)

* Help you understand the intention of each method and how to practice it

* Help you understand how the various methods and techniques fit together and support each other

* Provide a fun, non-judgmental learning environment where you can try things out, ask questions and explore

* Give you the opportunity to work with a teacher with an extensive background in various meditation techniques

I currently live in Columbus, Ohio with my partner Patrick Kennyo Dunn, we facilitate an in-person meditation gathering every Wednesday from 7P - 8:30P at ILLIO in Clintonville through Mud Lotus Sangha. If you happen to be in Columbus, feel free to stop by. We have weekly meditation gatherings, and are offering a day of meditation in October.

Sky + Rose

What is it? An experiment in the impossible task of excluding nothing and loving everything. An alchemy of play, presence and wandering into the shadows, you could say.

Sky & Rose is a practice container that will:

* Center group parts work practices to explore the fluidity, span and dream of who we are - somebody, nobody, everybody. You will be invited to express yourself vocally and physically, engage your imagination and play outside habituation.

* Do interpersonal and group meditation practices of seeing, being and awakening.

* Directly explore emotional embodiment & shadow work

* Include Beauty, Art & Wonderment as core practice elements 

Through rituals of imagination, meditation technologies and co-created fields of intentional play, we can slip out, for a time, of confining identities defined by our histories, culture and comfort.

Delivered by these practices, we can begin to inhabit perspectives and modes of being that stretch our sense of the possible and refresh our sense of the everyday. 

You might find yourself wearing Luminosities face or inhabiting Laughter’s chest. Together we might try out Venus’s view of the very life we live or we might make space to feel Chaos's dance and shake off some rigidity.

All of these are just examples of where our wondering and feeling into places of vitality and expansion may take us.

We will rebel against the quotidian and respect ourselves too much to only have crumbs of the sacred!

It was also be a time to work together with the challenges to living heart forward with sanity and presence within this hyper-fractured funhouse/madhouse world.

Sky and Rose is a place for Jogen and i to invite you into practices and explorations of 'soul work' that are not part of the Buddhist tradition but that have nonetheless been sources of growth and joy for us. Our influences in this include Paratheatre, IFS and Voice Dialogue, Hakomi, Process Work, Butoh, Jungian dream work and more.

We initiate Sky & Rose as an experiment in embracing Spirit and Soul simultaneously, together imagining and practicing interpersonal liberation, playfulness and spaciousness in this time of deep adaptation.

Meets monthly on Sundays from 10:30A PT - 12:30P PT / 1:30P ET - 3:30P ET

Join us for our Opening Ritual + Practice exploring

The Ritual of Liminality

Sunday October 27

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