share your final comments

5/19/2020

During an in-person genzo-e, at the end there is often an opportunity for participants to share whatever they'd like to about their experience of the retreat. If you'd like to post comments about your virtual genzo-e, please reply here.

22 Comments

Hoko

5/19/2020 06:14:36 am

Thank you for your practice!

Larry Bye

5/19/2020 09:16:37 am

Thanks to Sanshin and especially to Okumura Roshi and Hoko for organizing these five wonderful days. It has been a powerful practice experience for me even online from my spare bedroom zendo here in northern California! I am also filled with sadness as I write this for all the suffering taking place around the world due to the Covid pandemic. May all beings be safe, happy and well.

zenki batson

5/19/2020 11:50:29 am

Thank you all so very very much for having the virtual Genzo-e! It has actually been a sweet experience sitting like this in my tiny home as my husband, son, and cat friend all live their daily lives quietly around me.

Bowing deeply to you all and all being

Maura High

5/21/2020 02:59:41 am

And it was sweet knowing you and others in our Chapel Hill Zen Center were following the lectures and the schedule in their own homes not far from me. One space, one time.

Derrick Gregory

5/19/2020 02:59:46 pm

Thank you Okumura Roshi and Sanshin-Ji for making this happen! This was a great opportunity to expand my practice. Bows to you and all beings from Richmond, VA.

Judy Bertelsen

5/19/2020 03:21:33 pm

Many thanks to Shohaku Okumura and Sanshin community for making this possible. It is an odd benefit of our complicated historical situation (the sheltering due to COVID-19) that people are able to participate who are far geographically from Bloomington. I hope all of the talks will be preserved and available to others and for repeated viewing/listening. I hope this electronic option will continue in the future, even if/when in-person gatherings become safe. It was wonderful to see Shohaku Okumura and to hear his voice again. (I have enjoyed hearing him speak when he has visited Berkeley and the Bay Area in the past.)

Dave Ellison

5/19/2020 04:57:46 pm

Many of the benefits of a "real" sesshin without the expense and inconvenience of travel. I hope you will continue to offer this experience.
Thank you!

Eden Kevin Heffernan link

5/20/2020 04:59:26 am

Like Dogen leading his sangha to Echizen, not knowing if practice would be possible in that vast wilderness, so Okumura Roshi and Sanshinji sangha ventured into the Zoom realm to establish a place of practice. Thank you so much for your effort and profound offering.

I found this fascicle particularly moving amidst the many-layered crises going on in our society right now. May we all know and appreciate the true reality of these strange times. There is no turning away.

Maura High

5/21/2020 03:01:32 am

Eden, thank you. You said this so well, for many of us, and all of us.

Shoryu Bradley link

5/20/2020 07:34:28 am

Many thanks to Hojo-san, those who made Genzo-e available online, and to everyone who participated.

Rev. Vivian Gruenenfelder

5/20/2020 10:03:18 am

I don't think anything I could say could match the power of this Genzo-e Retreat with all of you. What Okumura Roshi offers is of immeasurable value to the English-speaking sangha, and is not duplicated by anyone. It is so precious! I am deeply grateful. I am grateful too for Zoom, which made this all possible, and while I prefer in-person retreats, practicing in my little home, where I live alone in California, created a supremely still place for holding the Dharma, and in that sense was better than an in-person retreat. And perhaps we need, for the sake of the environment, to travel less. So I hope this form of retreat will continue; it also saves a lot of expense for those of us who live on alms or are otherwise financially compromised, and it makes Okumura Roshi's work more widely available. I thought the technical crew at Sanshinji was just great and so appreciate how smoothly the retreat went from that point of view. Thank you to all of you, both the retreat team and all the participants, and especially to Okumura Roshi and his life dedication to this hard work.

Mike Welker (Mokushin)

5/20/2020 11:42:07 am

Deep bows for the significant efforts for skillfully turning an unexpected challenge into a meaningful and rich practice opportunity for those us further afield.
This was an interesting way to practice and certainly helped me learn where my home environment and karmic habits wanted to push open my practice container!
As always, wonderful teachings to help us make sense of Master Dogen from Okumura Roshi that I always feel fortunate to be able to attend in any form.
Would certainly attend another event of this kind that helped make it more affordable & accessible.
Deep bows to all involved!

Marta Dabis link

5/20/2020 07:27:48 pm

Thank you to all who made the Zoom retreat possible. I wish you continued offering it in this format (too). Makes it available to many of us who couldn’t /wouldn’t travel. I took copious notes and tremendously appreciated the context and nuance that went into the teaching. Personal opinions especially (“maybe Dogen was just too young”) that gives flavor and honesty to the text, as we hear it from a 21st century western world, I only wish some questions had been answered during the days. The format was beneficial and I only wish I could have been at former Genzo-e retreats, too. Warm bows to all.

Jôkei Lambert - La Demeure sans Limites link

5/21/2020 12:03:17 am

Thank you so much to Okumura Roshi, Hoko san and people who made it possible.
We couldn't go to Zendo l'Eau Vive last Marsh but we feel greateful whith genzo-e.
For us it is difficult to travel at this time of the year. And this year with Covid-19 it was impossible.
It's true that the online genzo-e is a very good solution in general.
Yesterday morning (May 20), during the first zazen, we heard the cuckoo singing for the first time... And suddenly, we were all on Mount Tiantong. You, us, the cuckoo, ...
Thank you for these magnificent teachings.
It was a very beautiful genzo-e, between zazen and the teachings.
Especially since we just came back to the temple after two months of confinement in the city. This allows us to get back into the life of the temple with a lot of joy and gratitude.

9 bows
Jôkei and Toen

Maura High

5/21/2020 03:07:07 am

I have read through the comments people have posted so far and can only say that they voice exactly what I feel: immense gratitude, wonder, and the hope that you may continue to do this in the future, even when travel restrictions are lifted. I loved watching Okumura Roshi raise his glass with two hands. O-water, o-glass.

Karla-Jigen Passalacqua

5/21/2020 05:08:15 am

So many thanks to everyone at Sanshin who put together this amazingly effective online retreat. Although sitting on my own cushion was a benefit of home retreat, seeing the zendo online made me surprisingly wistful for a visit to Bloomington. Shohojisso was a wonderful fascicle for this event - thank you Hojo san for your Indra's net full of info & wisdom. Sending much love to the whole Sangha.

Bud Bliss link

5/21/2020 10:48:35 am

Ahhh, just as I had the illusion of grasping some of Dogen's writing, along comes Shohojisso. It was humbling to hear how much effort Okumura put into translating and interpreting this work, and I am so grateful to have been granted the opportunity to participate. I can only say "YES!" to all of the previous comments, and wonder at my great good fortune.

Naomi

5/22/2020 05:52:43 am

With deep gratitude to Okumura Roshi and Sanshin community. The comments by others reflect my experience, too. It was moving to see how many of us from all over the world came together. This online Genzo-e allowed me to flexibly participate to the extent that I am able given my current medical health condition as I recover from a mild brain injury. In this way, I found the online retreat to be especially accommodating for my medical needs/disability and all the more accessible because it was online. Thank you for this generous offering and continued opportunity for practice. Bows.

Norma Fogelberg

5/22/2020 09:39:59 am

Deep gratitude and bows Okumura Roshi for all your heart felt teaching during this genzo-e. Also great appreciation to those who supported this effort at Sanshin. The pre genzo-e communication was clear and thoughtful. It was an excellent experience to participate from home, to keep the practice envelope, to fully engage in the genzo-e from a new perspective. I would absolutely participate again.
Thank you also to our fellow participants, whose committment and presence were felt across the miles and over zoom. We were clearly practicing together.
Again, thank you.

Shokuchi Deirdre Carrigan

5/23/2020 02:47:16 pm

Thank you so much, Roshi, Hoko-san, David, Sanshin-ji for this wonderful opportunity to study Shobogenzo Shohojisso. I hope we can study together this way again! 9 bows!

Myo Shin Dorota Zak and Tetsugen Jim Mclaughlin

5/29/2020 05:19:04 am

Dear Okumura Roshi and the Sangha,
Thank you so much for your hard work to organize the Sesshin and this opportunity to study Dogen. We are very grateful for being able to join online. We hope you will make this format available in the future, it is very hard to get there in person, especially if you are a lay person.
In gratitude,
Gassho
Myo Shin Dorota Zak

Nicole Myogyo Nesvadba

5/31/2020 06:26:43 am

Thank you so much, Okumura roshi, Hoko, and everybody involved, for making this 'e-genzo-e' possible. I've been tempted to join you for a regular genzo-e for a few years now, but felt it was too ... gluttonous? ... to fly all the way from France to the US for a sesshin, whilst having a very active Sangha in the Deshimaru lineage here in France, where I practice regularly. So in spite of the very difficult circumstances that led to this genzo-e, I am very grateful that it did happen. The teishos are such a rare occasion to study Dogen at some level of depth, which is something I do miss in my regular practice. It was also a great experience to sit with you all, and to do the ceremonies together from half across the world. It is so important nowadays to be reminded that this is world is just one. If you'd ever think it possible to open up a zoom window at the next genzo-e again, I'd definitely join you again. Thank you so much. Gassho.

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