#sotozen — Public Fediverse posts

In Place is also a book. Copyright 2018, Risa Stephanie Bear. All rights reserved
ISBN 978-0-359-28986-8 Stony Run Press http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/risabee

by the same author

100 poems
collected poems
the grace at the heart of the world
homecomings
starvation ridge
toward a buddhist/permaculture ethic
viewing jasper mountain
what to do about trees

In place: 1. working or ready to work; established. 2. [North American] not traveling any distance. One thinks of Thoreau (Walden): “I have traveled a great deal in Concord.” To “shelter in place” is to ride out an emergency, disaster or apocalypse in one’s place of residence or wherever one happens to be. Here it is suggested that the study of reality may be carried on just as one finds oneself, be it home, monastery, hermitage, hotel, freeway, or jail cell.

Not hindering others is not hindering self.
— Dogen (tr. Tanahashi)

Preface

The author is a part-time hermit, part-time householder; that is, the hut was by her back fence and she was not at the hut all the time. She is, since this frontmatter was written, a #SotoZen #nun, but was a layperson at the time of writing. The hut, called Gogo-an after the hut where Ryokan wrote poetry, contained

(deep breath)

a broom, cot, two blankets, two pillows, four chairs, electric desk lamp, desk, altar, censer, Buddha statue, vase, several clay offering bowls, candles, incense, lighter, cleaning rags, ointment, toothbrush, hairbrush, soap, ointment, two steel bowls, two soup/tea mugs, tumbler, two spoons, two forks, two pairs of chopsticks, a knife, steamer, coffeemaker, several Mason jars of dried tea, beans and grains, salt shaker with salt, water bottle, hammer, pair of pliers, assortment of hardware, pair of scissors, sewing kit, about twenty books, a transistor radio, Guanyin statue, a copy of a Soto Buddhist order of service, four chairs, framed enso, framed image of a statue of Mugai Nyodai, trunk with several changes of clothes and a pair of slippers, oil-filled heater, kerosene lamp, four bamboo window shades, work gloves, a gardening apron, secateurs, camp saw, ceremonial rakusu (for a Zen layperson) in its envelope, mala necklace and bracelet, lineage documents, pennywhistle, magnifying glass, flashlight, thermometer, and a horihori or Japanese gardening knife. Outside usually reside a bucket, hoe, sickle, and watering can. This list could easily be shorter but we’re not trying for martyrdom here.

She has since, for health reasons, relocated from the farm where the hut was located, to the city, where she found an abandoned tool shed on the premises, and repurposed it into a second "hut," Manzoku-an. https://manzokuan.blogspot.com/p/about.html

She finds that to "practice" in place is the best way to "shelter" in place. Her experiment in part-time hermiting predated Covid but proved to be a useful component of her family's #COVIDcautious toolbox.