As most of you know Genno Roshi has been forced to purchase a new furnance for her house.  The new one arrived last week and the workmen have had to take it apart in order to put it in the basement.  Here are a couple photos of the process.

It all has to come apart before they can put it in the basement and reassemble it.

It is really quite a job!

I think that with the new furnace we will have a warm winter!

More to come! Fund-raising continues!

Yesterday our new boiler arrived! (I still don’t know if it is a boiler or a furnace?) Our old boiler died and so now Genno Roshi has had to buy a new one for her house.  As the house belongs to her (and not Dana Sangha), she must come up with the €4000 – €5000 for the new heating system.  Well, we are continuing the fund-raising and in the meantime we have ordered our new boiler and yesterday it arrived!

A very nice gentlemen with a big truck came and unloaded it.  We helped him get it through the entry hall and out into the back yard where it would await the care of our new heating system people.  They will have to disassemble the boiler in order to get it down into the basement as it is too large to pass through the doorways.

Here is a picture of Genno Roshi next to her new boiler:

You can see the smile on her face!  Thank you to everyone who has helped and who continues to help with the purchase of this wonderful new heating system that will keep us warm during the long winter months of practice.  For those of you coming to the December sesshin you will certainly enjoy a warm stay in the house.

We will keep you updated as the installation of the boiler takes place.  Thank you.  Thank you.

We are in a bit of a crisis here.  The furnace in Genno Roshi’s house has given up the ghost — that is to say, it no longer works.  It is unfortunate to find out about this just as the weather has turned cold and we need it, but that is the way it is.  She will have to replace the furnace but it will cost more than €4,000. (Four thousand euros)

This is what the it looks like:

Dead as a door nail.

So, if anyone would like to make a donation towards the replacement of this furnace, we would all be very grateful.  It is difficult for her to pay for all of this herself, and since it is her house, not Dana’s house, she must pay for it, not the organization.

For more information you can contact me at gallagher75[at]gmail.com.  Any help would be greatly appreciated.

I will keep you posted.

Here are a couple of videos in which each of the participants of the Dana Sangha summer retreat say a few words for Corinne joie partagée Frottier Sensei to wish her well on her path as a teacher.  This was done at Le Bocage in Savigny.

Here is the first one:

And here is the second one:

Enjoy !

On September 21, 1969, Maezumi Roshi finished koan practice with Yasutani Roshi.   Maezumi Roshi had met Yasutani Roshi in the United States in 1962 and began koan study with him.  He studied regularly with him during Yasutani Roshi’s yearly visits to the United States until Maezumi Roshi went to Japan in order to study with him full time.  It is an extraordinary feat to go through the koan system in such short period of time.

We know that there were about 50 preliminary koans, the Mumonkan (plus verses), the hekiganroku, the shoyuroku, the denkoroku, Tozan’s Five Ranks and of course the 120 precept koans. That is a lot of koans.  A little more than a year later, Yasutani Roshi gave Inka to Maezumi Roshi, designating him as a successor.

Michel Genko Dubois Sensei makes an appearance on television.  He discusses the association L’un est l’autre (One is the Other) which he helped create and which serves food for several hundred people each weekend in Paris.

This video is in French. Enjoy!

It feels a lot like going back to school : we reopened the Zendo last week and we are all back to the routine sitting schedule. Roshi is back in Montreuil and in excellent health. We have had a few changes here at the center, a few coming and goings but the schedule remains the same.  We wake up early, make tea and coffee, and then climb the stairs to the Zendo.

The summer retreat is now behind us, and though there were some extremely difficult moments — and here I am thinking about Genno Roshi becoming ill and being hospitalized — the sesshin was a strong one. It took quite a bit of planning to get things organized but we had an excellent team of people working hard to make it all happen and run smoothly. Here are two of them in action:

Hank and Sabine Ready to Welcome Everyone

The big event of the sesshin was the transmission of the Dharma to Corinne Frottier at the end of the first week.  During the weekend of transmission there were over 125 people in attendance, some camping, some in neighbor’s houses, some in hotels.

Day after Transmission

After the actual Dharma Transmission ceremony there was a public gathering for Corinne joie partagée Frottier Sensei. The sesshin was held in the small village of Savigny about 25 minutes from Langres and 3.5 hours from Paris. Here are some photos of the place.

Le Bocage, Savigny (spooky)

The photograph above is from a 1950s era postcard of Le Bocage, the name of the estate where we held the retreat.  It looks more like a haunted house from a Hitchcock film than a place for a Zen retreat.  This is only one of two buildings on the property, but the only one that we were allowed to enter.  The other building, Le Saint Hubert, where the Zendo was supposed to be, turned out to be off limits due to safety regulations.  They did not tell us that until we arrived for the retreat.  Here is another picture of the same building the day we left.

Le Bocage July 2009

So now we are back in Montreuil, getting ready for future sesshins and looking at next year’s schedule.  It looks to be a full one and we are all looking forward to seeing everyone at the next sesshin which will be at the end of October.  What a joy to sit together in the Zendo, to practice together and explore this!

Just a brief video to share some of the atmosphere of one of our sesshins . . .

At 9:20 am on March 28, 1973, at the age of 88, Yasutani Roshi sat up in bed and then slumped over and died.  Ironically, he had finished koan study on March 28, 1938 with Harada Roshi at Hosshinji, exactly 35 years to the day before his passing.

As I have already written extensively on Yasutani Roshi I will not repeat here what has already been written, but I will only say that his work for the Dharma continues in Zen centers throughout the world.  This evening we begin a two week sesshin here at Dana Sangha in Paris and we will remember him in an opening ceremony.

I leave you with Yasutani Roshi’s own appreciatory verse on Hekigen Roku case 1, “Bodhidharma’s Emptiness:”

Holy reality, Emptiness, the man unknowing:

Spring breeze and Autumn moon speak heavenly truth;

Reverent monks, building temples to no merit;

Emperor Wu, how could you know the willow’s new green!

A coupld of weeks ago we went to Hamburg for a weekend Sesshin at Corinne’s new Zendo.  Genno Roshi performed an eye-opening ceremony for the Buddha on Saturday evening and afterwards we celebrated with good food and conversation.

The weather was a bit chilly and it rained often but we had the oppotunity to visit the city a bit on Friday before the sesshin and on Monday after the sesshin.

Corinne’s zendo is quite cozy with enough space for 16 or so participants.  We filled the zendo for the weekend and enjoyed the good food prepared by a very competant tenzo.

It was a cozy sesshin!  And as we all know, all good things must come to an end, so on Monday we visited the city of Hamburg one last time (eating some excellent italian food!) and then Corinne took us to the airport where we flew back to Paris.

I’m always a bit melancholy saying goodbye and this time was no exception: Corinne’s hospitality is second to none and I felt very warm and welcome there at her sesshin.  Corinne brought Roshi and I to the airport to say goodbye. We look forward to the next retreat in Hamburg!