By Gary Enns| 2023-02-11 | Saturday Morning Kusen | Posture Tend to the posture first. Slight curve in the lower lumbar, shoulders back and dropped, collarbones up. The heart area of the body is open. No slumping. Press the crown of the head to the sky.  Zazen posture is the rediscovery of our healthy, awake, ready posture, full of energy. Eyes are straight in the skull, but the skull itself is swiveled on the spine so that the gaze is around forty-five degrees down. This is important. The head must not droop down like a wilting rose, as that brings the cervical spine out of alignment, a ..read more

By Gary Enns| 2022-12-7 | Saturday Morning Mondo | Portia: When I first started meditating, I learned to keep eyes closed, but then at Mountain Spirit Center outside Tehachapi, they taught me to keep the eyes slightly open, and I was told it is because you don't fall asleep during the sitting, and here we keep the eyes open, too. What is the reason in our practice? Greek; eyes from a bronze statue Mountain Spirit’s is a good, practical answer: we keep our eyes open so we don’t fall asleep. There is a time for sleep, of course, but zazen is not that time. The Japanese word kontin means ..read more

Saturday, 25 January 2020 7:30-9:30 am   It's genmai time! On this day, Zen service includes a traditional monk's breakfast of genmai (rice and vegetable porridge) and tea after zazen (meditation). This is a great time to experience Zen practice and enjoy conversation over a yummy traditional Zen meal. Beginners are always welcome. If you are new to practice and would like to attend, we recommend contacting us first and then planning on arriving twenty minutes early for a brief introduction. For your comfort during meditation, we advise loose, comfortable clothing such as sweats ..read more

Friday, 17 January 2020 6-8 pm   In this introduction, participants will be introduced to Zen practice, including dojo etiquette, zazen (sitting concentration), kinhin (walking meditation), and traditional chanting of the Heart Sutra in Japanese. Upon completion, participants will be ready to join regular dojo practice. Refreshments included. Suggested Donation: $20 (students $10). Reservations required. Message us for more information and reservations ..read more

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Zen Fellowship of Bakersfield (@zenfellowship) on Nov 22, 2019 at 4:55pm PST Friday, December 13, 4:00-5:00 @ Dagny’s. Let's relax and have some fun together as we discuss classic Zen texts and stories over tea and coffee. We will continue our discussion with stories 21-40 from the collection Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps and Nyogen Senzaki. New and used copies of this book can be found on Amazon. This will be a chance for us, together, to bring our zazen to the reading. Contact us for details ..read more

By Gary Enns | 2022-9-10 | Saturday Morning Mondo | First-time Visitor: “How do you start a home practice?” Location  Where you practice at home is probably the first consideration. Where are you going to set yourself up?  Especially when you are first starting out, a distraction-free environment is probably best, a quiet room or patio, for instance. All of us through force of habit are prone to follow distractions when they present themselves, so reducing these can help us to settle and focus.  That said, I will note that if a quiet place is hard to come by, don't let that st ..read more

By Gary Enns | 2022-04-23 | Saturday Morning Mondo | Back to Basics Practitioner 1: "It’s been eight years since I last sat. I should have stretched beforehand! I had some pain in my ankles, but halfway through, they sort of adjusted. I’m getting used to the breathing and the posture again. I’m getting back to the basics." Good! We always go back to the basics, every one of us, every time we sit down on the cushion. Posture first, then breath, for every one of us, this is the same returning.  In this practice, we are cultivating our beginner's mind. We don't come to the cushion with a ba ..read more

View this post on Instagram A post shared by Zen Fellowship of Bakersfield (@zenfellowship) on Nov 2, 2019 at 12:26pm PDT Let's relax and have some fun together as we discuss classic Zen texts and stories over tea and coffee. ​We will begin our discussion on the first twenty stories from the collection Zen Flesh, Zen Bones by Paul Reps and Nyogen Sanzaki. New and used copies of this book can be found on Amazon. This will be a chance for us, together, to bring our zazen to the reading. Contact us for details, or RSVP to the event on Facebook ..read more

By Gary Enns | 12 March 2022 | Saturday Morning Kusen | "In this moment of sitting look into what sitting in itself is." - Dogen At this moment, we are practicing shikantaza, another name for zazen. Shikantaza means just sitting. Only just sitting.  Think about how simple this is. There's no need to talk about the Cosmos or Buddha or anything. You're just sitting, facing a wall, facing your self, and letting everything go.  Zen is life unadorned, everything dropping away—complexities, worries, thoughts, sufferings. Simply place yourself in this simple, healthy posture, with shoulders ..read more

By Gary Enns 5 March 2022 | Saturday Morning Kusen Zen practice—the Middle Way—is the path of balance, the path that transcends extremes. One of the Buddha’s well-known metaphors from the Anguttara Nikaya compares our practice to the string of a lute: strung too loose, and it rings flat or thumps when struck, but strung too tight and it sings sharp, or worse, breaks. The Buddha taught that the Way requires “a consistent effort that avoid[s] the two extremes of punishing striving and lethargy and that a middle way must be walked” (qtd. in Bassis). In our practice, we must find the tuning that a ..read more