Autumn Sesshin 2022

Thank you to everyone for sharing haiku, not-haiku, and wisdom from the dream.

Sesshin group photos are at the very bottom of the page.

Angela

Steel guitar pegs
Remind me
Tune your life

Coralene

Black Angus graze the
hill’s slanting sun. Logging trucks
doze silent ‘til morning.

Black crow’s mournful sigh
Night carts don’t run down Dunny
Lane anymorrrre, ooorrre, ooorrrre… (mimics the mournful sigh of the crow).

Barbara

The well speaks to the donkey: ‘Someone is drinking tho I have no water in me…Someone (with no substance and form) is drinking

Fiona

It gives and it gives
The old lemon tree, roots deep
in the septic tank.

In the silence after
the chainsaw, even the crow’s
ragged caw sounds sweet.

Meg

red as red as red can be;
leaves still hanging on the tree.
white as white as white can go;
old dog shit on-the-ground below.

Meg – Wisdom from the Great Dream

There are more holes than rock in basalt
Nothing smells better than dog
Never doubt a clothesline

“I was astutely avoiding election news but on Sunday morning there was News from the Great Dream all over the footpaths –

Angela – A Surprising Sunrise

Sitting in my dojo at dawn, in front of candles, flowers, the statue of Buddha.
Looking east towards the rising sun.
The sky a soft orange, fading to a perfectly contrasting blue above it.
Gazing at a huge deciduous tree, barren of all leaves, round in shape,
perhaps a hundred feet tall.
Somewhere in the distance right behind the tree,
the sun soon to appear, my eyes waiting, my breath slow and steady.
Suddenly, five silhouetted shapes race up the trunk of the tree and leap into the branches.
Five possums! ‘five possums on the 5^th day of sesshin’ I muse.
I watch astounded as the little animal’s chase one another around the branches of the tree, hurdling and skirmishing.
Often times they move in a clockwise motion,
creating the effect of a large glowing orange tree clock.
Around and around they go.
Is this all a dream? I wonder to myself.
Their game goes on for some time, and then, just like that, they go back down the trunk
and they are gone.
I wonder if anyone else has seen this spectacle,
or if life is putting on this theatre just for me…
I return my gaze to the statue of Buddha, and cannot help but laugh to myself as I attempt to focus on my breath.
All throughout the remaining hours of the day, I remember the possums, and I am overcome with laughter, with the hilariousness of life. -Angela Moon.