Looking forward to these two upcoming workshops:
October 5, with Shundo David Haye at Zen Center
and October 12&13 with Jody Greene, at Yoga Tree, Castro
The Attending Eye
with Shundo David Haye
Saturday, October 5, 2013
10 am – 5 pm
SFZC Conference Center at 308 Page Street
What do we see? How does what we see change as we regard it? How do we change in this encounter? Immerse yourself in a day of looking closely.
To take photographs means to recognize—simultaneously and within a fraction of a second—both the fact itself and the rigorous organization of visually perceived forms that give it meaning. It is putting one’s head, one’s eye and one’s heart on the same axis.
—Henri Cartier-Bresson
In this workshop, we will engage in different modes of attention, stimulating our receptivity and our agility of response. We’ll sit zazen. We’ll cultivate our close observation in a combination of writing and photography exercises. We’ll support each other’s work in an immersive, exploratory environment.
so full
of longing for the world,
changes its shape?
—Mark Doty, “Difference”
Please bring:
- a camera,
- plenty of fresh paper and a juicy pen
- a ready mind
- your lunch
Fee: $80; $72 current SFZC members; $64 limited income. Some partial scholarships available; see About Registration, Scholarships and Cancellations. No one turned away for lack of funds.
The Intimate Thread: Reading as a Devotional Practice
with Jody Greene & Genine Lentine
Sat, Sun Date: Oct 12, 2013 to Oct 13, 2013 From: 1:15 PM – 4:15 PM Location: Castro
Over two afternoons, this workshop will explore reading as a practice of awareness, attentiveness, and devotion. We will consider reading as a sacred, embodied act, one that gathers body, breath, and mind in a single-pointed effort to attend with care.
When we read, we enter into an intimate relationship with the traces another person has left on the page, and join a living, vibrant conversation. Reading in this way requires us to slow down, to set aside some of the usual devices and distractions that can fracture our attention, and to suspend for a moment some of our expectations about the world and the people around us. In reading, we open eyes, ears, and mind to encounter the new; even and especially when we are rereading or re-encountering something we have met many times before. We greet the work anew, the work answers back, and a conversation unfolds.
Cost: $75 for both sessions, Saturday and Sunday.
$40 for Saturday Only
The works we study (poems, sutras, short prose) will span ancient to modern: from Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras and short passages from the Ramayana to poetry by Hafiz, Emily Dickinson, Rilke, Mark Doty, among others.
We’ll engage with each other through and around the works we read. We will practice reading aloud to each other, and collectively. We will use both dialogue and writing to encourage and cultivate our capacity to respond patiently, with both heart and mind.
We’ll use meditation and pranayama to center and ground ourselves, slowing the usual habits of our busy mind. This workshop will consider reading as an embodied practice that takes place through the eyes, the hands, the mouth, and throughout the body as a whole – in gesture and in stillness.
Appropriate for all students and teachers of yoga, as well as writers and readers at all levels.
No experience or requirements beyond basic curiosity and the desire to encounter anew something you have probably been doing for almost your entire life: the simple and deeply pleasurable act of reading.
Students who wish to take only one of the two days are encouraged to take first day’s workshop if possible.
Jody Greene came to the practice of yoga in 2000, and her path to teaching continues to unfold daily through practice, study, and the karma yoga of assisting. She is deeply blessed and enlivened by ongoing studentship with her teacher, Janet Stone. In 2001, Jody began studying Zen Buddhism, and has practiced in both lay and monastic settings throughout the past decade. She is currently especially interested in exploring the intersections and diversions of Zen and Tantric Philosophy, under inspiring and inspired teachers Daijaku Kinst, Paul Haller, and Hareesh Wallace. In the interstices, she is Professor of Literature, Feminist Studies, and the History of Consciousness at the University of California, Santa Cruz