Hi Friends. Welcome to keep sweeping.
My name is Jacob Seiryo Gendelman. I’m a a zen priest, and writer by training and vocation. I’m recently back at writing as public practice. I’m a lover of language, silence, fiction, poetry, landscapes, film, comics, and music of all kinds. I’m pretty omnivorous when it comes to culture.
Happy to meet you on Substack. Thanks for taking a look (and, hopefully: thanks for reading).
Don’t mistake anything you see here for teaching: I’m exploring where this writing practice takes me, informed by zen practice, so there’ll be lots of overlaps and investigation of that Venn diagram along the way. It’s most definitely a work in progress. Things will evolve and zig-zag as we go.
I’m hoping it’s interesting enough for you to join me on the journey. I’m excited to share and looking forward to the give-and-take of community.
How it works.
I plan to post at least once a week, at minimum. The Freeside will offer those weekly posts, which may one day disappear behind the Payside wall. Payside opens access to any archived posts, and will also (eventually) offer access to some longer writing and ongoing investigations into practices both literary and zen.
More importantly, Payside also helps to sustain this project, and this practice. Like any creative project, keep sweeping is a kind of labor, and as such, your support to sustain that labor is much appreciated.
If Payside is not for you, that’s all good. The posts will keep coming on Freeside. The support of your reading and attention is a deeply appreciated gift. I thank you for being here.
You won’t have to worry about missing anything. Every new edition of the newsletter goes directly to your inbox.
One more thing.
As a zen priest, I’m a student of Tenshin Fletcher Roshi at Yokoji Zen Mountain Center. For more info on Yokoji, please visit www.zmc.org.
I’m also the caretaker Priest at Warwick Zendo, a small in-person and online sangha based in the lower Hudson Valley of New York. if you’d like to check out our practice community, we’re at www.warwickzen.org.
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To find out more about the company that provides the tech for this newsletter, visit Substack.com.
