Returning to the same questions.

I keep asking them.

I’ve been looking over my Substack posts from the last year or so.

Turns out, unsurprisingly, and with no advanced design, there are themes I keep returning to in various iterations and forms. With varying degrees of intensity. And varying degrees of success.

I’d say, from my posts, that my life, and my practice (and they’re the same thing, so not certain why I’m drawing a distinction that doesn’t exist) is pushing up against the limits of my experience.

What I mean by that — in the midst of what is now pushing a 19-month-long dramatic upheaval in my professional and personal life — I’m being pushed to the limits of what I understand and have always taken for granted about that life.

So, when the obvious trappings of who you think you are: work-wise, relationship-wise, comfort-level-wise, are all exposed as provisional, contingent, and fluid, who are you?

What’s left when everything crumbles?

Where do you stand?

What does it mean to step forward into your life when it doesn’t feel comfortable, or even always safe?

The thing is: I don’t know.

So, I just keep stepping forward, and trying to do it with everything I’ve got.

Not. Knowing. Anything.

Which, also means that, in not knowing anything. Anything. Is. Possible.

That’s a pretty wide horizon to embrace.

Your comments are always welcomed and encouraged. I’d love to hear from you.

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 of 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.

How this works.

I plan to post at least once a week, at minimum. The Freeside offers those weekly posts, which will always be accessible. Payside will (eventually) offer access to some longer writing and ongoing investigations into practices both literary and zen.

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, and I thank you for being here.

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