Flat Top Zen

A weekend Zen retreat at the Flat Top Zendo in the Blue Ridge Mountains near Charlottesville, Virginia in October 2006. Flat Top is a part of the Blue Ridge Zen Group in Charlottesville. Flat Top is located in Green County, close to the town of Crozet. The Zendo was built by Bill Stephens, a disciple of the Japanese Zen master Denkyo Kyozan Joshu Roshi. Bill Stephens led this two day retreat. The chant is "The Final Instructions of National Teacher Daito Kozen" which is commonly chanted in Rinzai monasteries. The chant ends with "After this old monk's pilgrimage, some of you may have rich temples, with large halls and volumes of sutras decorated with gold an silver, full of noisy enthusiasts. Or you may read sutras and recite dhranis, do zazen for long periods without lying down, eat only breakfast and work day and night. Although you do these things, if you don't set your mind on the marvelous untransmitted way of Buddha and the Patriarchs, you immediately deny cause and effect, and the true teaching falls to the ground... But if there is one person who seriously studies his own affairs, even if he lives out in the fields in a straw hut, cooking his meal of vegetable roots over a grass fire in a broken pot, he is the one who sees me daily and is grateful for what he has received. Who would dare to be careless? Work hard! Work hard!"
The video is by Tom Davenport, a long time friend, who often cooks during these fall and spring retreats.

Category:

Travel & Events

Tags:

• zen
• zazen
• sesshin
• retreat
• rinzai
• blue
• ridge
• folkstreams
• folkstreamer

[folkstreamer]

Flat Top 2008 Memorial Day weekend retreat is May 23-26. Contact the Blue Ridge Zen Group brzen(dot)org.

[Peekingduck]

Or a copy of something Japanese..

Still, interesting.

[logarini]

ahhhhhhhh humans at play

[hv238]

it is... beautiful in its own right

[tropicalian]

Zen retreats are a wonderful invention!

[Dharma2012]

Very healing, loved it. Thanks for sharing.

[daney17]

funny how this is so authentically american

[Zenboy23]

= )

[wesicknich]

Awesome!!!

[mayasem]

Pure discipline!! Great!