Zen and the Waking State

We just had one of those amazing and wonderful workshops with E.J. Gold. How out of the box, how unusual and not predictable it was again. You just never know what will happen, or how and it pretty much ends up being nothing like you think it might be or should be. It is not at all like any other kind of seminar or course or workshop that I have known. It was during the closing, when all participants expressed their impressions, that I was reminded how magical it all is here, how quickly a depth of feeling and realization occurs amidst watercolors, work, rice, swishing, bamboo, pond, rocks, more rocks, rice, bowl, harmonicas, shirts, store, dirt, bricks, work, green house, doing the seemingly impossible, garden, PoG, PoG power, connection, group, dump runs, working together, continue, kitchen, cooking, care, love, magic, be here, be present, be in the moment, gratitude, Umms, simplicity and amazingly..it always ends up providing what is needed. One and ½ days felt like we'd been here for a week.
You find the state of Zen between the in-breath and out-breath.
The best magic is ordinary.
A few pictures from this weekend in July 2007:


Getting into Zen State of mind and later that morning, watercolor instruction part I


Working in the Zen Garden


A bowl of rice


Lessons and spaces in the store and in the music studio


E.J.Gold sweeping the rediscovered stone steps he laid 20 years ago


Everyone did amazingly well with their watercolor painting.


Bowing at the closing circle