The Big Sit, Day 4

We had a good sit in the Tricycle office today. (I was seeing city patterns in the carpet.) Here’s what’s new on the Big Sit site:

The Weekly Discussion topic on the Precepts is generating some heat, but the teachers haven’t weighed in yet. (Two of them, Josho Pat Phelan of the Chapel Hill Zen Center and Elihu Genmyo Smith of the Prairie Zen Center, contributed dharma talks, which you can read on the Discussion page. And there is Robert Aitken Roshi’s groundbreaking article on the precepts here.) Participants are discussing giving up alcohol for the duration of the 90 days (and it’s also Lent now, isn’t it?) and the first precept (non-killing) vis a vis eating meat.

In the coming days we’re going to be posting more material for “beginners” — and aren’t we all really beginners? — dealing with things like the history of Zen, basic sitting techniques, and why the Big Sit is 90 days long. (It started with the monsoon season retreat in the summer. See ango on Wikipedia.)