February 2026

Village Zendo Bulletin—February 2026

BULLETIN

February 2026



“Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter." 


                                                    —Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Dear Sangha,

I don’t know what to say. There are moments in life when it feels like that—like anything you say will inevitably fall short. I seem to remember a Fusatsu talk about “non-lying” many years ago in which Enkyo Roshi mentioned that this precept also included not saying anything at all under certain circumstances—for instance, when someone you love has just told you they have terminal cancer. What can you say that will not in some senses be a lie? You cannot come up with some kind of solution. You cannot make it better. But you can sit there with them, be there fully, offer a hug, hold their hand.

I feel similarly muted right now. Our country, it seems, is really sick, and nothing I say, I don’t think, is going to change that right now. As a writer, this makes showing up especially difficult—when words just won’t cut it. Of course, in our practice, words are often recognized as ineffective—pointing, perhaps, but never leading you all the way there—so I should be used to my craft being a largely ineffective one by now, especially when it comes to the matters that matter most. 

So, what can I do? What, right now, can any of us do? I guess, as always, and in every way we can, we show up. We sit. We walk. We protest. We hug our loved ones. We say what we can. 

And when there’s nothing more to be said, we do what we can.

With love and hope,

Taylor Plimpton

Editor


 

FEBRUARY CALENDAR

Sunday, February 1: 
Online: Practice and Inquiry Circle with Joshin Roshi

                                  In-Person: Body, Breath & Mind, Intro to Zen w.Howard

Thursday, February 5:   Zazen and Dharma Talk by Ryotan Roshi

Sunday, February 8:      Zazen and Dharma Talk by Soten

                                       Music Jam, 4 pm

Thursday, February 12:  Zazen and Dharma Talk by Kenko

                                        Newcomers’ Meeting, 6:40 pm

Saturday, February 14:   Zazenkai and Dharma Talk by Ryugen

Sunday, February 15:      Zazen and Dharma Talk by Ryoshin Hoshi

Thursday, February 19:   Zazen and Dharma Talk by Daishi Hoshi

Friday, February 20:        Tangaryo, Invitation to Become a Formal Student

                                         Online meeting with Shinryu Roshi, 6:30 pm

Sunday, February 22:      Zazen and Dharma Talk by Torei

                                        Path of the Precepts begins, 2 pm

Thursday, February 26:  Fusatsu Ceremony and Precepts Talk


 

ONGOING GROUPS


The Bolivian Sitting Group meets online Saturdays: 7 am

              Bolivia Zoom Meeting ID: 297 525 8394; Password: 1234

The People of Color Sitting Group meets online Saturdays: 10:30 am

How to Meditate meets Monday evenings online: 6:30 pm

Sorting Out Your Stuff meets online Tuesdays: 10 am

Liturgy Training: In-Person
               
1st and 3rd Wednesdays of each month: 6 pm

Grace and Grit meets online, first Thursday of each month: 3 pm

 

Thursday, February 19, 7 pm

Documentary screening, Online


 

The Grace and Grit Team will host a special program on February 19, Thursday evening, at 7pm. We will stream a documentary called States Of Grace. After the showing, we will have an open sozan, similar in style to what we do after a zazenaki or retreat (and in the Grace and Grit support group).

The movie will be seen at the regular online Village Zendo.

The evening will be hosted by our Shuso Rakushin, ChoGakau, Jisei and Jimon. Our Grace and Grit team feels this movie, States Of Grace, to be a wonderful example of how a Buddhist community can come together and offer support that manifests the wisdom and compassion we all try to practice.

In 2008, Dr. Grace Dammann was a prominent HIV/AIDS physician, honored by the Dalai Lama for her extraordinary work during the height of the epidemic. During a routine commute across the Golden Gate Bridge, another driver crashed head on into her car. Though she miraculously survived, Grace had to spend more than a year in rehabilitation hospitals.

States of Grace follows Grace’s return home to the Buddhist community where she lives with her former partner Nancy “Fu” Schroeder and their daughter Sabrina. The film intimately portrays, with humor and candor, this family’s story as Grace struggles to discover new purpose in her radically altered life.

Audiences across the country have been moved by this inspiring story of perseverance and resilience. States of Grace captures the profound transformation of Grace and her family in the wake of her life-changing accident.

You can read more about the movie at https://www.statesofgracefilm.com/

We request a $10 donation to cover the cost of streaming the film.

When donating, under “Reason” select “Other” 
and write in: “Grace and Grit film event.”

At the scheduled time, you may join the event using the regular Online Zendo zoom link:

 

Friday, February 20 

Online, 6:30 pm


 
Tangaryo

An invitation to become a Formal Student

An informational meeting with Shinryu Roshi will be held

Online, Friday, February 20, 6:30 pm


The Village Zendo’s next student initiation — Tangaryo — will be held on Saturday, April 25, 2026. If you have not yet become a Formal Student at the Village Zendo, and wish to do so, please read the information at villagezendo.org/membership and attend this meeting.

Why Become a Formal Student?

You should become a Formal Student at the Village Zendo if you wish to make an ongoing commitment to Zen training and to enter into a formal teacher/student relationship with Shinryu Roshi and the Village Zendo teaching staff.

You are not required to become a Formal Student in order to work with Shinryu Roshi and the VZ teachers. You can do this on an informal basis by becoming a Member of the Village Zendo.


Becoming a Formal Student at the Village Zendo

Since the beginning of Zen in China more than 1,500 years ago, entering formally into training under the guidance of a teacher has been the traditional path for seekers of the Way. In today’s world of spiritual marketing and religious quick-fixes, the need for skilled guidance through the many years of one’s training is as great as ever.
 

Path Class 2026
 

The Path of the Precepts


Image: Bokushu Tucker, Japan 2019

with

Roshi Shinryu Thomson, Sensei Bokushu Tucker, Kenzen Randolph,
and guest teachers Sensei Tokuyu Manasia, Sensei Fusho Rice and Hoshi Daishi Koebner

Select Sundays: Feb 22, Mar 29, Apr 26, May 17, Jun 28,
Aug 30, Sep 27, Oct 25, Nov 22

2:00 pm — 4:00 pm Eastern

For many years, the Village Zendo has offered an annual, year-long workshop simply called the “Path Class.” Initially created by Enkyo Roshi and Joshin Roshi, these classes offer an opportunity to broaden individual study and practice while deepening connection with others in our community.

The 2026 class will center on the Bodhisattva Precepts, the core existential and ethical values in Zen, which can serve us to live a life that is healthy, sane, and of benefit to others. We will work with the Three Treasures (Buddha, Dharma, Sangha) and the Three Pure Precepts (Refraining from Evil, Doing Good, Doing Good for Others), and begin to look into the Ten Grave Precepts. In 2027, the Path of the Precepts class will continue and we will complete our study of the Ten Grave Precepts.

Our aim is to go beyond schematic thinking about moral codes and rigid notions of right and wrong. We will try to cultivate honest inquiry as well as a natural and free responsiveness to the challenges we face in life. We hope the workshop will help us to integrate the precepts into our daily lives.

We will examine what the Zen precepts are and how they function in Bodhisattva practice. We will consider the value and the traps of literal, relative, and absolute perspectives on the precepts. We will explore each of the precepts in grounded and first-hand personal terms.

Meeting monthly over nine Sunday afternoon sessions, the Path of the Precepts will combine study materials with exercises for personal reflection, dialogue, and council-style collective expression. We will draw on existing Zen commentaries as well as other creative material in the spirit of the precepts. Everyone is welcome.

This year’s Path class will be led by Village Zendo Abbot Roshi Shinryu Thomson, Sensei Bokushu Tucker, and Kenzen Randolph with guest teachers Sensei Tokuyu Manasia, Sensei Fusho Rice and Hoshi Daishi Koebner.

Everyone is welcome. Attendance at all sessions is strongly encouraged but we understand that personal circumstances may require some exceptions.


For the year-long class, the fee is $600 for members of the Village Zendo
and $675 for non-members.

 

Register   HERE   

To request a scholarship, please contact scholarships@villagezendo.org.

For questions, please contact registrar@villagezendo.org.

 

TEACHINGS

“Tunnel Exit Street”



A Dharma Talk by Bokushu Sensei

Good morning to those here in the room and those online. Thank you for your presence. 3.3 miles away from the Village Zendo in New York City, there is a thoroughfare named Tunnel Exit Street. Have you ever seen Tunnel Exit Street? It only appears to be in Midtown. It only appears to be four blocks long. It only seems to be a one-way street, going in all directions. It's neither short nor long. It appears to be very busy, but it is, in fact, completely empty. Empty. And yet we are all residents of Tunnel Exit Street, inhabiting it at all hours of the day and night in all of our coming and going. We never leave Tunnel Exit Street. Our wholehearted practice, our wholehearted Zen practice, makes us residents automatically. But all too often, we draw the blinds and we lose the light of that street, retreating to the tunnel that we know and love, even though we wish to exit it. We know and love that tunnel.

So what exactly is that tunnel?

It's our habit of separating, of dividing, using categories to split the world into pieces: pieces we like, pieces we don't like, pieces we revere, pieces that we hate. Our judgments about how we should be, how others should be, are continuous, are they not? These are the features of the tunnel: self and other, relative and absolute, past and present and future, good and evil, and of course, life and death. We use these dualisms to pretend that we know how life should be, how we and others should be. And pretending to know, we call ourselves good and others evil. We crave what we don't have and we despise what we do have. Our wanting things to be different is a major feature of this tunnel. There are frequent cave-ins. The air is not very good, and unidentifiable liquids are constantly seeping in and running down the walls. Yum, yum, yum, yum, yum. We love the tunnel and we hate the tunnel. We have an interesting relationship, a love-hate relationship with the tunnel. We want a way out, don't we? And so we come to Zen practice. 

But the way out, it turns out, is not so simple. At first, our impulse is to create another tunnel, and this tunnel is that the old tunnel is bad and that leaving it is good. But how can we leave this tunnel? By using the tools of the tunnel, we need something different than good and bad, entering and exiting, to be free of this prison that we have created for ourselves and are recreating anew all the time. We want to blame and fix ourselves and blame and fix others. We'd like to use brute force to eliminate our deep, abiding dissatisfaction, because it is all really very unsatisfying, isn't it? We just can't help wanting it to be different. 

The Buddha nearly starved himself to death, wanting it to be different. He applied brute force, self-torment, during his years of austerity, to try to make the change that he wanted. And then he realized—what I think he realized—is that instead of having an adversarial relationship with reality, he could actually accommodate what was going on. Old age, sickness, and death were not going to disappear because the Buddha didn't like them, and they're not going to disappear because we don't like them. But what if, instead of making them a problem, we came to understand that it's our own attitude—the tunnel that we have created—that is, in fact, the problem and the solution.

So since reality is us, this is the self meeting the self in all its many aspects; this is the self exiting the tunnel while continuing to fully inhabit the tunnel and to enter into the undivided activity of the tunnel. I am intimately familiar with this place that I'm calling the tunnel. My favorite tunneling is trying to manage the feelings of others toward me. For some reason, I think it is a catastrophe that somebody might not like me. I have an obscene fear of that feeling that somebody is not quite on board with what I'm offering, and I will go to enormous lengths to try to fix that. And of course, in trying to fix it, often, I make that problem worse or create it to begin with. But this is the habit. So it's not that I'm a people-pleaser. It’s that I'm a not-displeasing-people-person. I am “not displeasing you.”

What is your version of this tunnel behavior? Reflect now on what it is that you most want to do that constricts you, that binds you, that limits you. We all have it, and we can all develop a richer and deeper and fuller relationship with it, and that is what I think we're here to do together.

I want to be clear that this effort to see ourselves is not a do-gooder project.

This is not making nice or being righteous, or being moral or pure, because all of those goals just increase our suffering. We're never pure enough. Are we? We're never good enough. Are we? We constantly yearn for something better in ourselves than we're offering, and this is an exhausting round of suffering that we can easily relieve ourselves of, if we just learn to tolerate reality, which is us.

So here's how the great Zen Master Baizhang spoke about this 1200 years ago: “In the presence of all objects mind being neither still nor disturbed, neither concentrated nor scattered. Passing through all sound and form without lingering or obstruction, is called being a person of the way. Not setting in motion, good, evil, right or wrong, not clinging to a single thing, not rejecting a single thing, is called being a person of the Great Vehicle. Not bound, not bound by any good, evil, emptiness, existence, defilement, purity, doing, non doing, mundane, super mundane, blessings, virtue, knowledge or wisdom, is called Buddha wisdom. Not bound.”

Our Search to end our own pain, to stop anesthetizing ourselves with pious undertakings, simple certainties, logic, and reason, begins with zazen and with the Precepts. We have a study text this winter Ango—actually, it's two texts. Both texts were written by Dogen Zenji—if you haven't read them, they're available on our website. I urge you to read them. One of them is called Zenki, and in Zenki, Dogen writes this, where he offers subtlety, not certainty: “Both the entire earth and the entire sky appear in birth as well as in death. However, it is not that one and the same entire earth and sky are fully manifested in birth and in death: although not one, not different; although not different, not the same; although not the same, not many.” I just have to read that again: “Although not one, not different; although not different, not the same; although not the same, not many.”

Rather disorienting, isn't it?

How are we to compass it with our minds? How are we to live this insane between space that is neither good nor bad, but partakes of both, and rejects both and partakes of both and is neither of them. Can we just stop clinging so tightly to our preconceived ideas of what it should be like? Can we live the first pure precept: “Not knowing, thereby giving up fixed ideas about myself and the universe; this is ceasing from evil.” Not knowing, it's really how it is. Can we just accept the reality that we don't know how it is? It'd be a lot less painful, really a lot more complicated, much richer, much scarier, in a way, than the tunnel. So let's use the precepts as a lens to look at a recent event that is on the minds of many people. 

I thought very hard about whether to talk about this event, but because it is something that is so constantly being talked about through the lens of right or wrong, good and bad, I think we need to approach it in a different way.

I hope we can all be comfortable not knowing, so not knowing, about the shooting by 43-year-old Jonathan Ross of Renee Nicole Good, 37, mother of three.

We all have opinions, don't we? But were we there? Were we either of the people who are mainly involved in this incident? No. So what do we really know about what happened? 

Well, we have video, and we have a lot of ink being spilled about it, but what do we really know? But we have, for the most part, I think, made up our minds, one side or the other. 

So let's see if we can approach it a little differently, because the approach that we're taking, the reflex approach, is an approach that creates suffering, and as I won't tire of saying, this practice, in my view, is about reducing suffering, preventable suffering that we create through our wanting to know and judge. 

Not only were we not there, we have no direct experience. So let's pause in our anxiousness to make up our minds about this event and take a look at it through the lens of the precepts. I feel a little weird doing this, because we have fusatsu every month—our atonement ceremony—and in those ceremonies, coming up Thursday of this week, we have a Precepts Talk. And this is not really the time for a Precepts Talk, but I actually found working with the Precepts and this event to be very supportive and helpful to me, so I can't help but share it. So I apologize if you feel this is out of sorts, and I'm just going to go through them. 

For those who don't know what the Precepts are, there are Ten Grave Precepts, and you might think they're rather like the Ten Commandments, but they're really actually quite different, even if superficially similar. 

It starts with the same basic precept, in both cases, non-killing. We don't say, “Thou shalt not kill.” We say, “The precept of non-killing.”

Well, obviously, someone was killed, right? That's the controversy. Somebody died. The precept does not actually say anything about self-defense. It's quite interesting. I didn't really think about that, but neither the precepts nor the commentaries on them say that, well, in this situation, you can do it; or it's okay if such and such a thing happens to do it. None of that is there so and that's really the whole argument, isn't it? Everybody is arguing about whether it was justified or not. The precept says, quite simply, “Do not kill.” Can we just not do the thing that the precept is telling us to not do? That's what's on the table here. Even though none of us were there, even though none of us bears responsibility for it, can we not kill? There will be an investigation about the whole details of whether it was justified or not. But we can just say for ourselves, as a practice, for ourselves, “I will not kill.”

The second precept is non-stealing.

So here, as a 37-year-old person, I think she is, or was. She may have had, the victim, the person killed, may have had 50 more years of life. Those lives, those years, were stolen. That was a theft, I think one can say that. And of course, the person shooting stole something from himself, his peace, his peace of mind, his relationship with others. Will that person, Jonathan Ross, ever be the same? No, impossible. Can we have compassion for that person, although he did what he did, and we have our feelings about that, can we have compassion for the suffering of that person? It's a possibility. I'm not telling you what to feel, but it's a possibility that we could feel compassion for somebody who ruined his own life through that gesture, quite probably, how will he live with himself? 

Not misusing sex is the Third Precept. Now you might think, Well, that's very out of the picture here—but I have reframed this precept a little bit for myself, as “not abusing power.” So if you put it in that context, there's a lot to talk about here. And all I'll say about it is that if there isn't an impartial investigation, I think that might be called an abuse of power. And if the government says that its agents are above scrutiny, cannot be investigated for their actions no matter what those actions are, I would like to suggest that that could be an abuse of power. So that's the Third Precept. 

The Fourth is non lying. So right away, stories were being told about the victim. She was called a terrorist. All of you can make up your own mind about whether you think that's true or not, but it came very quickly. You don’t have the facts, and already she's being called a terrorist. This word is being used so much nowadays, I think it's losing its meaning. I mean, back when I was a kid, there was a lot of terrorism going on, but they were mass events. They were, you know, lots of people being taken hostage. Really elaborate planning, and staged, and governments kind of swooping in to fix that. This use of that word so freely and so quickly is, I think, a little bit questionable, especially since no investigation had been done. So you make up your own mind, but I'm not sure I see this person as a terrorist. I'm not sure I see either of them as a terrorist.

How do you see them?

Do you see them as separate from yourself?

The Fifth Precept is not giving or taking drugs.

I feel that the way that the press feeds us what we want to see, tells us what we already want to believe, validates our preconceived ideas and biases. The Press validates the tunnel and we select our outlets, right? Our media outlets for what we want to be told. It doesn't matter where you are in the political spectrum, you will select what you think reinforces your value system and your beliefs. So this is how the tunnel gets shored up. That's how it's built in the first place. But then it gets shored up with this constant self-reinforcement of our biases. So this is a drug just as toxic and potent as the things we normally associate with drugs. So can we stop giving and taking drugs in this way? Because we can allow for other versions of the truth to exist. We are not the possessors of the truth, and just because we read a particular newspaper or watch a particular television station does not make us right. 

There are a lot of aspects to the precepts. I'm just giving you the most quick, basic aspects. There's so much more to work with here: not discussing the faults of others, and not elevating the self and blaming others. Well, this is really quite obvious, isn't it, who was responsible? She shouldn't have done that. He shouldn't have done that. She's to blame. He's to blame. It's constantly using this story to judge people and assign blame. Have you ever assigned blame? Is there a person here listening to this talk who has not assigned blame to another person, looked down on the other person and judged the other person? We all have an experience of either doing this or having done it to ourselves or having had others do it to us. We all know what it feels like, and yet we continue to do it. This is suffering. This is the tunnel. 

Is there an alternative? I'm not telling you that I know how we should handle it. I'm just suggesting that there might be a different way of handling it that might reduce suffering. 

The Eighth Precept is “not sparing the Dharma assets.” This seems difficult to apply to this case, but we can at least inquire in our minds about what in this story are the Dharma assets? Is this event, terrible as it was for everyone, a Dharma asset? I think it is because we can learn from it. If we choose to, we can learn from it. And I implore all of us to learn from it.

The Ninth Precept is “not indulging in anger.” Well, I don't need to really dwell on this one, do I? I mean, this is about nothing if it isn't about anger. If you watch the video, there's a lot of different angles, but there's one video, the one taken by the agent who shot the person that has his verbal comment about her after the shooting—maybe some of you have heard that comment that to me, demonstrated a lot of anger. Was it justified or not? Who knows? But can we dial the temperature down to reduce our own suffering and that of other people? It is really difficult when our passions are engaged, to not be angry, to not indulge and feed that anger. It's just like chasing thoughts when we're sitting on the cushion, isn't it, our minds just want to reach out and grab and spin on a particular thing. Let's try to interrupt that cycle for our own benefit and the benefit of all those around us. 

Last but not least, is “not defaming the Three Treasures”, that's the Tenth Precept. There are a variety of things to be said about this, but one thing that defames the three treasures is separating. Do you think that Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha are separate from you? How could they possibly be separate from you? Each one here and each one not here, is Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. They are infinite. They encompass all of us. So let's try to stop separating, because that's what created this situation in the first place. They were at each other's throats from the beginning with disastrous results. Usually it doesn't go this far, but this is what it leads to when we separate. It can lead to this agony, this national agony that could have been prevented—and would that it had been!

So where does this whirlwind tour of the Precepts and how they might apply to this event leave us? 

It leaves us in a much murkier place, I think; much more relational, much more challenging, and much richer. And I think this is a place where we can practice. This practice is using the precepts not to react immediately through our biases, but to reflect. And it gives us a structure. I personally felt enormously supported when I started to digest this event through the Precepts, and I recommend that to everyone as a way of dealing with these difficult events. I think we need structure and guidance. And even if it seems to you like nobody else is doing the work—like the people in Minneapolis aren't doing the work, neither of them were Buddhists, neither of them—who cares? It doesn't matter. You're responsible for your own suffering, and you're responsible for bringing it to an end, and the Precepts can help you, along with meditation, to do exactly that, and even a tiny reduction is worth it. Never underestimate the importance of tiny reductions in suffering. 

I'm just very grateful that I can be here. I with you at this time.

I'd like to close by quoting Dogen again, this time from his Genjokoan:

Though there are many features in the dusty world and the world beyond conditions, you see and understand only what your eye of practice can reach. In order to learn the nature of the myriad things, you must know that although they may look round or square, the other features of oceans and mountains are infinite in variety; whole worlds are there. It is so not only around you, but also directly beneath your feet, or in a drop of water.

For the sake of Renee Good, for the sake of Jonathan Ross, for the sake of this broken world, let us continue to practice diligently and support each other in applying the precepts to accommodate reality as skillfully as we can to reduce suffering.

Thank you.

To view the Dharma Talk on YouTube, go   HERE  
 

REFLECTIONS

A Call and Response in Poetry, By Adam Seidō Levy and Enkyo Roshi

My mother passed away on December 15, 2021. She was ninety years old. The day before she died, I sat by her bedside and gave her a foot massage. When I asked her why she loved my father, she replied, "He took me to such interesting places." I chose to interpret that metaphorically.

My mother was a storyteller and a warm, vivid person. I was devastated when she died, and in my grief, I wrote poetry.  I would send them to Enkyo Roshi, and she would reply, within a few minutes, with a poem of her own. It was a call and a response that continued for about two years. 

Because our winter Ango study text this year is about birth and death, it seemed fitting to share three of the later poems, written after the initial disbelief, anger, and depression had passed.

—Seidō





Flowers

I brought you
Yellow tulips
Never thinking
The blooms
Would outlive you

 
                                
Enkyo Roshi O’Hara

Flourishing                                 
Like spring colors                                 
Your love                                 
Survives                                 
Her Death




The Key

The landlord
Demands 
The return of your key

It sits on my desk
Stubbornly

I throw it 
In the river
Safe with the fish

 

Enkyo Roshi O’Hara                               

Now the child                               
Returns                               
Remembers                               
How it was                               
And Stubbornness                               
How good it felt                               
Feels.                               
Even now.

 



Mother’s Day (2023)




Without 

A doubt

Your chair 

Is empty






 
Roshi Enkyo O’Hara 

What is empty?
                               
Bodhidharma told the Emperor,
                                 
“Vast emptiness, no holiness”
                                 
Poor Emperor, still trying to find the answer. 
                                 
There is none,
                                                                   
As you say,

“Without a doubt.”

 


   
We communicate in three places online:

our email list, a Facebook page, and a Groups.io list

where we share events and information among the whole

Sangha. Explore these various ways of staying connected and

up to date here: https://villagezendo.org/connect-with-us/
 
 


Editor: Taylor Plimpton

Editor Emerita: 
Nina Shuka Klippel

Managing Editor
Design & Production: Howard Thoresen
 



 
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