BULLETIN
March 2026
—Photo by Adam Seidō Levy
Snow into snow:
What silence!
The world is gone.
—Basho
Dear Sangha,
It’s such an unusual state for the city to be in, when a great snow falls. For once everything is pristine, unmarked. The past, the present, the future—all of it has been erased. There are no footprints yet. Just this stillness, this giant hush.
Honestly, I’ve always struggled to wrap my head around the dual nature of existence—how the one and the many are always at play—but a snow like this makes the One of it clear enough, for a while.
Interesting, though, the word play, for that in the end is what a great snow invites. In the face of it, we are all children for a moment. We throw snowballs, devilishly, at unsuspecting people we love. We construct snowmen with big round buddha bellies, and buttons for eyes. We allow ourselves to fall backwards into great heaps of it, sweep our legs and arms up and down, make snow angels, which is all any of us are at heart anyway: beautiful angels that are only here for a minute.
And that’s the other thing about a great snow. It will, of course, not last.
With love and snowballs,
Taylor Plimpton
Editor
MARCH CALENDAR
Sunday, March 1: Online: Practice and Inquiry Circle with Joshin
In-Person: Intro to Zen with Howard
Thursday, March 5: Zazen and Dharma Talk by Tokuyu Sensei
Saturday, March 7: Urban Sesshin: The Whole Works, 10 am – 3:30 pm
Sunday, March 8: Zazen and Dharma Talk by Soshin Sensei
Thursday, March 12: Zazen and Dharma Talk by Kojin
Newcomers Meeting, 6:40 pm
Friday, March 13: Urban Sesshin: The Whole Works, 10 am – 4:30 pm
Saturday, March 14: Zazenkai and Dharma Talk by Shinryu Roshi, 8:30 am
Sunday, March 15: Shuso Hossen, 9:30 am
Thursday, March 19: Zazen and Dharma Talk by Jiryu
Friday, March 20: Jukai: Receiving the Buddhist Precepts, 7 pm
Saturday, March 21: Buddhist Council of New York at Village Zendo, 1 – 4 pm
Sunday, March 22: Zazen and Dharma Talk by Kenzen, 9:30 am
Thursday, March 26: Fusatsu with Precepts Talk by Ryotan Roshi, 5:30 pm
Sunday, March 29: Zazen and Dharma Talk by Yugetsu, 9:30 am
The Path of the Precepts, 2 pm
________________________________________
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
Saturday March 7th, 10 am to 3:30 pm – Virtual Workshop
Friday March 13th, 10 am to 4:30 pm – In-Person Workshops
Urban Sesshin 2026
The Whole Works
Investigating Birth and Death,
and Undivided Activity
The Death of the Buddha (Parinirvana), Gandharo 3rd C.
Chaplain-led immersive exploration on Dogen’s Shoji and Zenki – The Whole Works: Investigating Birth and Death, and Undivided Activity.
Workshops are open to all. Please wear comfortable clothing and bring a pen and some paper or journal for writing.
Saturday March 7th, 10 am to 3:30 pm – Virtual Workshop:
Being Free from Birth and Death:
Raising the Sails and Embracing
the Way of Emancipation
Birth and Death bow to each other, two currents flowing in the same river. In the dynamic arc between these tides, living and dying are manifested moment to moment. Seeing this clearly invites us to become fully present, discovering the pulse of life itself and encountering impermanence as a compassionate guide. In this experiential workshop, through reflection, writing, deep listening, breathing, and movement, we cultivate intimacy with the fleeting nature of existence, investigating what matters most to realize the freedom we have to live unconditionally right now.
Workshop led by Keely Rakushin Garfield with facilitation by Village Zendo chaplains Willie Mukei Smith, Sherri Jyākuen Posey, Anne Jisei Reigeluth, and Marjorie Chogaku McCoy.
Schedule:
10am – Zazen
10.30am to 12.30pm – Online Workshop Part 1
12.30pm to 1.30pm – Silent Lunch & Writing Activity
1.30pm to 3.30pm – Online Workshop Part 2
Friday March 13th, 10 am to 4:30 pm – In-Person Workshops:
The World of the Boat:
Undivided Activity of Birth, Death and Myriad Things
This three-part workshop series is an invitation to inhabit the openness of each moment and actualize our lives through dynamic presence, taking up Zen Master Dogen's call to throw our body and mind into the house of the buddha. In this shared field of practice, encompassing our awareness of birth and death, we awaken compassion and the quiet courage for true, authentic expression. By bending and stretching towards dancing, singing, and making art, we will discover the infinite wonder and possibility in being in the boat and going with the flow.
Workshops led by Palliative Care Chaplains and artists, Keely Rakushin Garfield, TJ Douglas, and Soren Glassing.
Schedule:
7:30 am to 8:30 am – Regular online sitting
10 am Zazen – In-person
10:30 am to 12 pm – Workshop # 1
Undivided Activity of Dancing with Rakushin
12 pm to 1 pm – Lunch
1 pm to 2:30 pm – Workshop #2
Undivided Activity of Songwriting with TJ
2:30 pm to 3 pm
Break/Set Up Zendo
3 pm to 4:30 pm – Workshop #3
Undivided Activity of Making Art with Soren
4:30 pm to 5 pm – Reset Zendo
REGISTER HERE
IN PERSON AND ONLINE
Shuso Hossen
Sunday, March 15
9:30 am — 11:00 am
Keely Rakushin Garfield
Schedule (Eastern Time)
9:30 am – Shuso Hossen Ceremony
Please arrive by 9:15 am
Shuso Hossen is a joyous celebration recognizing our practice leader and new Senior Student. It takes place at the conclusion of the intensive training period of Ango, during which the student serves as a model and practice leader. Rakushin will give her first Dharma Talk and will take questions from the community in a ceremonial conversation known as Dharma Dialogue. As such, it is a participatory and deeply moving experience for all.
Keely Rakushin Garfield’s broad professional engagement encompasses her work as an acclaimed dancer and choreographer, a dance professor, a wellness specialist, and an ordained and board-certified chaplain. A snapshot of her career includes leading the Sitting with Dying programs for Visting Nurse Service (VNS), serving as clinical coordinator for Urban Zen Integrative Therapy (UZIT) at Saint Damien’s Pediatric Hospital and Orphanage in Haiti, and teaching Reiki for Yoga Journal NYC. Rakushin is a popular yoga teacher and yoga teacher trainer and regularly teaches yoga for Village Zendo retreats. She is the artistic director for her company, Keely Garfield Dance, and is the recipient of New York Dance and Performance Awards (a.k.a. “Bessies”) and a Guggenheim Fellowship in Choreography. As a chaplain, she previously worked at Mount Sinai Morningside Hospital and NYU Langone Hospital Brooklyn. Rakushin currently serves as the director of Spiritual Care and Palliative Care chaplain with Northwell Health.
This event will be in-person and online.
The in-person ceremony is at the Village Zendo, 260 West Broadway, in New York City. Please note that although our address is on West Broadway, the entrance to the Zendo is in the back of the building on St. John’s Lane.
Please consider a $20 voluntary donation to cover event costs.
Donate HERE
Questions? info@villagezendo.org
Friday, March 20
Jukai
Receiving the Buddhist Precepts
Online Only
Vast is the robe of liberation
A formless field of benefaction;
I wear the Tathagata teaching
Saving all sentient beings.
Are you curious about the precepts and taking Jukai?
Shinryu Roshi will be leading a discussion on taking Jukai, Friday, March 20 from 7:00 pm to 8:30 pm. He will be joined by Tokuyu and Fusho Senseis who will direct the sewing and precepts study during the summer.
In the Jukai ceremony, we vow to lead our lives in accord with the precepts. The study of the precepts has no beginning or end, but it is the basis of our practice and our relations with others. This will be a wonderful opportunity for anyone considering taking Jukai this summer to ask questions and to get an in-depth introduction into what is involved with taking this important step.
If you would like to attend or have any questions, please contact Tokuyu Sensei: jmanasia@gmail.com
TEACHINGS
“The Vast Wondrous Light”
A Dharma Talk given by Torei on February 22, 2026
Good morning. Wow, wild blizzards couldn’t drag us away from our time together, so thank you for those who came here today, and for those online, and for those who are going to listen to this in the future, like I often do, and thank you to the stewards who put our talks online so we can listen to them.
My name is Torei and I’m a senior student here at the Village Zendo. So, this past Tuesday, February 19th, 2026, NYU Langone Medical Center closed its prominent medical program for treating transgender youth. According to The New York Times, the move by the hospital came after the Trump Administration proposed rules that would pull federal dollars from any hospital that provides gender transition treatments for adolescents, such as puberty blockers, hormone therapy, or surgery. On Tuesday night, the hospital gave a statement and cited the current regulatory environment as among the reasons the hospital has decided to discontinue its program for gender related care for youth.
So I'm sure that many of you in our Sangha, you might have heard or read this news, and I'm going to assume that most—maybe sadly, not all—are disheartened by this. Here we have another example and way that this brutal administration has been attacking human and civil rights, and specifically targeting and scapegoating transgender people. I imagine many of you have shaken your head in disgust or disbelief that this could happen in a major New York City medical center, in the city that gave birth to Stonewall and the queer rights movement. But in the communities that I live and work in as a psychotherapist, this news was soul-crushing.
Parents of transgender children and teens that I know personally have been, for months, living with fear, dread, confusion, having to figure out where to safely get care for their kids, how to survive in this climate of targeted hate towards their families—where parents are labeled as perpetrators for seeking care for their children, fearing that their children’s mental health might plummet without it. Some have left the country. Others are considering it. Study after study shows that transgender children and youth and adults show improved outcomes in their mental health and have decreased suicidal ideation when they receive gender-affirming care. And while I don't work with minors as a therapist, I see the dramatic benefits of receiving gender-affirming care early in life. Some of my nonbinary and trans clients who were lucky to have supportive families and receive that care as teens—it shows. It shows in the outcomes on their own mental health, the positive outcome. And many do not have that, having to wait until college or beyond, if, again, they're lucky enough to have a supportive system in place. Sometimes in my office, it is the first time they might utter these desires and feelings about wanting to transition or thinking about transitioning.
But I don't need studies or my clients’ lives or my community members’ experience to know the importance of receiving this gender-affirming medical care. As a nonbinary and transmasculine person myself, I have been on the receiving end of gender reassignment surgery, having undergone in 2021 chest masculinization surgery at NYU Langone Medical Center in their adult clinic. Chest masculinization surgery has a few different kinds of procedures to achieve it, but for me, it involved a double mastectomy and then grafting my nipples back on a more masculinized-shaped chest. After years of confusion, emotional turmoil, my own internalized fears, and even confronting a therapist who reacted with horror when I spoke of wanting surgery, and other barriers, I was able to receive care from a surgeon who specialized in trans care and staff who were mostly queer and transgender themselves. Being in such a space where I could feel like a full human being is an experience that I cannot truly find the words to describe. It was beyond joy, beyond words, beyond any expression. So I can honestly, deeply understand despair when these spaces are slowly folding, taken brutally and cruelly away.
So for those who are new, we’re in a period of intensified practice called Ango, or Peaceful Dwelling—and our text for this study period was written by Zen Master Dogen, founder of the Soto school in Japan. The text we are reading is called Shobogenzo, or Treasury of the True Dharma. I wondered if this 13th-century monk would be able to provide me any guidance in delivering this talk today from a Dharma perspective. To be honest, I wasn't sure. But at the same time, our study texts and liturgy based on these ancient writings have always intuitively spoken to me in ways that are embodied and beyond words.
Leafing through the two chapters that were assigned for our study, I realized that indeed, as I found in one description online of this text, Dogen challenges dualistic thinking, urging us to see reality as interconnected, fluid. So yes, here it is: Our whole study text is here to remind us not to be trapped in binary ways of thinking, and to be able to lean into fluidity, to see beyond what we might see as rigid categories. He talks about concepts of birth and death, to explore what the experience is for you. In his talk that he gave in Kyoto in 1224, “Undivided Activity,” he says, “Thus, you make birth what it is. You make birth, your birth.” This makes me think of what we do as trans or nonbinary people when we claim our own gender over the one we were assigned at birth—we make it our birth, not the idea of it that someone might have for us.
As I immersed myself in this text, the following lines resonated with me deeply: “This being so, the undivided activity of birth and death is like a young person bending and stretching, or it is like someone asleep at night searching for the pillow. This is realization in vast, wondrous light.” I like to see our movement through life just like this: like the free bending and stretching in spirit of a child, just moving in the way that feels natural to them, without thought. And our journey through death can be the way we reach out to our pillow, without thought, as well. We stretch, we move, we grasp. Our bodies move towards what is natural for them, in an activity that is all our own.
The grasping for the pillow in the middle of the night is a reference to a koan in the Blue Cliff Record, Case 89: “The Hands and Eyes of the Bodhisattva of Compassion.” Yunyan asked Daowu, “How does the Bodhisattva of Great Compassion use so many hands and eyes?” Daowu said, “It’s just like a person in the middle of the night reaching in search of a pillow.” Yunyan said, “I understand.” Daowu said, “How do you understand it?” Yunyan said, “All over the body are hands and eyes.” Daowu said, “What you said is all right, but it’s only 80% of it.” Yunyan said, “How about you, elder brother—how do you understand it?” Daowu said, “Throughout the body are hands and eyes.”
Dogen, in the text, is making direct reference to the great Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokitesvara, who is depicted in Buddhist imagery as having many arms and legs, ready to respond compassionately to whatever arises and whatever is needed. In the koan, compassion is described almost as a reflex, the way we reach for a pillow at night, and not something we think about in order to gain favor, look good, or be a good person. We respond because it is a natural thing to do—to realize our interconnectedness, and through that understanding, we too feel the suffering of beings who are told they cannot actualize and live in their natural true state, or of parents that worry about their children sinking into depression and despair, or of a trans person filled with so much shame because they are viewed as dangerous, pathological, or less than fully human.
We feel these things because this suffering is witnessed by us, not from a surface level, like Yunyan says—hands and eyes covering our body like a skin—but like Daowu’s description: we respond to the world from throughout the body, from within, from a place without critical and rigid categories of thought, a place that is interconnected to the one body of this world. And in this discussion today, as I'm focusing on the experience of gender-nonconforming, nonbinary, trans folks, Avalokitesvara is the perfect Bodhisattva for this conversation. I will not go into all the literature about their gender expression, but urge you to listen to Joren's wonderful talk from this past summer, titled “What is Avalokitesvara’s Body Anyway?” In it, she gives the history of Avalokitesvara’s nonbinary transness, and refers to Avalokitesvara’s fluid gender expression, and sees them as a many-armed, compassionate embrace extending to the liberation of all sentient beings. She says in her talk that Avalokitesvara’s gender fluidity speaks to the Bodhisattva’s infinite capacity for compassion, assuming whatever form speaks most intimately to each unique suffering sentient being.
How beautiful it is to see our own Buddha nature that way—our own individual bodies, with their own natural expression, being part of this one whole body, with its many arms and legs, hands and eyes coursing through our veins, responding to what is, to the cries and joys of the whole world. In this way you were all transitioning with me that fall day on the operating table, under the watchful eyes and many hands of that team led by the magnificent Dr. Rachel Bluebond-Langner at NYU, that allowed me to live my life with greater dignity and congruency with my own true expression. And together, we continue that transition, as we grow, bend, stretch, age, get sick and die, sleep and awaken to the reality that all this activity is bathed, as Dogen says so poetically and tenderly, in a vast, wondrous light.
Because it is wondrous to view our lives this way, and also so natural and simple, too—like snow falling on the pavement, like geese flying across the sky over Prospect Park during my morning walks. It is not anything fantastical. It's just life as it is. And when a child is prevented from moving and bending and stretching in their own natural way, when a place like NYU Langone closes its door to them, it closes the door to all of us. So their cries are ours too, and we can use our true Dharma eye, or eyes, as our precepts instruct us, to bear witness to this suffering, and we can use the many hands within our community to open our hearts and perhaps take the action needed to open doors for other spaces for them to safely enter.
I want to end today with two verses written by a transfeminine performance artist, environmental activist, and the first Oscar-nominated transgender musician, although she did not get invited, like Oscar-nominated musicians usually do, to perform at the Oscars. Her name is ANOHNI, the lead singer of ANOHNI and the Johnsons. Formerly, that band had her dead name, the term used in the trans community for a name used prior to transition, so I won't say it, but you could look it up: ANOHNI and the Johnsons.
In 2016, when the artist announced that she was changing her name to ANOHNI, she elaborated on her views of being transgender to The Guardian: “The trans condition is a beautiful mystery. It's one of nature's best ideas. What an incredible impulse that compels a five-year-old child to tell its parents it isn’t what they think it is. Given just a bit of oxygen, these children can flourish and be such a gift, they give other people license to explore themselves more deeply, allowing the colors in their own psyche to flourish.”
Her song from 2005, “For Today I Am a Boy,” carried a lot of meaning for me and is part of the soundtrack of my life. It also gave me hope. A little fun fact here is that I met ANOHNI at our Zendo—not at this location, but at 588 Broadway. We were chatting after a Dharma Talk or event. I did not know who she was, and when she told me her name and the name of the band she was part of, I inwardly gasped, but tried not to show it, to be like New York City cool. She said it so humbly and so quietly that sometimes I even wonder to this day if it was her. But I was not surprised that someone like her would be at our Zendo. Our former Abbess, Enkyo Roshi, attracted many different creative people to our community, but in particular, she opened up her Bodhisattva heart and arms to embrace and welcome members of the trans community with warmth, acceptance, and a feeling that we belong. May we all continue on our compassionate path.
So here are the verses from “For Today I Am a Boy”:
“One day I’ll grow up,
I’ll be a beautiful woman.
One day I’ll grow up,
I’ll be a beautiful girl.
One day I’ll grow up,
I’ll be a beautiful woman,
And one day I’ll grow up,
I’ll be a beautiful girl.
But for today, I am a child.
For today, I am a boy.
For today I am a child,
For today I am a boy.”
Here’s the second verse:
“One day I’ll grow up, I’ll feel the power in me.
One day I’ll grow up, of this I’m sure.
One day I’ll grow up, I know who I’m within me.
One day I’ll grow up, feel it pure and sure.
But for today, I am a child.
For today, I am a boy.
For today, I am a child.
For today, I am a boy.”
To view Torei’s Dharma Talk on YouTube, go here.
TRUE EXPRESSION
Gathering Blossoms
by Jan Jinkai Gary
"Blossoms" Paul Klee, 1934
A few weeks ago, after morning Zazen was finished, Joshin Roshi shared this haiku from Issa: We walk on the roof of hell, gazing at blossoms. It was one of those mornings when I was having troubles with the news, and hearing this haiku inspired me to write this piece.
Gathering blossoms
For some reason, I always tidied the yard at the hottest time of day, my body damp with sweat as I swept every last bit of leaf and bloom into the dustpan, stooping and bending and angling the brush to avoid splatters of poop from the iguanas who gorged on the flowers.
It was hard work keeping the front yard of my first house in Key West tidy, even though it wasn’t really a yard but a long, narrow stretch of concrete blocks spanning the length of the fence. A few palm trees and a long flank of buttonwoods added a bit of a green, but it was the old hibiscus tree next to the house that provided the most shade and an ongoing proliferation of bright red flowers that continuously dropped off the tree.
The tree was old and much of the bark beat up and rotted in spots, but the tree guy I called to look at it said it was in good shape and amazing for its age. “I think this must be the oldest and largest Hibiscus in Key West,” he said.
Great. I was hoping he would say we should cut it down — in this town you need permission to take down trees — but he also pointed out the shade I would lose if I lost this tree. And the blooms, so beautiful. Yes, they were. They were also a pain in the ass to pick up. If you didn’t do it every day, the blossoms would turn into a brown gooey mess that was impossible to clean.
I’d curse as I swept, taking a perverse joy in spitting out the words.
One day, I passed my neighbor across the street who was sweeping leaves off the sidewalk in front of his art gallery. I called out to him. “They’re a pain, aren’t they? They just keep coming.”
“Nope,” he said. “As long as they’re falling, I know they’re alive.”
The next time I swept the blossoms, I was struck, and not for the first time, of how beautiful they looked in their piles. How fully they were part of the rhythm of life and letting go. By this time, Covid was in full swing, and this small patch of palm and green leaves and drooping flowers were my refuge — my kingdom. Even while I griped and bitched and stoked my resentment for having to do this chore, I knew that I was indulging in old habits, wanting to be somewhere else other than sweeping flowers and hosing off iguana poop.
It was crazy to be like this. Where else did I ever want to be but in Key West? And still I found ways to not be here, at least in my head.
As soon as my neighbor made his comment about the falling leaves, I thought, shit, this guy is a Bodhisattva — a great teacher. His words were like a slap in the face, telling me to wake up, to engage fully with this life and start to be a part of it by doing what was needed in this moment.
So, this time, as I began turning toward the task, I blossomed a little myself. Yes, the world was going to hell around me — the beginning of the time of Covid was frightening — but there was also beauty and an opportunity to hold it in my hands. What more could I ask for?
Now the world once again brings hell to my door. I hear this haiku from the Japanese poet Issa Kobayashi in my head, and it helps me pause and reel myself in from wandering off in fear.
The haiku translation is: We walk on the roof of hell, gazing at blossoms.
But somehow I hear it with a slight change of verbiage, probably embedded this way into my brain because of the tactile memory of those tissue paper blooms resting in my cupped palms:
We walk on the roof of hell, gathering blossoms.
The flowers are all around us: in Minneapolis, in New York City, in my own town, dropping like ripe flowers into my hands, beauty and love and kindness blossoming in the face of terror.
I try to remember to gather what is good.
Jan Jinkai Gary, of Key West, has been a long-distance member of the Village Zendo since 2021. She is an author, writing teacher and Sensei in the White Plum lineage. She writes the Substack newsletter This and now…THIS. janicegary.substack.com
REFLECTIONS
An excerpt from My Father’s Son by Taylor Plimpton:
I once heard an interview with the great documentarian Ric Burns that captured the unique spirit of my dad’s, and I’ve never been able to forget it. Apparently, my father was doing some narration for a film of his, and in the city that day there was a wild snowstorm. Understandably, no one showed up at the studio—no one, that is, except for my dad. As Burns recalled, my father had somehow managed to ride his bicycle there through the storm, arriving completely covered in snow. He had a big ridiculous winter hat on, his nose was bright red from the cold, and on his face was this big, boyish, irrepressible grin—and though they’d worked together on numerous projects and had known each other for years, it was this image of my dad, more than any other, that stuck with Burns. He finished his story by saying simply, “George knows what a snowstorm is—it’s this wonderful phenomenon—and he wasn’t gonna let it stop him . . . In fact, what you do in a snowstorm is, you go out into it . . .”
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
Design & Production: Howard Thoresen
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