BULLETIN
September 2026
“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.
The name that can be named is not the eternal name.”
—Tao Te Ching
Dear Sangha,
In this issue of the Bulletin, we’re thrilled to include a Dharma Talk by Joren, in which she quotes the great John Cage as saying, “I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry as I need it.”
Right now, trying to write this little letter to the Sangha, I can relate. Usually, there’s something clear I want to—or have to—say, but right now, I got nothing. I’m not so sure whether this nothing is a result of having too much to say and having no way to get it out—no way for words to express that ache in my chest, the lump in my throat—or whether I actually have nothing to say: my well of expression simply tapped out, exhausted, empty. Either way, as a writer, it is always an alarming moment to find myself at this juncture. After all, with no words, who am I?.
This is in part why I love Cage’s quote. It offers a path around this conundrum—a way to give even when you have nothing left to offer. Oh, you have nothing to say? Well, then by all means, go ahead and say it!
With a whole lot of love and nothing,
Taylor Plimpton
Editor
SEPTEMBER CALENDAR
Thursday, September 3: Zazen (no Dharma Talk)
Sunday, September 6: Online: Practice & Inquiry Circle w/ Joshin Roshi
In-Person: Intro to Zen with Howard
Monday, September 7: Labor Day, Online and In-Person Zendos closed
Thursday, September 10: Zazen w/Dharma Talk by Bokushu Sensei, 5:30 pm
Newcomers Meeting 6:40 pm
Saturday, September 12: Zazenkai with Gate of Sweet Nectar ceremony
Commemorating 25th Anniversary of 9/11
Sunday, September 13: Zazen with Dharma Talk by Torei
Thursday, September 17: Zazen with Dharma Talk by Musho Sensei
Friday, September 18: Letters to Solitary, 5:30 pm
Sunday, September 20: Zazen with Dharma Talk by Fugan Sensei
Thursday, September 24: Fusatsu with Precepts Talk by Soshin Sensei
Friday, September 25: Zen Salon with Yugetsu and Seido
Saturday, September 26: Jukai Ceremony, 1 pm (see below)
Sunday, September 27: Zazen with Dharma Talk by Rakushin
Path Class, 2 pm
_______________________________________________________
ONGOING GROUPS
The Bolivian Sitting Group meets online Saturdays: 8 am
Bolivia Zoom Meeting ID: 297 525 8394; Password: 1234
The People of Color Sitting Group meets online Saturdays: 10:30 am
Learn 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
Friday, September 18, 5:30 pm
Online Only
Lifelines to Solitary
If you are already writing to an incarcerated person or are interested in learning more about this practice, come to the next VZ Lifelines to Solitary online meeting. Join us for an evening of sharing our experiences of letter writing to our incarcerated partners. All are welcome, no need to pre-register.
If you have questions, concerns or topics for discussion, contact Seishin: prisonlettergroup@villagezendo.org.
JOIN US ONLINE HERE
Saturday, September 26, 1 pm
In-Person only
Jukai Ceremony
Vast is the robe of liberation
A formless field of benefaction
I wear the tathagata-teaching
Saving all sentient beings
On Saturday September 26 at 1:00, Soshin Sensei will be offering an intimate jukai ceremony for a student of the Village Zendo. If you are available at that time, you are warmly invited to the Zendo to offer your presence and support for this important marker of a student’s commitment to the Bodhisattva Way. We look forward to seeing you there.
If you would like to participate in the ceremony itself by filling a service position, this would be gratefully received. Please email Soshin directly here if you have experience with doan, jisha, and/or the drum. It’s not necessary to have served for this service—we can review it beforehand. We also need an attendant to the recipient (familiarity with the Jukai service would be helpful, and we can also review). Deep bows!
Saturday, September 12, 2026, 8:30 am – 12:45 pm
Hybrid: In-Person and Online
Registration Required
Zazenkai
We invite you to participate in Village Zendo’s Zazenkai, a half-day retreat that will be held both online and in person.It will include ample periods of meditation, service, a Dharma Talk, and conclude with open sozan.
Zazenkai will be held in a hybrid format, in which both virtual and in-person participants will practice together. Please note that there is separate registration for online and in-person attendance.
To commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of 9/11, we will celebrate:
The Gate of Sweet Nectar
\
The Gate of Sweet Nectar is an ancient and beautiful Buddhist ceremony in which we invite all suffering spirits into the field of our practice. We then offer them food and sustenance in order to satisfy them and bring them peace. We also invoke the Five Great Buddha families to be present as we open ourselves to the reality of suffering, within and without. It is an opportunity for us to fulfill our vows to serve all beings, rather than turn away from our personal and collective suffering rooted in greed, anger, and ignorance.
The ritual of feeding the hungry ghosts is appropriate for us now as we remember the violence and anguish of Sept. 11, 2001. Twenty-five years since that world-changing moment, which we witnessed in our own neighborhood, repercussions of the suffering continue. It is our vow to attend to the hungry spirits through our practice and compassionate action.
DONATIONS — FEEDING HUNGRY SPIRITS
In accordance with the guiding principle of the ceremony, the sangha is invited to bring donations of food to be distributed to hungry New Yorkers. Contributions of professionally prepared and packaged foods will be donated to the Bowery Mission Tribeca Campus. Due to food safety guidelines, the Mission cannot accept home cooked/prepared foods. (See list at the bottom of this page. * )
For those practicing with us virtually we recommend that you review the Village Zendo’s guidelines for online sitting.
Note that zazenkai does not take place via the public Online Zendo link, but is available to registered participants only. The Zoom link to join zazenkai will be included in your registration confirmation email, and will also be sent to all registrants the day before zazenkai.
REGISTER HERE
Schedule:
All times are Eastern Time
8:30 am – 8:50 am: Zazen
8:50 am – 9:05 am: Verse of the Kesa and Kinhin/stretching
9:05 am – 9:30 am: Zazen
9:30 am – 9:40 am: Kinhin/stretching
9:40 am – 10:25 am: Service: Gate of Sweet Nectar
10:25 am – 10:50 am: Zazen
10:50 am – 11:00 am: Kinhin/stretching
11:00 am – 11:35 am: Dharma Talk by Shinryu Roshi
11:35 am – 11:45 am: Kinhin/stretching
11:45 am – 12:10 pm: Zazen
12:10 pm – 12:20 pm: Kinhin/stretching
12:20 pm – 12:45 pm: Open Sozan
12:45 pm – Four vows
* Donations accepted by the Bowery Mission/Tribeca include grab and go meals; pre-packaged salads, sandwiches, snacks; canned and non-perishable prepared foods (fresh and sealed); please check expiration dates. All foods must be professionally packaged; no home cooked/prepared foods. https://www.bowery.org/donate/donate-goods/
Friday, September 25, 6:30 pm – 8 pm
In-Person and Online
Register Here
~ Invitation ~
Village Zendo Dharma Salon
Art by Shelby McQuilkin
Rituals and Ruins
Zen Practice in Documentary Storytelling
Join filmmaker Jean Yugetsu Carlomusto in conversation with writer and documentarian Adam Seido Harrison Levy after a special screening of excerpts from Yugetsu’s video archive.
In the process of collecting her 40 years of films and paperwork for acquisition by the Yale archives, Yugetsu culls the stories that have stayed with her– and popped up out of nowhere — just in time. In this artist’s-journey-through-her-collection before it is reorganized as an archive, Yugetsu will show two sequences from her documentary: Rituals and Ruins, which explore history, agency, and impermanence.
Jean Yugetsu Carlomusto is a New York filmmaker, AIDS activist, and interactive media artist. She produced and directed HBO’s Emmy nominated documentary, Larry Kramer in Love & Anger, which was featured at the Sundance Film Festival. Her works have been exhibited internationally in festivals, museums and on television. In 2022, she was a recipient of the Visual AIDS Vanguard Award for her pioneering work in the AIDS activist video movement.
Adam Seidō Harrison Levy is a writer, documentary filmmaker, and teacher. He specializes in evoking stories from people, be they writers, artists, or filmmakers for the BBC, or from the residents in a small rural town in upstate NY for the local paper. He has written profiles of the photographer Saul Leiter (Thames&Hudson) and the performance artist Robert Whitman (Pace Gallery). He is at work on a book about the lost photographs of Hiroshima. He teaches at the School of Visual Arts.
REGISTER HERE
Dharma Salon offers an occasion for Zendo sangha members and friends to share art, film, music and other creative expressions and explore their connections to the dharma.
Each salon features a presentation and a conversation about the influence of our practice on the material, followed by a gathering with light snacks and beverages.
Friday, September 25, 6:30 pm to 8:00 pm, in-person and online
Suggested Donation $15
You are encouraged to bring guests.
Kindly contact our registrar@villagezendo.org with any questions.
TEACHINGS
The following is an edited version of a Dharma Talk given by Sarah Joren Drury on August 16, 2026. To listen to the original on YouTube, go here.
Sarah Joren Drury
portrait by Lorenzo Triburgo/The Van Burgo Collective
Dog Days
Good morning! My name is Joren and I’m a Senior Student here at the Village Zendo.
Great to see everyone here today!
I’m going to start this talk with a note about the Dog Days. The term Dog Days comes from the Dog Star Sirius, the brightest star in the constellation Canis Major, in the southern hemisphere. When Sirius the Dog Star rises and sets alongside the sun, the ancient Greeks said that the star added heat to the sun, so they came up with the term “Dog Days.”
I have my own version of the Dog Days: mid-August, a time when no one is around and all “notifications are off.” I noticed at some point in my younger years that the Dog Days help me with turning off the “others” in my head. They help open up a space and spaciousness. A creative time, they offer a reprieve from questioning, from deadlines, from answers. Also, parking on the street in NYC is easier!
Long before I had a meditation practice, I noted the floating spaciousness of the Dog Days. Mid-August has always been the time when the leisure of summer is winding down, but the busy schedule of the fall hasn’t kicked in yet. It’s a moment of stasis, of neutral buoyancy—when an object in water neither sinks nor floats.
So what bubbles up in the Dog Days? The heat, the simmering, the experience of cooking and being cooked.
It’s too hot to think!
*
So I want to start by asking: What is a Dharma Talk? What should it be? What is it for me?
I love hearing Dharma Talks—dropping the talker’s voice into the attentive space created by zazen. A Dharma Talk is a chance to speak differently, and a chance to hear differently.
Like a form of zazen, a Dharma Talk means shifting into language—while practicing letting go of attachment to language as well.
So, what is a Dharma Talk?
I like to think of avant-garde composer John Cage’s saying: “I have nothing to say, and I am saying it, and that is poetry as I need it.” This is one way to think about letting go of attachment to language.
*
What about my Dog Days Pause State helped me in my youth, back before I was a Zen practitioner? It allowed me to let go of my judges and critics, the constant chatter in my head. The weather, the heat, the summer haze, the dirt and crud and emptiness of the city—these factors allowed me to simmer and bubble, freely cooking without naming it, freely simmering without judging what was being created.
The heat of the Dog Days offered me an opportunity to get out of my own way!
In the spirit of the Dog Days, I hope this Dharma Talk will be helpful—”I have nothing to say, and I am saying it.”
I want to take a moment to give a shout-out to the daily morning online hosts, and to the great one-minute Dharma Talks they give on a regular basis.
A month or two ago, as Saiju was the online host, she introduced a poem at the end of sitting, saying she had found this poem while searching for something that “would be helpful.”
This struck me as so simple! A talk, or a Dharma Talk, is supposed to be helpful! It may be an obvious thing, but for some reason, it really hit me. A Dharma Talk is supposed to be helpful with practice. This understanding cut through some of the craziness I go through preparing a Dharma Talk. It’s not “about me”—it’s about offering something that might be helpful.
During this past Tuesday’s post-sit comment, Yosho talked briefly about being Assistant Chiden at the retreat, taking care of the altars, the flower arrangements, the candles, the incense, saying that as Chiden he had realized: “When you’re doing it right, you’re invisible.”
This was a helpful insight for me!
During the second week of sesshin, I was assigned to be on the Chiden team. We benefitted from the already-set-up altars of the previous week’s team, which included Yosho. The quiet, serene altars with their exquisite arrangements were often made from wildflowers foraged from the surroundings.
As the second week’s Chiden team got started with these ready-made altars, I practiced my own experience of “when you’re doing it right, you’re invisible.” Flowers wilt and need to be refreshed, incense bowls need to be cleaned several times a day. The altar is a highly visible focus of the zendo. It needs to be fully arranged with nothing left out, nothing added. And so I got to practice this attentive “invisibility” during the sesshin.
In Tricycle recently, I came across an article, “The Heart Sutra: Wisdom from an Unexpected Source.” It focuses on a book entitled Reading the Heart Sutra, by Japanese poet Hiromi Ito, who first came to prominence in the 1980s for her writing on pregnancy, childbirth, and women’s sexuality. Reading the Heart Sutra was published in Japanese in 2010. This book has now been translated into English by Jeffrey Angles, and Tricycle will be publishing the book in monthly installments.
I thought this essay could be helpful in thinking about language as it is explored in the Heart Sutra.
This chapter starts out, “I’ve got a daughter. Her name is Kanoko.”
Ito describes her daughter Kanoko indirectly:
“Kanoko used to have a hard time with language.
She still has a hard time with English, and with Japanese.
Kanoko is an adult who works with people with autism and schizophrenia.”
Ito is saying: “Kanoko used to have a hard time with language, and still does sometimes. Now Kanoko is an adult who works with people who also have a hard time with language.”
In Ito’s essay, this difficulty with language becomes Kanoko’s opening into an understanding of the Heart Sutra, framed as a dialogue between Ito and her daughter trying to explain the Heart Sutra to her.
Kanoko starts with the first line of the Heart Sutra: changing the Sanskrit Avalokiteshvara to the Japanese Kannon, and speaking as Kannon in the first person:
“When I was doing deep prajna paramita, I saw something.”
I love this way of making Avalokiteshvara more human and everyday. Not launching right into the intricacies of Avalokiteshvara’s insight, but first simply saying, “I saw something.” Drawing attention to the simplicity of the world-changing power of this moment.
Kanoko herself sees something about the five aggregates through an experience with a patient she had at work:
“He can see, but he isn’t able to relate the things he sees to himself in any way. For instance, if I show him a picture of an apple, he’s able to match it with other pictures of apples, but he doesn’t recognize it as an apple. He’s only able to match the form to other forms, but he doesn’t consciously recognize what it is.”
Kanoko realizes: Without the five aggregates, it’s impossible to have language.
Her co-workers think that her patient cannot hear—while she believes that he does hear. She recognizes the difficulty he faces in not having language—others are not even aware that he hears them. Her compassion for him helps her see the five aggregates as illusion: “It’s just that he doesn’t have the ability to recognize things. Names don’t have any meaning in and of themselves.”
She explains: “The Heart Sutra isn’t telling us that all the things we believe in don’t exist per se. It’s telling us we should stop for a moment and analyze their true nature.”
*
I’ve got a daughter. Her name is Astrid.
Astrid came home from her job the other day, upset and inwardly raging. The head counselor admires Astrid and is incredibly supportive of her. Astrid is beloved by the campers—you could say she has a fanbase. But that day, she just could not control the kids during the Camp Assembly. They kept talking to her and wouldn’t be quiet, no matter what approved techniques she used to quiet them. Her “fans” are been-there, done-that 12- to 14-year-olds, and they were not to be controlled. The head counselor called Astrid out for not keeping her kids under control and publicly chewed her out at length. She came home fuming.
We talked a lot and she described her frustration at feeling backed into a corner by camp policies for counselors to use positive reinforcement and avoid negative reinforcement. She had tried her best, but had been publicly reprimanded by the head counselor, someone from whom she often receives praise. She felt undermined, knocked down. However I noted that she had done well at not striking out defensively in the moment. She had swallowed it all. We talked about this strategy, that strategy, her need to talk with the Head Counselor and try to get clear about it all.
What language bubbled up in her? Not fair! The kids are obnoxious! Why did the Head counselor have to chew me out so publicly, undermining my authority with the kids?
What language bubbled up in me? The good experience of this summer job is turning bad! Astrid may be fired! Astrid may quit! Astrid may not be able to work there again! This great work experience has been helping her confidence—now it’s all going to be dragging her down!
The next day, I texted her after work: How did the day go? She had talked with the head counselor, who had taken full responsibility for the incident, having had a bad day, and saying “My Bad!”
Bits and pieces of language played out, demons and dragons had arisen and dissolved. Bits and pieces of the universe formed, swirled, resolved into different forms.
There was no way I could convince Astrid that what happened was OK—it wasn’t.
At the same time, I was impressed that she was going through it all, looking at all sides, staying with it.
As Hiromi Ito’s text reminds us: “We use language to name our suffering,
The naming doesn’t make the suffering go away.”
She concludes the essay with, “So, after talking the Heart Sutra over with my daughter and reading a bunch of books, here is my own attempt to render it in the language of contemporary poetry.” I’ve excerpted her Heart Sutra poem here:
There’s no “world that can be seen with the eyes”
There’s no “world that can be sensed by the heart”
There are various things that arise from the workings of the mind,
Ranging from the world that can be seen with the eyes
To the world that can be sensed by the mind
But none of those really exist
But neither do their workings go away
There’s no “suffering of not knowing”
Nor does the “suffering of not knowing” go away
There’s no “aging,” no “dying,” no “suffering”
Nor do “aging,” “dying,” or “suffering” go away
Because people do not understand these things
There are various types of suffering as we grow old and die
But none of those really exist
Nor do they go away
They don’t exist
But they don’t go away.
They don’t exist
But they don’t go away.
They don’t exist
But they don’t go away.
TRUE EXPRESSION
Creative Offerings from the Sangha
Shattered and Healed
By Marjorie ChoGaku McCoy
The Heart Sutra served as last year’s summer Ango text and, not surprisingly, our then-Shuso Torei and other dharma speakers often referred to Avalokiteshvara Bodhisattva in their talks. During Shuso Hossen, I asked Torei the first question in Dharma Combat. Something like: “We’ve often heard the story of Avalokiteshvara’s head exploding upon realizing the depth and breadth of suffering in the world. How was their head put back together?” Shuso directed the question back to me: “How do you put your own head back together when it has shattered?” I answered, “I can’t.”
In the year since, I continued to ponder these questions, and sometimes raised them in interview. In early Spring, I ordered a small wooden statue of Avalokiteshvara from Etsy to use as a focal point for my questions and meditation. It arrived from India a few weeks later—a delicate 5 ½ inches tall. One of their tiny hands was broken. A dear friend pointed out that the grain of the wood had created a tiny teardrop under their right eye. Avalokiteshvara’s broken hand and tear stain seemed to me entirely fitting.
Googling the terms “Avalokiteshvara” and “shatter” sometime later, I came across a blogpost discussing Jungian analyst Rachel Wooten’s account of Avalokiteshvara’s story:
“There was a time when the great Bodhisattva of Compassion, Avalokiteshvara, made a vow to free all sentient beings from the lower realms of existence. In a moment of high energy and great confidence, he vowed before other buddhas and bodhisattvas that he would work endlessly until all beings had finally been liberated. He proclaimed, ‘If I should hesitate in this task for even a moment, then let me shatter into a thousand pieces!’ Having set his intention, he began to work with great vigor and amazing force. He felt tremendous joy as he freed one sentient being after another. Then he turned his gaze and looked behind him. When he saw innumerable other beings falling into the lower realms where they experienced great suffering, he hesitated. For one instant he gave up.
“According to his vow, he is shattered into countless fragments. The buddhas and bodhisattvas who had witnessed his vow and his great effort gathered all of the tiny pieces and put them together again. After Avalokiteshvara was made whole again, he wept profusely. His tears formed a pool in which a beautiful lotus flower blossomed. Tara arose from its open center, a buddha herself, the Goddess of Compassion. From that time forward, Avalokiteshvara had one thousand arms, many faces, and limitless power to liberate beings. And he now realized that he had a companion, Tara, dedicated to the same efforts as he.” (https://www.chudgar.com/the-story-of-avalokiteshvaras-tears/).
Although I have since read other accounts crediting Amitabha Buddha with piecing Avalokiteshvara’s head together, I much prefer Rachel Wooten’s version. Hearing, seeing, responding to the cries of the world require from us the courage to grieve, shatter, cry. And the loving presence of Sangha teachers and friends to hold and heal us as we do.
REFLECTIONS
By Taylor Plimpton
The following remembrance of 9/11 is excerpted from a piece first published in Tricycle called “Me, I Am No Savior.”
I am in the city on the eleventh of September. From the roof of my apartment building I look downtown and can see the smoke pouring across the river.
The day after it happens, the wind shifts north and the whole city smells of burnt rubber.
On the street, an African man is selling little American flags. “God Bless America,” he says. “How much?” I ask. “Three dollars, two for five.” I buy one. They are cheap and plastic and say Made in China.
Later, scrawled in purple chalk on the sidewalk pavement, I read the words, “An eye for an eye makes the whole world blind.”
On the fifth day, a Saturday, on the subway downtown, I find myself seated next to a black man in a trench-coat who sits on a Muslim cushion. I am ashamed that I am afraid.
That night, my girlfriend dreams she is trapped in a dark alley and throws a hotdog at a terrorist: a truly American response.
Of course, another truly American response is to go to war, which we do within a month. Everyone is united behind it—Democrats, Republicans, the public—and anyone who disagrees is labeled a traitor. On September 14, when Congress votes 420–1 to approve the Authorization for Use of Military Force, Rep. Barbara Lee (D-Calif.) is the lone dissenting vote: “Let us not become the evil we deplore,” she says, standing up on the floor of Congress, completely alone, and making her voice heard: perhaps the truest American act. Yet for voicing her opposition, Lee is called anti-American and receives death threats.
And then, for the vast majority of the next 18 years, I do the next truly American thing: nothing. I am extremely practiced at this paralysis. I go to work, eat food, watch TV. For a while there, I smoke a lot of pot.
(It should be noted that this is different than Taoist non-action, or wuwei, in which the sage seeks to emulate the great Tao—“doing nothing, yet leaving nothing undone.” The ancient Chinese philosophy does indeed critique our strange propensity for making things worse by trying to fix them, but this does not mean that the height of Taoist practice is to simply sit around on the couch.)
Oh, I do what I can, I suppose. I walk in the Climate March, my wife at my side and my little son up on my shoulders; I participate in the March for Our Lives to protest gun violence, as well. I sign online petitions to save the bees, to ban assault weapons, to make sure President Donald Trump can’t involve us in another war without congressional approval. I receive about 27 emails a day from various organizations asking me to support one noble cause or another, and when it’s feasible, I do. But for the most part, I do nothing.
Sometimes I try to write about it, but usually my musings go unfinished, and unread. I have a folder on my computer desktop entitled WAR, and in it are the beginnings of essays on topics ranging from whether Americans are safer because of our War on Terror (short answer: no) to whether the US should begin a new branch of the military devoted entirely to creation rather than destruction—a substantial force that can be deployed anywhere in the world to respond to natural disasters, and so forth—(short answer: yes, it should). I manage to finish a few anti-war op-eds, send some out, but none are accepted. The topic doesn’t interest people, I guess, which is something that interests me. Why? Why doesn’t anyone seem to care?
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
In these trying times, the Village Zendo still relies on your support.
If you are able, please make a donation.
DONATE HERE
