Online Only

The Path of Expression: Writing as Practice

Select Sundays
1:30pm — 4:00pm

Image: Zhāng Hóng, Inscribing a Banana Leaf, 1649
Allen Art Museum, Oberlin College

The Path of Expression
Writing as Practice

With Sal Gessho Randolph and Marco Seiryu Wilkinson

Select Sundays, 1:30pm — 4:00pm, Online
Mar 23, Apr 27, May 11, Jun 22, Aug 24, Sep 28, Oct 26, Nov 23

For many years, the Village Zendo has offered an annual, year-long workshop affectionately called “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 Village Zendo’s Japanese name, Dotokuji, means True Expression Temple. Expression and expressive forms are central to Zen practice—they bridge the contemplative wisdom of zazen with its functioning in the world as responsive action.

This year’s Path class, the Path of Expression: Writing as Practice, will be led by senior students Gessho and Seiryu. Working with Lynda Barry’s playful graphic writing guide, What it Is, the class will explore fundamental questions of self, memory, and imagination. What is an experience? What is memory? What are thoughts? What is a story made of? The focus will be on writing as meditation, a study of the self complementary to zazen.

Meeting monthly over eight Sunday afternoon sessions, the Path of Expression will combine council-style dialogues and exercises with expressive practice. Everyone is welcome. No previous writing experience is needed

What It Is

by Lynda Barry

How do objects summon memories? What do real images feel like? For decades, these types of questions have permeated the pages of Lynda Barry’s compositions, with words attracting pictures and conjuring places through a pen that first and foremost keeps on moving. What It Is demonstrates a tried-and-true creative method that is playful, powerful, and accessible to anyone with an inquisitive wish to write or to remember. Composed of completely new material, each page of Barry’s first Drawn & Quarterly book is a full-color collage that is not only a gentle guide to this process but an invigorating example of exactly what it is: “The ordinary is extraordinary.”

Sal Gesshō Randolph
is an artist and writer who lives in New York and works between language and action. She is the author of The Uses of Art, a memoir of encounters with works of art, and is co-founder of dispersed holdings, a publishing project. You can find her poetry and other writing at salrandolph.substack.com. She is a senior student at the Village Zendo.

Marco Seiryū Wilkinson
is a writer and assistant professor in the Literature Department at University of California San Diego. He is the author of MADDER: A Memoir in Weeds and his work has appeared in journals such as Kenyon Review, DIAGRAM, Seneca Review, and Ecotone. He has received fellowships from the Breadloaf Environmental Writers’ Conference, Oak Spring Garden Foundation, the Hemera Foundation, Montalvo Arts, and elsewhere. He is a senior student at the Village Zendo.

Registration is closed. For questions, please contact registrar@villagezendo.org.

Suggested Fee

Members: $350
Non-Members: $400

Sundays 1:30pm – 4:00pm

March 23
April 27
May 11
June 22
August 24
September 28
October 26
November 23

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