PRIVATE TEACHING | CALENDAR | PODCAST | WRITING
Hello friends,
First, thank you to all of you who’ve signed on to this newsletter recently, and to those who’ve chosen to sponsor it. Your attention and generosity mean so much to me, and they continue to make possible my own work and the operations of the Ocean Mind Sangha. I especially appreciate your support given how many publications and other worthy causes are out there. You could easily choose to give your time and resources to a new individual or organization every single day of the year and never run out of possibilities. So thank you. Please know I don’t take any of it for granted.
Second, I wanted to share with you that after some months of hard work the Ocean Mind Sangha is finally launching its new website! Please visit us there to find out more about our events and all things Zen. We can’t wait to share our new home with you!
When I left the monastery I had a clear sense that I wanted to make my living through teaching and writing, but I wasn’t sure that what I envisioned was feasible simply because I’d never seen it before. The only framework I had for a life steeped in dharma was monasticism. I hadn’t yet experienced the many ways that Buddhist teachers, both priests and lay people, have dreamed up to do what they love while supporting themselves financially. I therefore consider it incredibly fortuitous to be where I am today, and to be making what I make, even though it isn’t easily quantifiable.
I confess that sometimes the practical side of me imagines making something more tangible: furniture or food, new legislation or a high rise building. I could then point to any of those things and say “I made this.” Yet the work I do devote my time and energy to nourishes and challenges me every day, and sometimes I’m almost disbelieving of the way things have turned out—disbelieving yet infinitely grateful. I’m also grateful that I could never have imagined how things would evolve with time, because if there’s one thing that Zen has taught me—and this I’ve said before—is that the imagined pales before the possible.
Shortly after moving to Brooklyn, I started considering how to move forward with my work. The first step, I thought, was to create a website—a place where I could park my writing and let people know a little bit about what I did as a Zen teacher. I have a clear image of sitting one Friday night in a coffee shop in Brooklyn, a cozy place tucked on Fulton between Classon and Grand which is now called Sweetbee but had a different name then. It was 9 pm so it was mostly empty, which suited me. I sat on a huge, plush couch, sipping chai and looking up from my laptop now and then to stare in frustration at the brick wall in front of me. Following some weird logic, I thought I’d be able to figure out enough of WordPress to create a simple page based on the fact that is was the same platform the monastery used. But I hadn’t developed the monastery’s site myself or done any of the maintenance. I knew no coding—nor really any design, for that matter. But, I thought, how hard can it be? Two hours later, at closing time, I hurriedly shut my laptop and rushed out of the café so the young waitress behind the counter wouldn’t see me crying.
Fortunately, I’m stubborn. Even more fortunately, Zen has added focus and determination to that stubbornness. So the next night I was back at the coffee shop where, after a very short fling with Wix, I settled on Squarespace as the vehicle for my new site. And then I was off.
vanessazuiseigoddard.org was born in June of 2019, and it’s served me better than I could have imagined over the last four and a half years. Thanks to the work and particular brand of stubbornness of Annelisse Fifi, who’s helped me all this time in more ways that I can count, my fledgling site slowly grew in scope and functionality. And it’s again thanks to her that the migration to the new site happened almost seamlessly. (I got excited and made the site live before I was supposed to, causing all kinds of trouble with the crawling Googlebots, which I picture as thousands of tiny spiders trawling the dark recesses of the web for that one url I changed three years ago and for which I now have to pay dearly.) An unfortunate image, actually, given where Annelisse ended up working on the new site—a place very different from my little Bed Stuy coffee shop.
The idea, when she described it to me, seemed good in concept: she’d ride down to Punta Allen, a tiny fishing village about three hours south of Playa del Cármen, and work on the site while waiting for whatever needed to happen so she and some artist friends could begin painting a mural in the local auditorium. She’d heard the place was beautiful, and undeveloped, and perfect at least in one respect: she’d be able to see the stars, which she’d been craving to do since she herself left the monastery years earlier. But the downside, she found out when she got there, was that she’d be sharing her kitchenless room with various species of bugs, and she was worried enough about them that when she came back to Playa for a visit, she sat on the floor of the terrace outside my apartment and disinfected every last item in her luggage before coming inside. Still, there were advantages. She could indeed see the big dipper above her head as she worked—she started at 5 am, when the internet was faster—and listen to the ocean lapping the white beach a few feet away. Later, during a boat ride, she and her group sighted a pod of dolphins, and when she went into the ocean to clean the underside of the boat before pulling it ashore, she said the water was so clear it was like a solid sheet of jade encrusted with jewels.
Bless her, is all I have to say. Bless her gumption, her hard work, and most of all, her stubborn friendship. It’s lucky enough when a colleague understands your work and can complement it with theirs. It’s beyond lucky when they understand you, and know what you might need long before you do.
Years earlier, Annelisse was my attendant at the monastery, helping to direct students to the teacher’s room during sesshin, our silent meditation retreat. One day I came into the room and caught her wiping the doorknobs with Windex.
“Um, what are you doing?” I asked her.
“Wiping down the knobs,” she said. “That way, if anyone’s sick, they won’t spread their germs to you.”
No attendant before or after her thought of doing the same for me. No other monastery resident asked me, when I was work supervisor, if they could bathe the monastery’s stone walls with water so they wouldn’t dry out and crack in the sun.
It’s this same care she’s brought to all her work with me, and the website is no exception. I myself wouldn’t know where to begin with the Googlebots—I didn’t even know they existed!—so I’m beyond grateful to her for watching out for me and the Ocean Mind Sangha, and for wanting our work to thrive as much as I do.
So come on over and take a look at what we’ve made together. It is, after all, something we can point to and proudly say, “We made this.” Maybe we can’t hold it in our hands exactly. Maybe it won’t outlive me or you. But for the time being, it works. Perfectly, it works. And we can’t wait to share it with you.
If you benefit from my writing or teaching, please consider supporting my work by sponsoring this newsletter or offering a different donation through my website. Please know that your gifts, no matter how small, allow me to devote time and energy to this labor of love. Thank you, always, for your practice and generosity.
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Meditation & Study
Wednesday Evening Zazen
Mar 20, & 27
7–9 PM EDT
Join us Wednesdays for zazen followed by a dharma talk or a close look at a Buddhist text. There's no prerequisite; just make sure to register before the beginning of the session.
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