Fall Ango art practice

It has been far too long since I have posted anything here, so here goes….

This fall I am participating from a distance in the Fall Ango at the Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper, New York. Ango 安居 means “peaceful dwelling” and is a twice annual period of intensive training at zen monasteries when, traditionally, monks would withdraw from as many worldly engagements as possible and retreat to their monasteries for more study and more zazen than usual. In Japan ango is usually held in the winter and in the summer, but at the Zen Mountain Monastery it is a three month period held in the spring and fall. As part of ango, participants are encouraged to use art as one way to examine ourselves and our relation with the world. This years’ ango art theme is Opposition/Contrast/Contradiction. We live in a world of ever deepening conflicts, clashes, contradictions. How do we accept those conflicts, contrasts, contradictions as expressions of the whole, without either negating them or getting caught up ever more in the divisions they tempt us with? This is the koan of everyday life, now and always. Here are some of my visual reflections on this theme, taken in and around Ako this fall.