Inside or outside of retreat, we are forever moving between attention and distraction. When we learn to embrace both, we find that this is the ground of our practice, one that already contains care, intimacy and connection. One we can trust.

In our practice we stop, drop from our head into our body, pay attention and connect to our world. What we call compassion is not an ideal to be pursued as much as an expression of being awake.

When our default mode of self becomes porous in Zen practice, what is left is All-inclusive life experienced as Just This.

We are the closed fist. We are also the open hand. These are the inbreath and outbreath of our practice. How will we use them?

When life looks difficult, it is. But that is not all; there is also this - to take the broom and sweep the yard with no hesitation. Make this your year for a Zen retreat!

When we come into ourselves, we are naturally awake and the world naturally meets us. So selfless, so simple.

Compassion in Buddhism is not cute; it is grounded in Emptiness, in Taoism it is grounded in Tao, ordinariness. And both of these are marked by a fundamental unfathomable interconnectedness.

Whether we are on formal retreat or out in the everyday world, our practice continues. We pay attention, whatever we are doing and whomever we are with. We honour our inherent relatedness. This is where our practice is tested, refined, enjoyed and deepened.

We come to Zen through the teachings of the tradition. The brilliance of the teachings is that they have a self-destruct button. We are asked to leave the house of explanation and go into the fresh air. There we can find the Way of Attention and Connection. Very clear. Complete faithfulness to Just This.

In a world awash with information, disinformation, misinformation, debates, opinions, what can we truly rely on? This question points us back to our Zen practice itself, towards our learning to return to the roots of our unassailable experience.