Zen Art retreat -Spring in Kodoji!

At Kodoji 26 -28 October 2012

Haiku, Walking, Clay, Silk Dyeing.

Teachers
I will take people for a haiku walk (ginko) in the valley and teach them to write a haiku.
Janet Selby will be offering a Clay and Meditation workshop.
Gail McCall will show us how to dye a Shibori silk scarf with gum leaves, onion skins.

Schedule
Zazen and kinhin (sitting and walking meditation) morning and evening, making art most of the day, eating vegetarian meals, resting. Beginners to Zen practice and interested children are most welcome. Breakfasts and morning and afternoon teas will be provided, participants bring food to be shared.

Venue
Kodoji, or Ancient Ground Temple, is the Sydney Zen Centre’s retreat centre in the Upper Macdonald Valley, about two hours north-west of Sydney, via Wisemans Ferry and St Albans. Kodoji Temple sits in a beautiful valley called Gorricks Run, surrounded by high sandstone cliffs and deep wilderness. There is only limited indoor accommodation and it is generally expected that participants will pitch their own tents.


Cost $80 members of Sydney Zen Centre, $100 non-members, $55 children

ELDERS' YATRA - LAWSON

Sunday dawned warm and sunny for the Elders to walk out along Lawson ridge. Boronia floribunda was flowering  along the rocky spines of the hills - how divine is that scent? Years ago I lived near Armidale and went out for a walk one day, in the bush on the farm we lived on. I encountered this plant in flower, and the sensational scent. I didn’t know what it was at that time. Surely one could put up with many trials in life, if you could fill your nostrils with that fragrance every spring?
There were other delights:  Caroline saw a skink on the rock platform - the rock under our bare feet felt warm and alive -  in the swamp I saw a large dragonfly - and the quail which flew away from me on Monday, was back on the track again, in the same place. These are all the simple things of being alive, in this place, at this time, that bring joy to me and others.

In the far valley
a black cockatoo calls,
“Where are you?”

Yes, what is in front of you right now?

I’ve been going on some wonderful walks lately. In August I walked with the Upper Blue Mountains Bushwalking Club to Blackman’s Crown near Cullen Bullen. I wrote this:

Under this lookout
shale mining tunnels -
we stand on honeycomb

But somehow I don’t think it’s quite right. Maybe it’s one of those haiku that needs to be expanded? What do you think?

I think this stands on its own:

At last she’s laughing -
gropes for a foothold
falls towards a tree



After a wonderful walk along the tops of the Crown, viewing Capertee valley and all the country to south, west and  north, we headed back to the vehicles which were parked beside the Castlereagh highway.

 
Bits of smashed-up car -
a violet flower
twines along the cutting

SEPTEMBER

I took a lovely walk through Empire Pass in Lawson,with two friends. I wrote a haiku about the wind, but it needs expanding. Here’s an attempt at growing a poem from a haiku.

The power-lines groan
with September wind -
a tiny bird cheeps -
Roar!
We small organic things
eat sandwiches beside a waterfall,
wonder about wattle

way above our heads
a high-voltage tussle.

Not long afterwards, I walked up Donkey Mountain of which I’ve heard so much.

Conversation -
and I walk into a wall -
Ow!

There are all kinds of nooks and crannies on this stand-alone mountain - it’s like Korowal, in the Kedumba valley.

Pole-dancing vine
twines up another vine
in the “green room”.

OCTOBER - Elders’ yatra

Sunday dawned warm and sunny for the Elders to walk out along Lawson ridge. Boronia floribunda was flowering  along the rocky spines of the hills - how divine is that scent? Years ago I lived near Armidale and went out for a walk one day, in the bush on the farm we lived on. That day I encountered this plant in flower, and the sensational scent. I didn’t know what it was at that time. Surely one could put up with many trials in life, if you could fill your nostrils with that fragrance every spring?
There were other delights:  Caroline saw a skink on the rock platform - the rock under our bare feet felt warm and alive -  in the swamp I saw a large dragonfly - and the quail which flew away from me on Monday, was back on the track again, in the same place. These are all the simple things of being alive, in this place, at this time, that bring joy to me and others.

In the far valley
a black cockatoo calls,
“Where are you?”

Yes, what is in front of you right now?

My friend Kate - always a great companion when I need to do a reccie.

walking with Dulumunmun

On Sunday the fifth of August  I took a walk with Uncle Max Dulumunmun, an elder of the Yuin tribe, at Bundeena south of Sydney. About twenty-eight of us were there to learn from him and get a sense of what this stunningly beautiful spot may have meant to the first Australians. It is just inside Port Hacking, with Cronulla just across  the water and the city towers floating in the distance like a film set. I have been on a number of culture days with Uncle Max. He is a bridge between whitefella and blackfella.

We walked down to a beach. An interpretive sign said that we were on Tharawal country and the name given to the area was Jibbon. The Tharawal would have had this harbour and the river to fish in. An observer with the First Fleet described the dexterity with which Bennelong’s wife  would fish from a canoe in Sydney harbour. She would have a fire going in the canoe and cook the fish as she went.

Up the beach, Uncle Max showed us the remains of shells poking from the sand. This was a place for eating shellfish, but not just any shellfish. He explained that a group would study the shells left behind in the midden by a previous group, and avoid collecting that particular food resource. In this way, ‘Jibbon’ and all its diversity was cared for.

A few watercraft were anchored in the bay; we walked along the beach and up onto the headland. There was a watercourse there, where Dulumunmun continued his teaching about respect. He always tells us that we must ask for permission before using a plant or picking a fruit, and I have adopted this practice in my garden at home. It’s quite interesting asking the mandarin tree whether it is ready to give up its fruit. If it isn’t ready to let go, the peel tears around the ‘bellybutton’ of the mandarin, so then it must be eaten straight away. We sat in the sun while he showed, with the help of Lee and Mel, how to respectfully gather water. I didn’t quite understand some aspects.

A pile of dead wood was another  reason to pause and really think. “What do you call this?” , Uncle Max asked.  “Dead branches, ” I answered. Wrong! They have stored in them all the energy that Grandfather sun once poured into them. I love his teaching about Grandfather. Once, at Kodoji, we all went out into the morning sun with him, faced Grandfather sun and  expressed gratitude for our life, for life. This is a wonderful practice to do every day - and especially if you’re feeling sour and bitter about something. For a while I practiced it every morning. And later on, walking out at Mt. Bindo which is a very high place in Gundungurra country, I wrote this:

A lick of orange
from grandfather sun
on the dozing mountain


Some places, Uncle Max said, should be left untouched. Yes. Just left alone to unfold the way they’re going to, and not seen through the prism of utility. We walked on up the headland into the bush and he led us to a very large sandstone rock shelf. I found axe grinding grooves there, with another faint marking which seemed symbolic but may have been nothing. But the main engravings which he showed us were a great variety -  sea creatures, beings, kangaroos. There are hundreds of rock  drawings like this, right across the Sydney basin, he said. In the Royal National park, where we were, many of them are buried under plants. We went to a stingray. The way it was aligned showed that it had come from Port Hacking and it was making its journey in a southeasterly direction. There was also a jellyfish and an orca. Uncle Max referred to humans’ relationship with orcas ( he called them ‘mooji’), similiar to man and dog.  The mooji would round up whales and bring them into shallow waters where aboriginal people could then spear them.  I have heard of this happening in Eden, NSW.

Do you see the fin at the top of this mooji? There appeared to be at least two whales here, two stone whales. One of them had a hairbelt around his middle. This makes it related to us, to humans, since this was a decoration of Aboriginal people. And beside it was a dillybag. That whale also was heading out to sea, to the south-east and perhaps Tasmania? I’ve walked with Uncle Max elsewhere in the Royal, seen another whale like this with a hairbelt. Uncle Max said then that whales regurgitate the law for humans, when they beach. I do not understand this.

When the whaling ship Britannia neared Sydney harbour in 1791, this is what the captain, Thomas Melville saw:
''Within three leagues of the shore, we saw sperm whales in great plenty. We sailed through different shoals of them from 12 o'clock in the day till sunset, all round the horizon as far as I could see from the masthead.” He wrote this letter to his company in England. He wrote, “ In fact, I saw very great prospects in making our fishery upon this coast and establishing a fishery here.'' The whaling industry did establish itself in Sydney and within a decade or two, decimated the right whale population. It then switched attention to the humpback. Within three decades the industry was nearly finished.  

We stopped for lunch on this rock. I was a bit bothered that some people did not heed where their feet were treading, and added a little bit of wear to the engravings by standing on them. This is not a good thing to do, as these carvings are no longer being renewed in the old way, where they received TLC when people gathered near them for story and ceremony.

When we walked back along the beach, there were more boats in the bay. Two little figures sat high up on a top deck, masters of their conveyance.

We went next to  the Burnum Burnum reserve on the Woronora river. Near the entrance to the park is a plaque, and on it is his declaration which he made in 1988, on the cliffs of Dover. It begins:

 “I, Burnum Burnum of the Wurundjeri Tribe, do hereby take possession of England on behalf of the Aboriginal Crown of Australia.…”

And so it goes on, in conqueror style.

Uncle Max took us to the grandmother trees - angophoras. Because  these trees guard or mark birthing rocks, they are womens’ places and therefore are not his business. I like this idea of ‘grandmother’ and ‘grandfather’ - to think that they are my ancestors, they are related to my being. It is true on a level other than the literal.

If you’d like to see Lee Nutter’s photos of Uncle Max, there are 8 on his Flickr website:

http://is.gd/BKbQpL

Dulumunmun is leading another walk soon. 
SUNDAY  28th October…. From 9.30am till 3.30pm in KURINGAI NATIONAL PARK

Bookings now are open for this. Limited numbers.Cost $90

You can contact Caroline Josephs for all the details on :cjosephs@tpg.com.au

Get in quick because this walk may book out. A group of us walked up Gulaga, on the south coast, with Uncle Max some years ago. I wrote this, using the Gundungurra word for "wedgetail eagle':

Mullyang

drawing sky circles

above the farmlands

October yatras - mid-mountains

Now that the Olympics are over, the weather is calling us away from the TV: " Come outside! Enjoy the outdoors!" 


Golden wattle - 
a medal for survivors
of that cold winter

 
A yatra is a chance to practise mindfulness of the body. You will be walking in the tracks of mountains Aboriginal people. Here are the dates.

Sunday October 7:
Elders' yatra for those with physical limitations. We will walk in Lawson, Blue Mountains,  for about 1 - 2 hours, along easy gradients. There will be opportunities for seated meditation, and barefoot walking. I will tailor this walk according to health. About half a day.

Saturday October 13:
This yatra, for middlin' levels of fitness, involves about 5 hours of walking, boronia at full aromatic throttle, a waterfall and cave, and the above.  This walk begins at Linden and ends at Hazelbrook. A full day.

Cost: $20 plus dana (gift)

Some haiku - some walks

I did a most marvellous walk from Otford lookout south of Sydney, along the edge of the escarpment. There was a turnoff to a beach called Werrong, so I thought, "Why not?" I had been gazing down the steep cliffs to the sea surging below, to the container ships anchored offshore from Wollongong, to the shacks at a small beach. Well! It was a nice track, went past a lagoon, came to a stream....

As still as a rock

the body on the nudist beach

is sandstone brown

...............

In July I walked with friends from Perry's Lookdown, into the Grose valley. Before we began the descent, a white-eared honeyeater sat out on a twig, three hundred metres above the valley, and sang thrillingly. Down in the valley, I was delighted to find a 'Bleeding heart', Omalanthus populifolia, one of Australia's very few deciduous trees.  Some of its heart-shaped leaves were red and about to drop, or dropped. It was growing in a creek flowing into the Grose.

We walked out at quite a pace, but I wrote this:

Buff cliffs

reflected in the river - 

dappled, flowing

............

My garden is always changing....

winter bee

cruises slowly - 

fourteen peach blossoms

............

 

    

Winter yatras

The gale had nearly huffed itself out by the time Saturday came around, but there was still a morning ruffling of the air as though it was indignant and offended. It was cold and we knew we were alive. We were the hardy souls who had not lost our power overnight or been blown off the road.
 Strangely, the group did not initially want to take their shoes off and walk the cold stone on a lookout rock. I kept a fairly steady pace in to North Lawson swamp, where there was an old tree trunk in the sun, in the lee.  It was a lovely seat for meditators who wanted to sit for a while.  I crashed around trying to find a better way out of the swamp , but it was dagger hakea at every step, so  we negotiated the eroded old track. Constant rain has made it a slippery gutter with a hakea fringe.
There was a little sun at morning tea on the road; here's proof!

Honeyeaters sang and flitted about. Then a group of yellow-tailed cockatoos flew across, like the whales of the skies, calling laconically. I always think of this as good fortune.

We set off again, aware of the whole body moving. And what was moving when we stopped?
This reminds me of a story about Hui-neng, the sixth zen ancestor after bodhidharma.
"Two monks were arguing about the temple flag waving in the wind. One said, "The flag moves." The other said, "The wind moves." They argued back and forth but could not agree. The Sixth Ancestor said, "Gentlemen! It is not the wind that moves; it is not the flag that moves; it is your mind that moves." The two monks were struck with awe." ("THE GATELESS BARRIER: The Wu-men  Kuan (Mumonkan)" translated with commentary by Robert Aitken)

 We had lunch at this beautiful rock further along Lawson ridge. A blast from the south meant that meditating at height was not comfortable. We ate lunch tucked into a rocky shelter, in the lee of the hill.

Our return along the ridge was peppered with stops to meditate on any handy log or bank. And the wind picked up.



Blasts of cold air - 
the trees furious - 
warm body moving 

 But warmly wrapped, by the end of the day everyone was willing to give barefoot walking a go.Here is Renee, experiencing it.

I unwrapped my feet: they were like the pale white grubs in the soil which, when unearthed, shrink and curl away in alarm. My feet had that reaction, but each surprising step was rich with the graininess of the rock, its shocking cold, its uneven shape and the shifting closely observed view of its axe-grinding grooves and wind- carved shapes. And then there was the moss: so soft, so cold and wet, bright green, little patches of this simple ancient plant making a decent living up here, in the cold air and winter light and wind.


  Maybe in the warm weather a group can return here to fully explore this rock with it's axe grinding grooves and view to the west.