The Zen Arts of Noticing in a 'Post'-pandemic Vermont: A Journaling Workshop

July 17, 2021 @ 2:00PM — 4:00PM Eastern Time (US & Canada)

Drawing on the awareness and stillness cultivated in zazen (meditation) practice and the teachings of a seminal sutra in the Zen Tradition: the Heart Sutra, we will open our body-mind to the blank page.

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The Zen Arts of Noticing in a 'Post'-pandemic Vermont: A Journaling Workshop
with Sensei Jody Hojin Kimmel
Saturday, July 17 on Zoom | 2pm-4pm
Tickets $25

“The journal is like a deep desk, a place to put anything and everything, without forcing it into elaborate order.” -Virginia Woolf


Are you feeling the whiplash of readjusting to 'normal life'? We all know that summers in Vermont can be quite filled and with all that has happened in the pandemic and the reopening of our state and lifting of mandates, much feels like it is on fast forward making up for lost time.

Join Abbess of the Zen Center of NYC, Sensei Hojin Kimmel, for a guided workshop on slowing down, noticing, capturing, and relishing these moments of summer into our journals through a spirit-inspired, creative expression. We will come together on Zoom where we will receive guidance from Hojin around noticing, followed by a practice time of connecting and crafting together.

Materials needed for this class are a blank journal that you would love to hold and work in and an assortment of mark making implements: pencils, pens, markers, watercolors, pastels. Other supplies such as scissors, glue or glue stick will be useful. We will be drawing on the awareness and stillness cultivated in zazen (meditation) practice and the teachings of a seminal sutra in the Zen Tradition: the Heart Sutra, we will open our body-mind to the blank page.

Journaling may be thought of as an expressive form of journey. It involves intimacy, the art of noticing and live recordings. Through the pages we can learn to read the body language of the world and gain clarity into how we perceive ourselves and how we see things. We will draw on the awareness and stillness cultivated in zazen (meditation) practice.

The kind of journal we will begin is an all-inclusive one—one that allows for actual and imagined inner and outer places and spaces. A place to deposit strong emotions, pools of color, poems, sound images, rubbings, drawn lines of a plant, cloud patterns, lists, and excerpts of dialogue among friends and strangers. We’ll explore outdoors as we are able and work in our home spaces. The juxtaposition of such apparently unrelated parts of our life may seem strange at first, but if we can just allow the expression to be wild and free as it is, the journal has a way of revealing unexpected connections. It is, after all, our whole life.


About Sensei Jody Hojin Kimmel

A Zen teacher, Jody Hojin Kimmel, received transmission of the Precepts from Daido Roshi, who began the process in 2009, and from Shugen Roshi, who completed the transmission in 2012. In 2017, she received full dharma transmission from Shugen Roshi. She currently serves as Head Priest and MRO Director of Training and Abbess of the Zen Center of NYC. Before entering the Monastery in 1990, Hojin Sensei studied fine art and trained under legendary ceramicist Toshiko Takaezu, and studied kiln building and wood firing with artist, Katsuyuki Sakazume. Over the years she has taught drawing, ceramics, and painting, and continues to teach on the creative process within the Mountains and Rivers Order. You are welcome to join her Art Practice series on-line every Friday morning to continue to nourish your Dharma practice and the creative impulse. See www.mro.org for more info.