The Practice of Attention: Zen, Writing, and the Unfiltered Page
Please join us for our multi-day meditation retreat in the western North Carolina mountains. Watershed Retreat Center is located on 100 or so acres in a pastoral setting highly conducive to finding — or returning to — our true nature, all the while resting in the embrace of Mother Nature.
In Mountains and Waters Sutra, Dogen admonishes practitioners to “clearly examine blue mountains walking and your own walking.” Additionally, he says, “blue mountains are neither sentient nor insentient. You are neither sentient nor insentient.” At this Watershed Retreat, we will sit zazen, walk mountain paths, and enter into these same blue mountains Dogen spoke of over a millennia ago. We will try to hear with our eyes and see with our ears the teaching of the dharma from the mountains and waters that surround us. This requires us to tap into our creative energy, a flowing spring that runs throughout the natural world. Through various writing exercises, we will creatively examine the blue mountains walking and our own walking, which just means, practically speaking, our lives, our experience, our practice, and maybe touch that ineffable thing beyond insentience and sentience.
Bring your favorite writing tools, along with a camera if you would like to engage in nature photography. While writing is not required, we will alternate sitting meditation periods with writing, creative language exercises and sharing sessions.
Meet your hosts
Taiun-roshi will share poetry from the written record of Zen, introduce verbal design exercises, and offer opportunities for personal interviews (dokusan).
Shomōn Alan Rossi, a novelist, award-winning short story writer, and teacher of creative writing. He sees writing as another way to reflect on the dharma; contemplating Zen, and a way to study Buddhism as well as ourselves. During the retreat he plans to offer sessions to include the following:
· The Micro-Memoir: A small-scale writing project in which one “studies the self.” He will share techniques to help participants turn oneself into a character so you can help identify the self, and the actions they undertake from the perspective of others.
· Poetry Through Prose: During this session the participants will be invited to read something from the Zen cannon, and “reply” via poetry after a period of reflection. This is a way to put into words the Call-and-Response that happens internally during Zazen. It may also help participants see how they express the teachings of Zen in their daily life.
Keisei Andrew Dietz, is a writer, consultant, and author based in Atlanta. His work often explores creativity, attention, identity, and the rewards of following what is true but not always obvious. At the retreat, he will lead sessions on the relationship between zazen and writing, with a focus on how silence and stillness can help open a more honest path to the page.
He believes that a key idea in the day is the search for the first honest sentence — the sentence that arrives before performance, polish, or overthinking take over; the one that comes from genuine attention rather than from trying to sound a certain way.
Across meditation, dialog, and writing periods, he will invite participants to notice what arises from stillness and to write from that quieter, more honest place. The emphasis will be less on technique or performance and more on attention, listening, and allowing language to emerge from what is genuinely present — whether in fresh writing or in work already underway.
Registration limited to 5 to preserve intimacy and interactivity of the intensive.
Where: Watershed Retreat Center – 361 Albone Branch Road, Hayesville, NC 28904
Fees: Suggested Donation $240 (or pay what you can).
Questions Prior to Retreat Contact: