This is where we invite you, the Sangha members, to contribute your short articles on your experiences, ideas
or readings that you feel will interest others. Send these direct to Sarah Kokai Thwaites, or via the contact page. Posts will be linked and publicised in general mailings, Facebook and Twitter. Comments may
be made on the StoneWater Zen Facebook page or via Sarah Thwaites if you don't use social media.
Soto, Rinzai, accuracy of aim and ways to desperation – By Guro Shoshin, Annoyed of Norway Zen lore goes back 1000s of years and reaches into the realm of myth. It is full of tales of wonder and mystery that are beautiful, puzzling, provoking and poetic. But then some of it can be unbelievably and downright […]
In the open air, it was difficult to hear Manu’s instructions clearly. Together, some 15 or 20 of us, barefoot on a field in unseasonably warm weather, followed his direction to become unfamiliar, estranged even, from our bodies. We unlearned how to move our limbs and how to hoist ourselves up against gravity. We moved […]
Shake the dust off your feet, don’t look back. Nothing now can hold you down, nothing that you lack Bob Dylan, Pressing On One October morning in 2005, I sat in a café in Salt Lake City with my good friend, the Zen priest and Jungian analyst Stephen Proskauer. I was in Utah for a […]
It is with great sadness that I share the news that my friend and sangha companion Will Hozan Lovell died peacefully on Wednesday 10th September 2025, after a period of illness. I met Will on the very first night that we started the StoneWater Zen Northampton group. He came along with his friend Lorna Kokai […]
‘Fighting cancer’ I discovered recently that my prostate cancer has come back. When my prostate was removed in 2021, they said they’d got all of it. But apparently some escaped. I did big mind with the cancer before that operation, and it said, “I’ll get you if I can”. When I thought I was […]
This is a poem to mark the jukai ceremony at Fell End. Let life do you let it take you by the hand as you dance in tune and fall through the sinking sand into a world of love revealed in a broken heart where fear is gone once you are no longer apart […]
In the early years of his practice, Kōjin served as the tenzo during a retreat in the USA. What follows is a tongue-in-cheek account of his experience. -Ed. As the tenzo on a winter Zen retreat, my role is to nourish the sangha in both body and spirit. Mostly, though, it involves leftovers, suspicion, and […]
In the open air, it was difficult to hear Manu’s instructions clearly. Together, some 15 or 20 of us, barefoot on a field in unseasonably warm weather, followed his direction to become unfamiliar, estranged even, from our bodies. We unlearned how to move our limbs and how to hoist ourselves up against gravity. We moved […]
Long ago, when the World-Honoured One was at Mount Grdhrakuta to give a talk, he held up a flower for the assemblage. At this, all remained silent. The Venerable Kasho alone broke into a smile. The World-Honoured One said: “I have the all-pervading True Dharma, incomparable Nirvana, exquisite teaching of formless form. It does not […]
My practice is the act of being lost and coming back. It’s a constant journey of drifting in and out of awareness, caught in my own body, mind and ego. I am lost in the swirl of my thoughts, emotions, cravings and distractions, believing in the reality of what I see, feel and think. But […]