Practice Opportunities

Please join ATZC for a period of sitting.  

Each period is opened and closed with a chant.  

Morning Zazen (Monday-Friday @7:05-7:30 AM CST) & 

Noontime Zazen (Tuesday & Thursday:  12:05-12:25 PM CST)

Bedtime Zazen (Monday & Thursday @10:05-10:30 PM CST)

What do we mean by Zazen Practice and Relational Practice? 

Sitting Meditation:  Our shared practice of just sitting (Zazen) provides a foundation for showing up in our relationships with wakefulness—with awareness, curiosity, and responsiveness.  Zazen is a practice of meeting life as it is, which includes meeting ourselves as we are, noticing the habitual places to which our attention drifts, thoughts, feelings, planning, worrying, etc.  As we engage in the practice sitting silent and still, we notice when our attention drifts and gently bring it back to a present moment anchor, which in this practice is breath.  Each moment, breathing in, breathing out, we meet the moment as it is and practice letting go of our habitual ways of avoiding our experience.  

Relational Practices:  Relational practices are an opportunity to extend our practice through bringing our present moment awareness into a space of connection and shared experience.  Simple practices or simple prompts (a phrase or a poem or a story or questions) provide an opportunity to turn inwards, notice our reactions or where our attention is drawn while in connection with our community.  The sharing of our internal experience, speaking our truth as it presents in that moment, is an invitation to take the risk of simply being ourselves with one another.  The act of receiving one another’s sharing, simply listening without our habitual patterns of responding, is as much of a gift as the act of sharing.  In this way, sharing, receiving, we embody a flow of relational mutuality.