December 2022. The Village Zendo’s annual year-end Zen retreat. We held it at the Garrison Institute in upstate New York, as usual. Well, it was usual before the pandemic, but this is our first in-person winter retreat since year-end 2019, so I didn’t take it for granted.

The Garrison Institute was a Capuchin monastery built in 1923, then converted to a retreat center in 2003; now it hosts retreats for all kinds of spiritual communities. I notice in these photos how the Christian bones show: the Zen priest offering incense to Manjushri looks almost like a Catholic priest flanked by altar boys, preparing the eucharist.

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Images © A. Jesse Jiryu Davis