I met Gesshin (æœˆå¿ƒ) Greenwood at Tassajara Zen monastery this Summer. She is an American-born Buddhist nun who currently lives in Kyoto, Japan. She trained in two very intense training monasteries in Japan and knows first hand what it’s like to do that sort of rigorous practice. Her current teacher is Shundo Aoyama, the author of the book Zen Seeds: Reflections of a Female Priest.

As those of you who regularly read this blog and my books already know, I never really experienced this sort of training. Both of my teachers were and are non-monastics. Although both of them trained in Zen monasteries, they chose to teach their students a different way. They believed in weaving the Zen life into the the work-a-day world outside of the monastic setting.

I had a lot of lengthy and interesting conversations with Gesshin about this stuff while we were at Tassajara together. So we decided to try and recreate some of those conversations for you, the readers of this page.

There’s a lot here. But I think it’s really interesting and relevant to hear Gesshin’s take on these matters.