I am here. I have arrived.

Thursday I got to Great Vow Zen Monastery, near Clatskanie, Oregon, shortly before sunset for a retreat led by Arinna Weisman, a vipassana teacher in the lineage of Ruth Denison and Sayagi U Ba Khin. It was my first time to experience Arinna's teaching, and though I've been to many vipassana retreats, and I've been studying with one Buddhist teacher or another for almost my whole life, I feel I have only just begun. Something in the way Arinna teaches just clicks for me. It's what I feel I need to be doing. Arinna's energy is gentle, kind, reasonable, scholarly, and wise--it resonates in my bones. She draws from many Buddhist traditions and teachers, including Vietnamese Zen and the teachings of Thich Nhat Hanh.

I don't want to say too much about the retreat, because Arinna is such a skillful teacher that I could mangle or misrepresent her teaching through my imperfect understanding; but I did take the camera with me, so I'll post my pictures and try to be concise.