CityZen Calendar

April-December 2025

April

Monday Night Meditation 7:00pm

07  In Person/Hybrid Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

14  Zoom Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

21  In Person/Hybrid Michelle Brandt Sensei

28  Meetings with a Teacher Gary Brandt Sensei (Zoom)

 

May 

Monday Night Meditation 7:00pm

05 In Person/Hybrid Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

12 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

19 In Person/Hybrid Michelle Brandt Sensei

26 Holiday 

 

Wednesday Night Meditation 7:00pm

14 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

28 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

 

Meditation Walk in the Park 9:00am-Noon

May 3 Gary Brandt Sensei

Laguna de Santa Rosa Trail

 

June

Monday Night Meditation 7:00pm

02 In Person/Hybrid Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

09 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

16 In Person/Hybrid Gary Brandt Sensei

23 Zoom Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

30 Zoom Michelle Brandt Sensei

 

Wednesday Night Meditation 7:00pm

11 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

29 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

 

July

Monday Night Meditation 7:00pm

07 In Person/Hybrid Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

14 Zoom Rachel Mansfield-Howlett

21 In Person/Hybrid Deanna Hopper Sensei

28 Meetings with a Teacher Gary Brandt Sensei (Zoom)

 

Wednesday Night Meditation 7:00pm

09 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

23 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

 

Meditation Walk in the Park 9:00am-Noon

July 12 Gary Brandt Sensei

Armstrong Redwoods State Park

 

August

Monday Night Meditation 7:00pm

04 In Person/Hybrid Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

11 Zoom Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

18 In Person/Hybrid Gary Brandt Sensei

25 Meetings with a Teacher Michelle Brandt Sensei (Zoom)

 

Wednesday Night Meditation 7:00pm

13 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

27 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

 

September

Monday Night Meditation 7:00pm

01 Holiday

08 Zoom Rachel Mansfield-Howlett

15 In Person Hybrid Michelle Brandt

22 Meetings with a Teacher Gary Brandt Sensei (Zoom)

29 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

 

Wednesday Night Meditation 7:00pm

10 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

24 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

 

Meditation Walk in the Park 9:00am-Noon

Sept 6 Gary Brandt Sensei

Spring Lake Regional Park

 

October

Monday Night Meditation 7:00pm

06 In Person/Hybrid Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

13 Zoom Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

20 In Person/Hybrid Gary Brandt Sensei

27 Meetings with a Teacher Michelle Brandt Sensei (Zoom)

 

Wednesday Night Meditation 7:00pm

8 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

22 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

 

November

Monday Night Meditation 7:00pm

03 In Person/Hybrid Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

10 Zoom Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

17 In Person/Hybrid Deanna Hopper Sensei

24 Meetings with a Teacher Gary Brandt Sensei (Zoom)

 

Wednesday Night Meditation 7:00pm

12 Deanna Hopper Sensei

 

December

Monday Night Meditation 7:00pm

01 In Person/Hybrid Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi

08 Zoom Deanna Hopper Sensei

15 In Person/Hybrid Michelle Brandt Sensei

22 Zoom Meetings with a Teacher Gary Brandt Sensei

29 Closed through January 4

 

Wednesday Night Meditation 7:00pm

10 Deanna Hopper Sensei

 

 

Monday and Wednesday night Zoom links will be shared via the CityZen list group. (Suggested donation for attendance is $10)

Meditation Walk in the Park, details will be shared by Gary Brandt upon registration. (Suggested donation at registration is $20)

Please contact Gbrandt@sonic.net to receive the links and the location details or to be added to the CityZen list group.

 2025 SEVEN-DAY SPRING SESSHIN

MARCH 14 - MARCH 21, 2025

Full or part time attendance 

Scholarships available

St. Dorothy’s Rest
Occidental, Sonoma County

Sesshin is an ancient Zen tradition; it’s a special environment built to help you discover your own awakening. Often in your daily life, the light of your attention goes out from you into the world; during sesshin you turn the light back inward into your own heart/mind. 

We are so looking forward to meeting in person again for our Great Spring Sesshin. CityZen’s senior teacher, Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi will be the guiding teacher. Senseis Michele Brandt, Deanna Hopper, and Gary Brandt will also be teaching.

We practice in a relaxed traditional form of sesshin, with lots of dharma talks and opportunity for meeting individually with the teachers. Our silent retreat is held at St. Dorothy’s Rest in Camp Meeker, with stunning views of the redwoods and rolling hills and featuring exquisitely made hearty vegetarian meals.

We wholeheartedly invite you to join us for this precious week.

Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi is a koan master in the Pacific Zen School lineage and the Founder and senior teacher at CityZen in Santa Rosa CA. With degrees in botany and law she is also a public benefit environmental attorney, law professor, cook, gardener, and grandmother. She is a contributor to The Book of Mu: Essential Writings on Zen's Most Important Koan and The Hidden Lamp, Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women. 

   

Nothing has ever been hidden. 

In W.G. Sebald’s The Rings of Saturn, there's an interview with an English farmer who at one point says:

“I have always kept ducks, even as a child, and the colours of their plumage, in particular the dark green and snow white, seemed to me the only possible answer to the questions that are on my mind.”

Your right place is always just beneath your feet.

Fish don’t run out of ocean,

And birds enjoy the endless sky.

How will you be any less fortunate?

Rachel Mansfield-Howlett

Reclaiming the Fallow of the Year

fal·low/falō      

adjective: fallow (of farmland) plowed and harrowed but left unsown for a period in order to restore its fertility.

Synonyms: uncultivated, unplowed, untilled, unplanted, unsown; unused, dormant, resting, empty, bare.

In our northern climes, before the advent of artificial sources of light, the months of winter were a long dark time. Nature too, took her rest and there wasn’t much to do on the land for our farming ancestors. Long nights and cold days meant folks got a break from the busyness of life and entered into a more timeless place. The stillness without encouraged a slowing down, uncovering a stillness within. It’s the place before the formation of ideas; before an opinion or comparison arises. It’s the place of intuition, inspiration, improvisation and creativity.

What did our ancestors do during the long dark winter months? We can imagine that they told stories, stoked the fire, made love, slept, painted, played music, made something hearty to eat from what had been stored or was on hand, and bundled up and took walks.

Modernly, the lights are always on, figuratively and literally. We have lost something important to our well being in converting all of our time to the activities of the light. We can feel it in our bones when we flit from activity to activity, contantly looking for the hit that dispels boredom. Alternatively, we can become familiar with the activities that truly rejuvenate our bodies and spirit. 

The following familiar story shows the value of emptying or losing track of the known, to restore the fertile ground.

A man went to visit a teacher to find out about Zen. While the teacher served tea, the professor talked about what he knew about Zen. The master poured the man’s cup to the brim, and then kept pouring.

The man watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. “It’s full! No more will go in!”

The teacher replied, “How can I show you anything unless you first empty your cup?”

Knowing is a kind of filter that limits our vision and closes off possibility. In other words, we only see what our knowing will allow us to see. Allowing ourselves a period of fallow both empties and widens the field. Laying down the realm of the known and unknown, relinquishing our usual tendencies to form opinions and judgments, to predict success or failure, we enter the vast and wide of the Great Way itself and allow ourselves to be reshaped by this undoing.

An old master said: “The way is vast and wide, how could it ever be a matter of knowing or not knowing? Knowing is arrogant; not knowing is stupidity; the way is far beyond both of these.”

Practices for the Dark of the Year

Slowing down.

Doing a single task with all your attention gives you a needed break from the jar of constant distraction. Doing a thing, wholly, brings its own kind of joy and you can learn to rest again in the gentle peace of everyday things. When you’re sitting with a friend, give them your full attention. If you are walking, just walk. If you are sautéing onions, notice their color and smell as they cook, the rhythm of the spoon in your hand.

Give yourself time to do nothing.

This winter sit in candlelight, stare into a fire, go outside and watch the moon and stars, listen to the rain fall, sit by the ocean and watch the waves roll in and out, rest on a bench and watch birds and passersby, rest by a lake or a river and notice the insects and trees and the sound of water over pebbles.

Put down your electronic devices.

Of course. Of course! A couple hours before bedtime, or for a time early in the morning as you are waking, put away your devices and the sounds they make to alert you of emails and phone calls.

Sleep.

Sweet sleep restores our bodies and allows the mind to rest, to dream, to let the intelligence of all things find its way into our consciousness.          

Walk.

Anywhere. A short stroll or a long walk about, it’s what our bodies are meant to do. It reminds us of the true pace of life and shows us the aliveness of the world.

Read aloud to each other.

A forgotten art, we can take it up again. Like walking instead of riding, we slow down to take in more. Resting in the cantor of the human voice, we savor what we may otherwise have missed.

Make love.

No explanation necessary, right?                       

Listen.

Be quiet and listen. Notice when judgments and opinions arise, when you are comparing yourself to others or complaining about unimportant things. Then, just return to the place where you are.

Cook simple meals and share them together.

Find a local farm, bakery or supplier and gather some things that look good to you. Learn to cook a few seasonal meals that you will enjoy making. The simpler, the better.

Notice what has already been given to you.

You are given this life as a human being, each of your senses, this fine body, the moon and the stars, the green leaf, and watery sea, a home, food to eat, and each other.

May you truly enjoy the blessings of this season.

St. Dorothy's Rest Spring Sesshin morning

Chris Bell, Vikki Kath, Bill Krumbein

St. Dot's forest morning light

Spring Sesshin altar