This is the flyer I made for the Nov 14, 2009 Zen and the Brain workshop at the Providence Zen Center, which I'm also organizing.

Please visit the website for more information!

The image of the Buddha is from a photograph I took at a Korean temple in Manhattan, a narrow slice of the dharma, in a converted apartment on the upper west side. If you look closely, you'll see that the back wall is covered with small buddhas in alcoves-- each one with a plaque to name a generous donor. The place is run by an incredibly energetic nun, whose specialty is...fundraising. Ahem. In Asia, apparently, Buddhism is all about the bling, and people visit temples regularly to make payments to monastics to offer prayers and incense to get little Johnny into Singapore Polytechnic. To me, raised up on pre-Hammer-pants Protestant humility, it's a little much. But hey!

In any case, I was there for a 1,000-bow ceremony (summer 2006), wherein one performs 1,000 prostrations in unison, slowly, to the beat of a moktak (wooden instrument shaped vaguely like a blowfish). It took several hours, and left us all standing in pools of our own sweat. But the unrelenting and repetitive nature of the activity had its desired effect: the mind struggles, whines, sings to itself, plays porno movies and old commercials from the 70s, revisits past arguments, imagines worrying possibilities for the future...and finally, falls silent.

Ahhh.

Postcard designs for a Providence firm, announcing their move to new and flashier digs.

I had a great time doing the location photography for this job; there was a forecast of two weeks of solid rain, so I was up before dawn and on the road to catch the soft light in the quiet of a summer dawn. Beautiful!