We are entering a New Year – an auspicious time to “commune with the source” and ask what specific mind habit or pattern is in the way of our enlightenment practice. “Relinquish” means to renounce or surrender something – to let go of your grip on something, to give something up that is no longer needed, to desist from a pattern, to ask what is holding me back, what am I afraid of, and to bring compassion to something that is difficult to change. This is a question to sit with; to allow emptiness to offer a message. Tonight we will create “Relinquishment Scrolls” with simple art supplies provided to express our Relinquishment Intentions for the year 2022.  People on zoom are invited to gather their own art supplies – paper, crayons and pen. After the ceremony you may choose to place your scroll on your home altar or ‘burn’ it in the fire of letting go.
REMEMBER – Letting go is a vast teaching. When we let go we lift our burdens; we open into this amazing interdependent field of being where possibilities for liberation are always arising.

Paravrtti Doralee Grindler Katonah serves as Ino, or head of the meditation hall. She studied in the Soto Zen lineage with Sojun Diane Martin in Illinois and Rev. Val Szymanski in California. She was priest ordained in 2019 by Sojun Diane Martin.