Tassajara fire update

Gina, on the left, and other Tassajara students
get ready for another day of preparing for fire
(photo by Shundo David Haye)

The fires continue to burn in the Ventana wilderness, and from what I can gather from my distant perch here in New Mexico, are creeping closer to Tassajara, perhaps within a mile and half away at this point. Gina calls me nearly every day and she is still good, offering what she can along with the handful of other students who chose to stay and prepare the monastery in case the fire reaches there.

My intuition is that they may need to really evacuate soon. This is big dharma, practicing with impermanence. From an entry today on the Sitting with Fire blog:

Lots of people like the Tassajara zendo and would hate to see it in ashes. Yet, this is a building which owes its life to a fire. A temporary replacement for the zendo which was destroyed by a local fire the year after Zen Center students fought hard to defend the monastery against the Marble Cone fire.

While we sit with the possibility of the fire reaching Tassajara we are playing with the idea of how we could take our cue from the seeds that need fire to open and use this fire to renew ourselves, our community and our places?

So, I continue to wait and pray for Gina's safety and that of all the beings and creatures in that beautiful land, and all beings everywhere.