Volume II, No. 5

The Kannon Room

The past fortnight has found Lou and Stevan at work on one of the more distinctive design elements of the Zendo Project: the two decorative ceiling beams that will go in the new Kannon Room. First they had to find trunks of the just the right girth, which were waiting for us on our own property in the form of two black cherry trees, one of which had fallen a few years ago near the cabin on the south side of the pond. These then had to be sawn to shape with a ‘chain saw’ sawmill , and voila! our two beams are now ready to be raised.

Yesterday the concrete floor of the Kannon Room was poured. After we lay carpeting over it, we’ll have a Kannon Room that will double as a space for our dokusan waiting line. The adjacent bedroom, acoustically buffered by special insulation, will serve as our dokusan room until we have the final half-million dollars we need to build the northeast wing of the new building, where those two areas will be located.

Zendo

The zendo roof monitor, or cupola, is now in place, rising above the other roofs of the retreat center. The underside of it was to be a louvered ceiling section designed to block direct sunlight that might fall directly on sitters. But now it occurs to us that it would only be in late June and early July that the sun (such as it is in these parts) would climb high enough in the sky to present a problem in that way. So we’ll try omitting that element for now, and see how the sunlight tracks next summer. (Shades on that south bank of monitor windows could correct the problem if necessary). Meanwhile we’ll have clipped off some ten thousand dollars in building costs—while offering a view up into the monitor from below that we wouldn’t have had otherwise.

The Building Committee has decided to carpet the perimeter of the zendo, where kinhin will take place. The carpeting will offer some relief to people who now find that walking on bare floors in kinhin sometimes exacerbates existing foot problems as sesshin goes on. The rest of the zendo, though, will have oak flooring.

For all of the benefits we’ll enjoy upon moving into the new zendo next year, there is one that at this point remains iffy: sitting on tans (sitting platforms). To be up off the floor during zazen is a big plus for sitters, but maybe even more of a boon to the zendo monitors, who use the kyosaku so much during sesshin. So if a donor in search of bonus merit were to come forward soon to cover the expense of building tans, we can begin that project in the next few weeks so that they will be ready when the zendo is finished. They will be similar to the ones at Arnold Park, made of cherry wood.

Miscellany

The flooring for the porch surrounding the courtyard arrived last week, as did a shipment of cedar for the exterior window-and-door trim. The porch floor and the cedar exterior wall work are to be done by Chapin Mill staff and volunteers. Are you there?

We are awaiting the arrival of the exterior doors, which will enable us to then enclose the new construction and get it heated. “Rough-in” electrical work will start very soon, as will the sprinkler fire protection system mandated by code.

The “rough plumbing” work is nearly complete, and the heating and air-conditioning duct work underway in the basement.

More December 2006 photos of Chapin Mill are available here .