Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei • Plants, Rocks + Colors, 2020
Todd Weinstein • Headlight Colors, Woodward Avenue, Detroit, MI, 2020
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Jody Hojin Kimmel, Sensei received the priestly transmission (the transmission of the Precepts) from Daido Roshi, who began the process in 2009, and from Shugen Roshi, who completed the transmission in 2012. In 2017, she received full dharma transmission from Shugen Roshi. She serves as the Training Director for the Mountains and Rivers Order and Abbot of the Zen Center of NYC-Fire Lotus Temple. Hojin Sensei began her artistic career early and has taught drawing, ceramics, and painting, opening people up to the wonders and mysteries of the creative process and continues to offer Art Practices as part of her teaching as it was used in the Zen traditional as a direct pointing to the heart-mind in seeing one's true nature. She has been in full-time residential training at the Monastery since1990 and now shares her time at the Brooklyn temple.
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Story of Influence:
Influence: the capacity to have an effect on the character, development, or behavior of someone or something, or the effect itself.
It seems we are always under the influence of someone or something in this dream we call our lives. For better or for worse, we are met by influencers in this spiritual terrain that imprint our hearts and minds. I have been privileged to have until now, great teachers and influencers known and unknown. They are not always in human form. Trees, mountains, rivers, plants, animals, and the great elements have been great influencers and in the silence of mind, they speak and teach how to live in harmony within this fleeting world of impermanence. And then there have been people who show the way offering teachings how to act to not harm and to realize liberation from world of illusion and manifest the most important thing. For me this is the gift of ‘metta’- loving kindness as a heart experience not a concept. This will ultimately be the most beneficial influence for this great earth and all it many beings.
