July 17: Felsentor

On the 17th, A. and I dropped K.F. at the airport in Zurich and then drove N.F. down to the practice center at Felsentor near Luzern, where he is teaching a seminar about Dogen's Genjokoan. The center is in an old hotel on the side of the mountain above Lake Luzern, reachable only by hiking or by a cogwheel railway up Mount Rigi. From the Rigi-Bahn stop it's about a ten-minute walk down to the center.

The whole experience—the lake, the cogwheel train, the views—is improbably romantic. And they have built a perfect traditional zendo; N.F. was very excited at the thought of sitting and teaching in it for a week. They made us welcome, fed us lunch, gave us a tour of the gardens and the new zendo, left us alone to sit talking on the terrace looking out across Lake Luzern to the high Alps in the distance, old friends come together from three parts of the globe and soon to separate again.

More pix on flickr .

Then N.F. walked us back up to the Rigi-Bahn stop and waved us goodbye. One of the students arriving for his seminar got off the uphill train just before our downhill train came.

Drove back slowly, by farm roads. Dinner on a terrace over the Rhine in Bad Säckingen. (Are you catching the theme here? in Europe you eat outdoors when you can...) And on the 18th got up with the wakeup bell to clean my room while everyone else was in the zendo; quick goodbyes before they all began their morning study period; Zurich airport; and the long long long flight home.