Zen Master Reding from the Honora Zen Monastery invites you twice a year to open Zen meditation in St. Gallen in the Feldli Cemetery.

Zen Meditation in St. Gallen

Over there over the fields in warm, saturated air, floating threads meet and scent joins scent. A pale little face bends from every scented pile. There wander the departing souls of the dying flowers. Sometimes at night a child stands by the waves of the sea, full of longing. Then a dolphin comes along, carries the child through the rolling tide. Mermaids rise in circles, the moon floats high in the sky.

And they look at it and murmur softly: "It's a star that wanders." Rush of leaves, fragrant May, rush of earth, hike in pairs! Singing and longing in the living room and in the woods, childish delusions and silent violence. Hoping and fearing and cheering and hesitating, glowing cheeks and trembling cars, fleeing and searching and getting kisses. Do you hear the finches flapping in the lilac bush?

When the Mind wanders

It goes one after the other, and also probably before the other. So let's walk the paths of life swiftly, well-behaved and boldly. It keeps you from reading the flowers a lot with a sideways glance. But nothing restrains you more fiercely than when you've been wrong. You don't want to wander the paths where the dusty crowd walks. Be one of the others who yearns for the stars. look!

The stars bloom above the dust and are always looking for someone. They crown every longing's forehead with a king's diadem. I have drunk many a wine in many a country while hiking. One went into my bones, I feel the other in my head. No one touched my heart like that. And made me as free and happy and free of all ties as wine from the Moselle. Today I step on that threshold that you crossed yesterday.

Tomorrow a third will come, and a fourth will follow the third. Everyone who has gone before becomes the past of the other. And yet I often feel as if I see the same one wandering over and over...