Last week I stepped out of my position as the Executive Director of Mindfulness Northwest. This has been a rewarding and incredible chapter of my life, and also my primary source of livelihood since 2014, so I'm starting to feel into what this new chapter of my work life will be like.

I created Mindfulness Northwest (MNW) in 2011 because I saw an opportunity to serve others as interest in mindfulness seemed to be growing strongly. I wondered if it might be a way to bring what I'd been so nurtured and transformed by in Zen to a wider group of people who were never going to be comfortable with all of the stuff we do here. Plus my wandering career was feeling less and less meaningful and satisfying. (A few stops along the road: field botanist, handyman, cabinet maker, elementary school teacher, computer programmer!). Might it be possible to make a living through....meditation? That this might be possible amazed me.

(And yes I know I'm a lucky privileged person to even have the option of  prioritizing meaning in my work. Plenty of folks don't have the luxury. I'm deeply grateful for that.)

To my great surprise and delight it worked! The organization was successful. With a lot of hard work of course, but it worked. I was even able to hire a small staff and MNW supported them as well! In alignment with my values, I created it as a non-profit organization. We've actually served something around 10,000 people in our programs since it was founded in 2011. It'd good to take a breath now and recognize how amazing all of that is. Wow.

And after a few years MNW actually was doing well enough to pay me a modest professional salary which has been my primary income even since. Supplements by the stipend the sangha generously shares with me and the dana folks generously offer (thank  you!) it's been enough.

And now I am dropping a lot of my income. And that's a bit unsettling. I can feel the parts of me that want security tugging at my mind. And I do have some faith that it'll all be okay. Objectively: I did manage to set aside a chunk when I worked in technology.

I had to step back to be in integrity. I was getting tired. The organization has struggled since the pandemic. Where I once had great creative and dynamic energy from 2011 through 2019 - I was creating new programs and excited to go to work! - by 2023 or 24 it was feeling like a slog. I was just keeping it going as an obligation. Right when the org needed me to be sparking and excited to reinvent it it's leader was anything but excited. I still loved the teaching (still do!) but it started to feel like if I had to go to one more weekly admin meeting or make one more decision on polices my brain was going to implode. Do you know that feeling? I was done.

Plus I started allowing myself to feel how hard I'd been working. For years. How constantly I'd been responding to all kinds of needs in two organizations. Somehow for these last 14 years I've managed to be leadership in two dynamic organizations full of interesting and passionate people.....with all of the emails and personalities and great ideas and the occasional conflicts and issues that involves. And I always seem to want a family feeling where everyone's included (not that I do that perfectly as a leader but it's my default). Which is wonderful and creates a lot of richness and community but also just a LOT to keep up with.

So I'm a bit nervous about this change but also relieved at the same time. There will be a big release from a whole lot of tracking and remembering and tending and organizing with people.

And more room for me - not someone I usually prioritize! - and more room for our sangha and our practice as we move towards opening Sansui-ji. A lot of my sangha work has felt squeezed in to not enough mental space for...years.

So I let go of something big. Wonderful and pretty unsettling at the same time. What big things have you let go of?

It all has me thinking about the idea of renunciation.

In our life-practice journeys it may be that what real growth and change requires - what deep practice requires - is letting go of things. Allowing more change. Releasing from the assumptions of continuity we make as our conditioned selves yearn for more stability in the face of impermanence. Embracing change more. Living in deeper accord with the empty, impermanent, rich, wondrous, unpredictable nature of all things.

So last week I renounced being the Executive Director of an amazing non-profit. And I'm sure it's not the last thing I'll renounce. While we need to be practical in our lives, we also need to take risks! As I risk a drop in income I also look forward to discovering what opens up in my life.

What have you renounced? What might you renounce? What are you holding onto out of habit or unconscious obligation?

Big things and little things both are worth considering. Our way of practice is the way of letting go. Of releasing. Even as we stand strongly in our hearts in service of all beings - especially as we do that.

To paraphrase the Diamond Sutra: we save all beings understanding that there are no beings to save and no one here to save them, that's how we save all beings. We are called upon to be passionately engaged and completely letting go at the same time!

May we go forward together in grace and understanding as we lot go of going anywhere at all,

Nomon Tim