Beautiful essay, Zilong. Thank you, as always, for your stories from around the world. It moves me, especially, to read of your thoughts generated from your wounded masculine. May we all heal and rediscover the sacred feminine within. Two other thoughts came up for me: (1) I realised that my impression of the Goenka-ji Vipassana Dhamma centres is one of nourishing feminine energy since I spent my outdoors time under the graceful massive trees and always felt like they were watching over me gently during the 10 days, like a mother with deep karuna (compassion) :) Also, what species is the 'sad' tree of SDS? They look so lovely! (2) Tara feels special to me too, since our kula-deivam (family deity) is Kanchi(puram) Kamakshi devi and Bodhidharma who brought Zen to the East hailed from Kanchi; Tara and Kamakshi devi are both akin since they embody Shakti in her full magnificence :)