January 10, 2015
Community Night: Dedication of the Sangha and the Hall
This Monday, January 12, is our first Community Night of 2015.
It’s a good time to re-dedicate ourselves as a sangha, and our practice
in our nomadic Dharma Hall at Shove Chapel
to the flourishing of the Way of kindness and generosity.
We will light candles, offer a special dedication,
share cookies, tea and conversation
and ask a question of the Bodhisattva Guanyin,Bodhisattva of Compassion: She who hears the sounds of the world.
We can ask for some guidance regarding a question we form together, using the Guanyin Oracle—an ancient Chinese form of divination that is used in many parts of the world today.
Steven Karcher, translator, describes the heart of the process this way:
“Symbolizing or hsiang makes images that have the power to connect the visible world of your problems to the invisible world of the spirit. …We use divination to hsiang something, to turn the problem into a symbol, for we hsiang things by imagining: we create images, imitate, act and act out, play, write or divine. In this way we make a connection between the invisible world of the spirit and the visible world of our lives.”
Karcher goes on to say that people do this because “they seek to act in harmony with what the Chinese called the tao or the Way, the ongoing process of the real.”
We could also say this is a way of hearing a description of our current situation in terms that might not be accessible to our useful, daily, logical ways of understanding, but might make sense to us at another level, and thus help us act in accordance with the deeper currents of life.
So please come to be part of our dedication—bring anything you might like to leave on the altar, or something you’d like to bring into the new year of your practice, or the name of someone or ones you’d like to dedicate your practice to in this beautiful new year.