Bodhi Day Retreat: Realizing the Mystery
with Sarah Bender, Roshi
Saturday, December 7th, 2024
Hybrid at Creek Bend and Zoom Zendo
We come together for a day of meditation and companionship, to honor, inhabit and realize the beautiful strangeness in which we find we are made of awakening, and we practice this awakening with body, heart and mind.
The day will start at 5:25 AM Mountain Time with optional in-person and online tea and meditation.
After a breakfast break, we’ll reconvene at 8:00 for meditation (note the time change!) and a Dharma Talk by Sarah Bender, Rōshi, and continue the retreat until 5:00 PM. Work-in-the-Room with Sarah will be offered for those sitting in person.
For those in person, breakfast and lunch will be provided.
Registration is required, to be completed by the end of Wednesday, December 4th. To register, please follow this link to register online.
If you have any questions, email frank.actis@gmail.com.
We’ll need to know for sure if you plan to be here for breakfast and lunch, or only lunch. If you plan to attend in person and can contribute salad, bread or dessert for lunch, please let Frank know that, too (or you can add that information in the registration form)
Registration is $75. Scholarships are available for the asking.
You can pay via PayPal here:
http://www.smszen.org/
Or you can mail a check to:
Springs Mountain Sangha
P.O. Box 2613
Colorado Springs, CO 80903
The schedule is in Mountain Time and looks like this:
Optional Early meditation: Zoom and in person:
5:25 am Morning Tea
5:30 Meditation
7:00 Breakfast
Zoom and In-Person:
8:00 Story of the Buddha and Meditation
9:30 Dharma Talk
11:00 Movement Meditation
12:00 pm Lunch, Rest Break
2:00 pm Tea, Afternoon Meditation and WITR
3:00 Outside walk
4:30 Conversation
4:50 Dedication and Vows
5:00 Cleanup
A Bodhi Day story:
from Roberto Calasso, Ka
When he was inside his mother’s body, the Bodhisattva settled down in contemplation. He looked through the transparent skin. He never moved until he was born. Meanwhile, Maya dreamed of an immense white elephant, experiencing a pleasure she had never known before.
The Bodhisattva’s life was coated by a uniform film like the thin walls his father, Shuddhodana, had had built around the palace park. Whatever happened, there was always something slightly artificial and suspect about it. Why did the Bodhisattva only meet creatures of his own age? Why, whenever he approached the boundaries of the park, did the path veer off into thick vegetation that hid any trace of walls and turn back? Was this the world—or a piece of temporary scenery whose real purpose was to hide the world? One day the Buddha would sum up those years in a single sentence: “Once, before I left my father’s house, I could easily obtain the five qualities of sensory pleasure.” That was all he said. Characters, faces, adventures, emotions: all smoothed out in just one sentence.
It was May. There was a full moon. That night the Bodhisattva had five dreams. Upon waking, he thought: “Today I will achieve the bodhi, the awakening. Everything will be exactly as before, as now when I woke up. But I will consider all that happens as now my mind is considering those five dreams.”
During the second quarter of the night of awakening, the Buddha remembered his previous lives. First one, then two, then five. Soon he stopped counting. Names appeared—and he would say: “That was me.” He saw places—and said: “That was me.” He saw passions flare and fade. He saw people dying—and said: “That was me.” A throng of faces, clothes, towns, animals, merchandise, roads. He went on watching. He had stopped repeating “That was me.” And suddenly he realized he was watching the lives of others. He didn’t notice any fundamental difference. He pressed on, amazed, but amazement was a constant in these migrations through time. True, he could no longer say: “That was me.” But was that really so important? He could still recognize the joy—and above all the suffering. The scenes he had lived through and those he had not lay side by side, each attracting the other, like leaves in a pond. The light they emanated fused into one. As soon as the eye retreated, they became a thread of beads, each with a slightly different color, and here and there a small chip.
For seven days after the awakening the Buddha remained seated. Then he got up and gazed long at the fig tree that had protected him. He looked over every inch of it with an elephant’s eye. After fourteen days the Buddha got up again and began to walk. He wasn’t going anywhere in particular. Not far away, Mara collapsed, defeated. He wrote on the ground with his stick.
We hope you can join us for this quiet celebration as your whole being deepens into winter.