May 1, 2015

Happy May Day!

The next three days hold a number of chances to get together with your practice community: for meditation, conversation, party,  koan inquiry, sutras, Dharma study.   Packed!  Here’s the scoop:

Tomorrow, Saturday:
6:30 to 8:30 at Shove Chapel

We’ll sit together in meditation from 6:30 to 8:00, (or any portion of that) and then our member, Frank Actis, will give a “Zen Threads” presentation, followed by conversation. Breakfast will follow for those who would like to share it at Wooglins, around the corner.

4:00 at 7528 Jenkin Place:  Party!

Gather to welcome May, share some yummy food (brought by us) and just enjoy each others’ company. Please see our last email for more info, or contact Becky Myers at 578-9268

Sunday, 3:00 to 5:00 PM at 7528 Jenkin Place

 

Koan Gathering:

We’ll be taking up a new koan together.

This is how it works:  We say or read the koan to each other, usually several times, so we get to hear it in different ways.  Then we’ll spend a little time in meditation with it, and then we’ll open it up together….and be opened up by it.  It’s always striking how each of us meets the koan a little differently, and how our different experiences enlarge the territory of the koan.

 

If you haven’t done this before, or don’t know what a koan is, don’t worry.  Once you start hanging out with them, you might notice that they are not so much a thing you can define as an encounter with another way of seeing—-sort of like a diving board, that is best known by bouncing on it and then taking a dive, or cannonballing into the pool.  In the pool is not only the koan, but the particular lives we all bring into the afternoon, and the vastness of which it is all made.

 

Sutra night at Shove Chapel on Monday, May 1, and our night to honor Buddha’s Birthday

 

5:15 discussion will take place downstairs, working with Joan Sutherland’s Acequias and Gates, 

Second Acequia:  Keeping Company with Koans

 

And we’ll have Richie Domingue, late composer of much of the music of our sutra service, leading sutras via recording (with assistance from Jessica Wong, live Cantor).  During the Prajna Paramita Heart Sutra, we’ll bathe the Baby Buddha with sweet tea, a custom that is observed world-wide at this time of year.

Another tradition is to deck the hall with flowers, so please feel free to bring flowers if you are so moved