Month: August 2020

One of the gifts of this challenging time is the ease with which we can visit distant sanghas, hear their dharma talks, take part in their classes, one-day sittings, sesshins, and ceremonies. I am currently participating in a study group offered by Houston Zen Center and will be co-teaching a class at Mid-City Zen in New Orleans this fall – with no travel needed.

As I mentioned in a recent Newsette, Brooklyn Zen Center decided not to renew the lease on their Brooklyn home of many years. Laura O’Laughlin, (Laura and Greg Snyder are the guiding teachers) describes their process of grieving and celebration: “We have been going through a month-long process with the sangha of grieving our city temple (about two years ago BZC purchased land outside the city). We have had a few zoom evenings of recollection and the BIPOC community made a short video and another sangha member made a longer video .Folks in the city are visiting the space in small groups and next week Greg and I will do a ceremony to close the space. It has been such a powerful, beautiful practice space and our sangha grew substantially in that space, especially with the kitchen. Kitchen practice is still happening once a week until the end, creating soups and food for protestors and those in need.”

Laura also shared a 30 minute video. She describes it as “a beautiful and generous offering to our community, capturing our practice in our Brooklyn temple. It includes snippets of teachers’ talks at BZC and chanting.” Here’s the link: https://vimeo.com/450607102 password snowy2328.

I’ve signed up for a second election retreat. It’s not too late if you’d like to join other Buddhists in September or October for four hours of practice (zazen and a dharma talk) and letter writing to encourage people in swing states to register and vote. On September 13th you can join members of Houston Zen Center, San Francisco Zen Center, and Upaya Zen Center. Roshi Joan Halifax will give the dharma talk that day. Here’s the link for information about these election retreats: https://mailchi.mp/1325076a5ced/september-october-retreats?e=d3485a4663

Douglas Floyd, Board Chair of Ancient Dragon Zen Gate in Chicago, and I are working on a survey we will be sending you soon to learn how Branching Streams Zen Centers and sanghas have been affected by Covid-19 — what decisions you’re making about your practice spaces, how you’re offering the dharma, how your membership and finances may have changed. I’ve received many questions about what sanghas are thinking about renewing leases, reopening, amplifying online offerings, surviving financially. We will be able to share the survey results on our website.

Branching Streams is in search of a new Webmaster. After several years of maintaining the Branching Streams website, our wonderful webmaster, Eric Jonas, of All Beings Zen in Washington, DC, needs to pass on the baton. Please let me know if you or someone in your sangha would like to be our next webmaster.

Here’s an invitation to join Jon Voss’s weekly Zoom drop-in clinics, Wednesdays at 11 a.m. Pacific time if you need Zoom advice, support, or encouragement.

May you find ways to nourish yourselves and to connect with others this week. I hope to see some of you at the Soto Zen Buddhist Association Conference September 3rd and 4th.

This has been a challenging week for those of us in California, with over 600 wildfires flaring all around the state, many of them close to practice centers and homes of sangha members and causing poor air quality in the Bay Area and beyond. In addition, a tropical storms is on its way to the Gulf Coast, endangering communities in Louisiana and Texas. Such vivid reminders of the climate crisis are impossible to ignore.

Many sanghas have been addressing this issue for several years. Climate justice was a theme of the 2018 Branching Streams Conference, which included a wonderful presentation by Stephanie Kaza on systems theory and the climate crisis. Given the pandemics of Covid-19 and the heightened awareness of racial injustice, the precarious state of our planet may have moved to a “back burner.” Please let me know if your sangha is involved in climate justice actions or study and I will include that in the next Newsette.

As the days grow shorter, even in places that are still experiencing the heat of summer, signs of autumn are unmistakable. School is starting, for most students, from pre-school to college, online. Ancient Dragon Zen Gate’s senior students host a Zen group for students at the University of Chicago, which was recently featured in a Tricycle article, “Buddhists on Campus”.

Many sanghas are planning Fall Practice Periods, some starting as soon as September. Mountain Rain Zen Centre in Vancouver is opening its Fall Practice period with a weekend retreat and will be opening its zendo for up to ten sangha members at a time, physically distanced, as well as offering the retreat online. Guiding teachers Michael Newton and Kate McCandless carefully worked on a zendo reopening plan.

Seattle Soto Zen’s guiding teacher Allison Tait writes, “I am receiving support from the teachers both Bellingham and Vancouver to offer an [online] Seattle practice period! SSZ has only ever had a shuso one time before, so the Sangha is very excited.” This inter-sangha support and cooperation is happening more easily with Zoom.

In case you missed it, I’m mentioning again Thomas Bruner’s Fundraising for Buddhists class, offered by Houston Zen Center, three sessions beginning September 1st. For a description or to register, go to: https://houstonzen.org/events-calendar/2020/9/1-september-fundraising-for-buddhists

Jon Voss continues to generously offer his weekly Zoom drop-in clinics, Wednesdays at 11 a.m. Pacific time.

May you, your loved one, and all beings be healthy and safe.

In 1963, in the summer before I graduated from college, I spent three weeks in a voter registration project in Greensboro, North Carolina, sponsored by the American Friends Service Committee. I joined a group of about 20 Black and white college students. We were housed in the basement of a Black church and went door-to-door to encourage African-Americans to register to vote. I have never forgotten how precious and precarious is the right to vote. Getting out the vote continues to be of vital importance.

In recent years many Zen Buddhist practitioners have organized election sesshins in swing states. This year, leaders and members of sanghas across the country are participating in online election retreats. Individual and groups of sangha members can participate in these letter-writing efforts to get out the vote. You can find more information at https://www.electionretreat.org/

In response to the climate crisis, the Shogaku Zen Institute is offering a 13-week course in Eco-Dharma, beginning September 10th, led by David Loy and Kritee (Kanko). Some questions the course will address include:

• How can we respond urgently and effectively to the ongoing climate emergency and the larger ecological crisis—and stay sane doing it?
• How do we understand the interconnection of environmental degradation with colonialism, racism and neoliberal economics?
• What contemplative/spiritual principles and perspectives can help us forge a response to our ecological predicament?

For more information, here’s the link.

In case you missed it, I’m mentioning again Thomas Bruner’s Fundraising for Buddhists class, offered by Houston Zen Center, three sessions beginning September 1st. For a description or to register, go to: https://houstonzen.org/events-calendar/2020/9/1-september-fundraising-for-buddhists

Jon Voss continues to generously offer his weekly Zoom drop-in clinics, Wednesdays at 11 a.m. Pacific time.

I’d like to end with words from the late John Lewis, in a statement he wrote just before he died in July, “When you see something that is not right, you must say something. You must do something. Democracy is not a state. It is an act, and each generation must do its part to help build what we called the Beloved Community, a nation and world society at peace with itself.”

Several sanghas are finding creative ways to practice together outdoors, physically distanced. This image is from Richmond, VA Zen Center, at Sheilds Lake:

If you’d like to know more, please go to: https://www.richmondzen.org/boundless-zendo

Houston Zen Center is offering a second series of Fundraising for Buddhists led by Thomas Bruner, as the first one filled. The next series will be September 1, 8, and 15.

Jon Voss will be hosting the Wednesday Zoom weekly drop-in clinics, at 11 a.m. Pacific time.

This continues to be a time of great hardship for many people in the U.S. and around the world. May we find ways to share our practice in ever-widening circles.

This morning, August 4th, after online zazen, Abbot David Zimmerman was doshi for the monthly Suzuki Roshi memorial we recently resumed online at San Francisco Zen Center. He made the offerings of tea, rice, and sweet water at the Kaisando altar and the kokyo led us (we were muted) in chanting the Harmony of Difference and Equality. I thought of all of you, with gratitude for the many expressions of practice you are offering around the U.S. and in many other countries.

I am wondering what your experience is, offering services and ceremonies. What innovations have you experimented with? I read on the Soto Zen Buddhist Association listserve about a jukai ceremony at Red Cedar Zen Community in Bellingham, WA led by guiding teacher Nomon Tim Burnett. It was physically distanced, outside on a deck, with two preceptors, one ordainee, one support person, everyone masked and pretty much maintaining the 6′. They broadcast the ceremony live on Zoom; about 50 people participated. Tim thought it worked “surprisingly well.”

Houston Zen Center is planning an outdoor Bodhisattva Precepts giving ceremony for September. Abbot Gaelyn Godwin commented about this in the SZBA listserve: “September might be cool enough in Houston, and we might have calmed down in the pandemic mode, to allow us to have an outdoor spacious ceremony for 6 new Bodhisattvas and a widely-spaced community.”

In the online Zoom Clinic with Jon Voss, Douglas Floyd from Ancient Dragon Zen Gate in Chicago and others have been learning how to record bells to use in zazen and services. If you want to expand the doanryo for services or ceremonies, your sangha members are welcome to join our weekly drop-in clinics, Wednesdays at 11am Pacific time.

How are students sewing rakusus in your sanghas, given social distancing? Zen Center North Shore in Beverly, Massachusetts, whose guiding teacher is Joan Amaral, will be hosting their annual sewing retreat online. It will be led by Hogetsu Laurie Belzer from Ancient Dragon Zen Gate in Chicago, who, prior to Covid-19 would spend a week in Massachusetts.

The members of Centro Zen l’Arco in Rome Italy are sitting sesshin online this week with their Abbot, Dario Girolami. Those participating in the sesshin Zoomed in to Eijun Linda Cutts’s Sunday Green Gulch dharma talk this week, as Eijun Cutts is Dario’s teacher. I had attended Dario’s Mountain Seat Ceremony in Rome last year and was happy to see the familiar faces of many sangha members who hosted me the week I was there.

Looking toward the Fall, some centers are planning practice periods or ongoing classes. Please let me know if you’re planning activities that you’d like other sanghas to know about.

I’m continually inspired to hear of the connections and collaborations between sanghas, amplified by the ability to visit another sangha without getting in a car or a plane.

May you be nourished by Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha – the whole wide world.