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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.

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