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I enjoyed seeing many of you at last week’s Soto Zen Buddhist Association Conference.

And I’m happy to let you know that we have a new Branching Streams webmaster, Jon Voss, a member of Mid-City Zen in New Orleans. I want to thank Eric Jonas of All Beings Zen Group in Washington, D.C. for his responsiveness and creativity in updating the website.

This Newsette features news from Branching Streams groups in Europe, Mexico, and Columbia. You will read of some challenges groups have faced due to Covid-19 as well as opportunities going online has afforded sanghas.

Djinn Gallager writes: Black Mountain ZC in Belfast, Northern Ireland, is hosting an international weeklong sesshin on the theme Entering the Buddha Way, led by Ryushin Paul Haller. “The sesshin has 62 participants, and we will be sitting together across the world in Ireland and Northern Ireland, the UK, the US, Canada, Thailand, Australia, Slovenia, Greece, Norway and Austria. Ryushin is offering the sesshin by donation to allow as many people as possible to attend, regardless of their finances.”

Akazienzendo in Berlin offers an international evening

Bernd Bender, their guiding teacher, writes: “The zendo was closed from April to the middle of June. Since then we very cautiously reopened and accommodate 14 people to sit, practicing physical distancing. Like in many practice places, most of our events still happen online only.

“Zen in English” started two months ago as a venue for practitioners in Greece to meet with me. (For the past five years I have been traveling to Greece four times a year for short weekend-retreats.) The big surprise of “Zen in English” has been that right from the start people here in Germany also participated and a dream came true: For years we have been trying to find ways for the Athens and the Berlin sanghas to meet, and now it is happening. Then some friends from California joined, and lately Djinn Gallagher in Belfast participated and hosted our last meeting.

It is a very heartwarming experience how in challenging times we can find creative ways to connect and practice together. The meetings happen every Friday, 7.30-9 pm, Central European time. We sit together for 30 minutes and chant the Heart Sutra, usually followed by a brief talk and discussion.”

The Zoom link is: https://us02web.zoom.us/s/3516453359?pwd=bDlaT042OWR0UDJmNmlFOUFVM1VUdz09#success. You are invited to join!

News and request from Montaña de Silencio Comunidad Zen Insight in Medellin, Columbia

Sanriki Jaramillo, their guiding teacher, was participating in the Spring Practice Period at Green Gulch Farm, which ended in mid-March, due to the Covid-19 pandemic. He writes, “I returned to Medellín to guide our small community through the quarantine. It has been a time of great uncertainty and limitation. Although we are now close to ending our quarantine (the curve of contagion and death from COVID 19 has begun to diminish significantly in Colombia), the economic impact of the temporary closure of our center has been great. The largest part of our income is comprised of donations and voluntary support from practitioners and visitors, and our monthly income has been reduced by forty percent. In the last six months, we have incurred a large deficit that threatens our future. If we are not able to cover this deficit, we may have to give up our practice center, the house we currently occupy, where a small community of permanent and occasional practitioners live.

Fifteen days ago, we began a fundraising campaign with the goal of raising $20.000.000 Colombian pesos ($5,500 US dollars). The result so far has been encouraging as we have raised 60% of our goal, but we still have a long way to go before we reach it.”

Sanriki asked me to share their current situation in the hope that we might be able to assist them in guaranteeing our economic equilibrium for the rest of the year.

Link to the campaign: https://vaki.co/generosidad

Link to visit their page: http://montanadesilencio.org/

Sergio Stern, leader of Montaña Despierta in Jalapa Mexico writes: “ We just reopened the zendo at Montaña Despierta with limited capacity (8-10 persons) and all the measures of hygiene, some distancing and mask wearing. The rest of the sangha may connect through Zoom. We are also meeting regularly in nature, by a river, to do some walking meditation. We are beginning to feel the full force of the sangha coming back to life after a big blow just when the pandemic started and we had to cancel everything. We were beginning our very first Practice Period in which I was going to be Shuso under the guidance of one of our teachers, Anka Rick Spencer. We couldn’t continue. Many of us, including myself, had our lives completely upended and it was very difficult to give space to the practice and feel the close in-person support that we felt was needed for a Practice Period. But we are back with our once a week sitting group. Gaining in confidence little by little and turning again into that place of refuge for the people in our community, where Eijun Linda Cutts has led many sesshins.

We have a nice web page in English and Spanish with a unique audio library of Dharma talks in Spanish or with translation from the English which makes a special contribution to the Spanish-speaking Dharma world.” www.mdzen.com

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

Wishing you all good health and resilience (the topic of a talk I’m giving at Monterey Zen Center) this week.

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