I booked a flight yesterday for the first time in over two years! I will be flying to Austin, Texas for the Branching Streams Conference in April. Please consider joining me and sangha leaders and members from many parts of the U.S. and Canada from April 25 to 28. Austin Zen Center will host the conference at nearby Ancient Yoga Center. The theme is Healing Relationships, from our relationships with ourselves to our relationships with our beloved planet Earth. The program includes a workshop with poet Naomi Shihab Nye, a day devoted to The Work that Reconnects with Stephanie Kaza, and Healing Circles. Here is the link to the registration form. Please register by March 15.
Upcoming Dharma offerings include Houston Zen Center’s Intensive Practice Period of Great Peace and Awareness from April 3 to June 16, led by Abbot Gaelyn Godwin and Shuso Sengetsu Tricia McFarlin, and classes in Quigong and Tai Chi, An Introduction to the Zen Koan and Koan Practice, and How to Be a Buddhist. All of these events will be in-person.
Mountain Rain Zen Community in Vancouver B.C. has two class series beginning in March, What’s Love Got to Do with Zen led by co-guiding teacher Myoshin Kate McCandless (meeting in-person) and Embodied Practice with Kakuko Kaye Simard (on Zoom).
Offerings related to social and racial justice:
Hoka Chris Fortin, guiding teacher of Dharma Heart Zen in Sebastopol, CA and Doralee Grindler Katonah from Valley Streams Zen Sangha in Sacramento CA are partnering to lead Racial and Social Justice as Dharma Practice, a monthly online group committed to study, intimate investigation and conversation, and embodied bodhisattva practice to actualize personal and collective freedom for all beings. The next meeting, on Thursday, March 24 from 6 to 8 p.m. Pacific Time, will focus on Breeshia Wade’s Grieving While Black, An Antiracist Take On Oppression and Sorrow. To register, or for more information please email: chrisfortin@comcast.net or grindkaton@icloud.com.
Zen Center North Shore in Beverly, MA is supporting a young woman, who was injured in the earthquake in Haiti, to get needed health care and emotional support. Guiding teacher Joan Amaral wrote, “the ZCNS, in partnership with Adaptively Abled, is raising funds for our lovely sister Jas, to help meet her core living and medical costs. Thank you for showing what love is about, and we encourage you to share this love-giving opportunity with others to help us reach our $5,000 fundraising goal. Here is the GoFundMe page where you can learn more about Jas’s story.”
Thank you all for the many ways in which you cherish life.