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Newsette July 9, 2024

This Newsette highlights a transition in spiritual leadership, recent events at two Zen Centers, two offerings focusing on peace and one on voter registration.

From September 5-8, 2024, ceremonies marking a change in spiritual leadership will take place at the Zen Buddhist Center Black Forest in Germany. There will be a ‘Stepping Down’ Ceremony for Zentatsu Richard Baker Roshi (Sept. 6), followed by an ‘Ascending the Mountain Ceremony‘ for his Dharma Heir, Tatsudo Nicole Baden Roshi (Sept. 7).

Because the ceremony weekend will take place in Germany, the Black Forest Center’s sister temple, Crestone Zen Mountain Center will offer extensive online coverage and streaming of the events. If you would like information about how to participate online, Click here. The Crestone sangha is inviting people to join them for the weekend to follow the livestream of the ceremony. Kokyo Henkle will join the community and will give a talk. This weekend is offered on a donation basis.

Tenshin Reb Anderson traveled to Brooklyn in June to lead a five-day sesshin at Boundless Mind Temple. “From June 5th to the 9th, Reb Anderson guided almost 60 participants through periods of zazen and kinhin, and offered dharma talks and dokusan. It was his eighth retread with their sangha.”

Brooklyn Zen Center dharma teachers and Tenshin Reb Anderson (left to right): Shingetsu Laura O’Loughlin, Charlie Korin Pokorny, Tenshin Reb Anderson, Sarah Dōjin Emerson and Kosen Gregory Snyder.

Members of Zen Center North Shore and guiding teacher Joan Amaral marched in North Shore Pride on June 22 in Salem, MA.

On Wednesday, July 10, 7 – 8:30pm EST Brooklyn Zen Center will host an in person Wednesday Evening Dharma Share with senior students Radha Radkar and Ryan Lee Wong on the subject of “Teaching and Learning Peace. “Especially in this moment of violence and warmaking, how does our bodhisattva training support peace? How do we receive and offer teachings of peace?”

The guiding teacher of Richmond (VA) Zen, Eden Heffernan, will speak on Sunday July 14 on “Climate, War, Democracy, and the Bodhisattva Path: The Tangled Web and Indra’s Net.” Following their regular Sunday zazen schedule Eden “will reflect on Dogen’s The Bodhisattva’s Four Methods of Guidance as an especially urgent teaching in our heated times.

Engaged Buddhist Election Retreats are online gatherings in which we can, together with others, send postcards to voters in swing states, encouraging them to register to vote. Each retreat includes zazen, a brief service, and a dharma talk as well as time to write postcards. Rob Lyons, one of the organizers, will speak at the next retreat on July 21, soon after he returns from the Republican Convention in Milwaukee, WI.