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Newsette 11-16-2024

In my last Newsette, sent soon after Election Day in the U. S., I shared encouraging words from several guiding teachers and heard from some of you that this was helpful. As always, I welcome your comments about these Newsettes.

At City Center, last week David Zimmerman and I co-hosted two listening circles, one in person and one online. Both were well attended by people who were turning toward sangha to share a range of feelings and responses to the election. Several Branching Streams sanghas provided similar opportunities for members to gather.

In this Newsette we greet a new affiliate and share one sangha’s recent joyful Jukai ceremony. We also note a few Rohatsu sesshins and a three-week residential practice opportunity. You may be interested in the environmental actions two sanghas are engaging in. And SFZC’s City Center is looking for kitchen support as we reopen in January.

Welcome to a new Branching Streams affiliate, Zendo of Boulay in Charente-Maritime, France, near the cities of Saintes, Cognac and Pons. Zendo of Boulay was founded in 1996 by Guiding Teacher Jean Yves Seijo LeClerc. Jean Yves received dharma transmission from Keido Les Kaye in 1996, while practicing at Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center in Mountain View, CA.

Cynthia RyoTan Kear, Guiding Teacher of Great Spirit Sangha in San Francisco, gave Shukke Tokudo (priest ordination) to Betsy Groh on Sunday, Nov 10th. Betsy’s dharma name is Sei Ka Ken Jo, Sacred Fire Manifesting Love and Mercy. Betsy is a long-time meditator and has been a member of GSS for many years. She leads Meditation in Recovery’s monthly Marin meeting. 

Practice opportunities

Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center and Zen Heart Sangha in Mountain View CA will jointly host a two-day Rohatsu sesshin on Friday and Saturday, December 6th and 7th at Kannon Do. “The sesshin will be led by Misha Shungen Merrill, who is a Dharma heir of Les Kaye’s and is Guiding Teacher for the Zen Heart Sangha. The Rohatsu Sesshin will be held from 8 am – 5 pm each day and will include a modified oryoki lunch. This sesshin is appropriate for first timers and experienced practitioners. There is a $10-50 suggested donation/day which includes the cost of lunch, tea and treats. To attend, please sign up using this form.”

Chapel Hill Zen Center (NC) is offering a December Sesshin from December 6 – 13 led by founding teacher Josho Pat Phelan Roshi. “Sesshin is an intimate way to practice with ourselves and others. We begin sesshin together, sit zazen together, walk together, eat together, and work together. Our practice is supported by the entire universe and each of us is supporting everyone else.” The sesshin day will include zazen beginning at 6 AM, kinhin, a Dharma talk, work period, and oryoki meals. Dokusan with Josho Roshi will also be available.” Here is the link to the registration form; register beforeNovember 27.

Mountain Rain Zen Community in Vancouver BC will hold Rohatsu Sesshin from November 30 to December 7, in person and online. “Please join the Mountain Rain sangha for this seven-day residential retreat, led by co-guiding teachers Myoshin Kate McCandless and Shinmon Michael Newton, in the beautiful natural surroundings of Brew Creek Centre near Whistler.” More information is HERE

Brooklyn Zen Center is offering its first ever Residential Practice Intensive from January 4 to 26, 2025, as they begin their 20th anniversary year. “This a rare opportunity to study with our root teacher Soshin Teah Strozer, who will lead this three-week intensive with the support of BZC Dharma teacherKosen Gregory Snyder at Ancestral Heart Temple and neighboring Watershed Retreat Center” in Millerton, NY. More info and a registration form is here.

Actions to protect the environment from sanghas in the U.S. and Canada:

Santa Cruz Zen Center’s Earthcare Practice Group offers Quick Actions for the Planet each month. This month they include:: Tell Bank of America to Stop Financing Deforestation. They note that “industries destroying the rainforests — primarily for soy, beef, palm oil and wood products — are financially supported by banks.” To send a message, Sign Here.

The Engaged Buddhist Practice Group atMountain Rain Zen Community (Vancouver, BC, Canada)is hosting (w)righting on November 25 in person and online. “On this day, send a letter or email to defend Vancouver’s Climate Plan. Let’s support each other in practicing right speech, voicing our concerns regarding current social/environmental/climate issues. Let’s find ways to express wisdom and compassion in response to the issues that concern us most deeply.” See website for more example letters..

San Francisco Zen Center’s City Center, which has been closed for renovations during 2024, will reopen in January, 2025. City Center is looking for an experienced cook to come for six months. For more details, please email the City Center Director, Choku Proudfoot at choku.proudfoot@sfzc.org.

May we find support and joy in our sanghas and with friends and family as we navigate this challenging time.

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Newsette 11-6-2024

Several Branching Streams teachers sent messages to their sanghas on the day of the November 5 election, and the day after – messages to remind us of the support of sangha and our kinship with all beings.

Eden Kevin Heffernan, guiding teacher of Richmond (VA) Zen, sent on Election Day:

“Whatever may happen today and the following weeks, and well, really, the rest of your life on this vast wild Earth — home, I will remind you now of an outrageous and impossible array of beings, like anteaters, fruit bats, snow leopards, kangaroos, orangutans, amberwing dragonflies, honeybees, garden spiders, magnolias, Venus flytraps, jasmine, Beluga whales, bioluminescent squid, and yes, bioluminescent fungi that play a role in the Wood Wide Web, the network supporting, among other beings, coast redwoods, the forest giants that grow to over 250 ft in height and live two millennia — know that you are as large and deep and ancient as a coast redwood, with your deeply rooted ancestry exponentially branching behind you, your IRL internetwork of kinships and communities, gut microbiomes, living stone infrastructure of bone and bioelectrical mesh of flesh that lights up with sights, sounds, smells, textures, tastes, memories and dreams of this and worlds past, present, and future.”

“When we forget or ignore this kinship, we suffer and cause others to suffer isolation and alienation. When we turn toward and embrace our wholeness, the whole of our wild life, we lighten up and relieve others of their painful delusion of separation. And we can, perhaps, do this with nothing more than a smile. Kinship calls us to kindness.”

This morning, soon after I learned the results of the presidential election, a member of Brooklyn Zen Center shared this message from their co-guiding teacher Sarah Emerson:

“Beloved Sangha,

Here’s what I want to say as a Dharma teacher and as a human being to you this morning:

Keep Healing

Keep uprooting the deep tendrils of domination culture and oppression in ourselves and in society, keep challenging powers that seek to dominate and dehumanize, keep looking closely at what our truest values really are, and keep in the forefront of our awareness and actions how we are all inextricably connected.

Notice what’s happening in your hearts, and bring the full force of all the love you have received and all the love you have to offer and hone it in on any division you find, and illuminate it with the light of the Dharma.

This absolutely does not mean we shouldn’t be angry (I’m really angry), or despairing, or numb or fearful. These and many other feelings are all legitimate responses to violence. And the question we can ask ourselves is how we can feel into the support of one another, feel the ground of the Sangha, and illuminate our anger, fear, despair, numbness, and anything else with the light of how we’re ALL in this together. Let the Dharma be our collective compass to finding a different way forward than more division and more despair and more violence.

There is a lot coming, and a lot already here, that we will need to be ready and able to show up for.

Don’t give up Bodhisattvas!
Every ounce of love we drop into this mess matters.”

Zenju Earthlyn Manuel posted in her newsletter on Substack, “To Have and To Hold Each Other. Our shared suffering is less than one degree from each other. Our shared liberation must be the same. No matter who won this 2024 presidential election, twenty-four years into a new millennium, there is something that we all must do more than ever. We must keep faith in those around us. We must relish and cherish the relationships of family and friends no matter their human flaws. It doesn’t mean we have to suffer other’s suffering but the way to our liberation is to forge, with our heat, all that is broken in this country into a kind of freedom we never imagined we had the power to shape. I say this because it is only us that we have and only us who will need to stand at the doors to protect our free communities, free spaces, free loved ones, and more—not as protectors of people only but protectors of what has always been sacred and that is life itself. We must value all life even in the middle of all life not being valued.” To read her entire message, go to the link above.

On another note, San Antonio Zen Center writes, “It is with great gratitude that we officially install our new guiding teacher, Rev. Karen De Cotis, at 2:00 p.m. on Saturday, November 16. We will also celebrate and offer reflections on the 20-year anniversary of the San Antonio Zen Center.”

Their message includes these words of Thich Nhat Hanh: “Each moment is a chance for us to make peace with the world, to make peace possible for the world, to make happiness possible for the world.

Norman Fischer, founding teacher of Everyday Zen Foundation, based in the San Francisco Bay Area, will be reading twice this week, today (Wednesday) and Saturday, from his new book of poetry, Through a Window. The readings will take place in the New York area and will also be streamed on Zoom.

Wednesday’s reading, from 4:00 to 5:30 p.m. PT, with Farnoosh Fathi and Ryan Lee Wong, will also include a conversation on Zen, poetics, and Eihei Dogen’s “grandmotherly” mind. On Saturday, Norman will share the podium with the New York Neo-Futurists, an ensemble whose high-energy work fuses elements of poetry, game, and performance art.” [It may be too late to register to view this event online.]

On Saturday, November 9 from 2 to 5:30 PT, Norman will participate in a reading, “Norman Fischer and the New York Neo-Futurists.” You can Join on Zoom.

Today, Norman sent this message to the Everyday Zen sangha:

“An invitation to pay close attention to your life your breath your daily tasks and relationships, not to be baited into confusion and despair. You are alive in a world that’s everywhere alive, pay attention to this. And to kindness. And watch the government and society in which you live just as carefully, listening for the rhythm underneath the jagged melody. Build counter-movements and strengthen counter-movements that already exist. Every day.” To see the rest of Norman’s message, click here. He ends with a poem:

Day after day.
Would that words knew how, what to feel 
To do 
Would that the heart on the sleeve 
Turn inside out with the terrible news clean fabric 
Soldier on, those parts of the body in whose darkness 
Sanity resides Kindness as natural as wind 
Blows through to some shaft of light 
In which the truth scrolls show scraps and clear hints 
Of what’s to come 
That’s never as imagined 
Humans have their many foibles fear elicits 
But the body marches forward ever 
Forward and round and round
This too passes 
And passing refreshes 
Every new moment’s a promise That being human matters 
On a green and greening earth… And the trees hold steady

May our teachers’ words inspire us to continue our practice, love and encourage one another, and stand up for what we most care about.

Posted on

Newsette 11-1-2024

Kaishin Victory Matsui, the director of Ancestral Heart Monastery in Millerton NY, connected to Brooklyn Zen Center, sent this photo of the view from their garden.

Two Streams Zen in Western MA posted a quote from the late historian Howard Zinn that speaks to this time in our country and the world:

“To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places – and there are so many – when people behaved magnificently, this gives us the energy to act, and at least the possibility of sending this spinning top of a world in another direction.

“The future is an infinite succession of presents and to live now as we think human beings should live, in defiance of all that is bad around us, is itself a marvelous victory.”

Reirin Gumbel, guiding teacher of Milwaukee Zen Center in the battleground state of Wisconsin, has been hosting an Election Retreat. She writes, “The Election Retreat is a vibrant group of Zen people, mostly from Berkeley, CA, but also from Chicago and locally…People meditate, eat, work, and go out together to canvas for the election. Almost every day, there is a dharma talk given by Taigen Dan Leighton, Zenshin Florence Caplow, Hozan Alan Senauke, Greg Fain or myself.” Reirin is also preparing to be a poll chaplain for the November 5election.

On September 22, Reirin gave the precepts to three students: Eli Lu, Fragrant Breeze,Field of Virtue; Fay Akindes, Clear Lake, Supreme Peace; and Meg Lucks, Brilliant Moon, Circle of the Way.

News from Tassajara Zen Mountain Center: The application for the 2025 Winter Practice Period, led by Eijun Linda Cutts, from January 7 to April 2, is online, with a deadline of Nov 20th.

 Summer 2025 Applications are also now open! Director Ashley Ng writes, “We are looking for volunteers to help with the summer guest season, especially volunteers with kitchen experience or trade skills. We will have visiting teachers in residence throughout the summer, and as usual, there will be weekly dharma talks, offered by visiting and resident teachers.” Please email zmcdirector@sfzc.org if you have any questions.

The Soto Zen Buddhist Associate is offering two more events in this year’s series Celebrating the Voices of Women in Buddhism. The first isThroughout the Body, Hands and Eyes: Compassion and Bodhisattva Activism on November 9, and the Finale event is on December 15, Full Moon Bodhisattva Ceremony (Ryaku Fusatsu). Both events are online via Zoom, with a sliding scale of $10 -$15 (no one turned away for lack of funds) and open to all.

May you have ease of well being in this uncertain time.