I have good news to share with you today! Our new website is up and running. Here is the link. We can thank Jon Voss, the SFZC IT staff, and volunteers Bernard Voss-Potts and Pat Yingst for the refreshed look and updated content. Please let me know if you see anything that needs to be corrected.
Branching Streams Flow On – Invitation to submit photos
You and members of your sangha are invited to a Branching Streams Online Gathering, Saturday May 22 from 9a.m. to 12 noon PDT. Please save the date.
Teresa Bouza will be creating a video for the event, using photos of sanghas’ outdoor activities and images of nature. Please send your photos to tbouza@gmail.com. Teresa made a video using images she received from sanghas, which we shared at our December 10,000 Joys and 10,000 Sorrows gathering. Here’s the link in case you missed it.
There will be no Zoom Clinic with Jon Voss this week. He will be back on Wednesday April 14th.
Celebrating spring and Earth Day – Here are two expressions of spring you may enjoy knowing about:
Mountain Rain Zen Community in Vancouver is offering a creative way of celebrating the new season with a Spring Renga-kai on Saturday, April 17, 1:00-4:00.
Cherry blossom season is here! Please join us for our fifth renga-kai, or “linked-verse gathering”. Renga is a sequence of linked verses, typically created by a group of 2-4 people in a convivial atmosphere. The roots of renga lie deep in the history of Japanese poetry, but the form has survived and evolved through the emergence of haiku and into modern times and other languages. We will learn how to write and share renga in a way that is both grounded in our Zen practice of moment-to-moment awareness, and also accepting and fun! Click here for registration and details.
Austin Zen Center is celebrating Earth Day on Thursday, April 22, 6.45 pm CT All are invited to participate (in person outside, or by Zoom) by offering words of gratitude, intention, and vow regarding our commitment to our Mother the Earth on paper ‘ema’ (plaques),: in-person or online. The paper ‘ema’ will be hung from the great oak in the front yard. The oak tree, which was symbolically ordained in 2014, reminds us of our unfathomable and absolute mutual interconnection with all things, and specifically that our natural world greatly deserves and needs our utmost respect, care, and stewardship. For more information, here’s the link.
Shokuchi Carrigan of Brooklyn Zen Center shared information about a Love Walk/Love Sit in New York City on April 11th from 3-6 p.m. EDT, sponsored by the Buddhist Council of New York. The walk is in solidarity with the Asian Community in response to recent and past violence toward people of Asian descent.
Wishing you joy on Buddha’s birthday this week, as we are all buddhas, taking our steps toward liberation for all beings.