Month: July 2014

Blooming, Fruiting, and Leafing It’s lovely to watch the property come to life as summer develops, including many edibles. The property is offering free fruit and vegetables. Besides the many blackberries and wild plums, lamb’s quarter is showing up wherever there is disturbed earth. The blackberries are ripening early and the wild plums are so… Read more »

A “being,” according to the Buddha, is made up of “aggregates,” or “heaps.” These, of course, are common translations for the Buddhist term “skandha,” which originally could refer to a “mass,” “heap,” “pile,” “gathering,” “bundle” or even “tree trunk.” So, we are an amalgamation of changeable things, in five layers from “form,” the body, to… Read more »

Successfully Concluded with Record Numbers During the week of July 13-19 Dharma Rain’s annual Mandala on the Mountain youth camp took place at Camp Adams, near Molalla.  Fifty three campers and another 25 staff packed the little Zendo and dining room, and thoroughly enjoyed the warm weather as Portland baked in high 90s temperatures. Click… Read more »

June 2014 This is a summary describing the month’s work of the temple’s three major decision-making bodies. A governance notebook with approved minutes is filed in the temple office. A list of current Council members and areas of concern, individual charges to leadership and temple job positions are listed on the temple website. Board of Directors A quorum of… Read more »

The Canadian wilderness guide Carl Rustrum used to look forward to solitary winter camping, because he enjoyed being where “you can holler for help and not be heard.” The Japanese word for trust can also mean confidence. What does it mean to have trust? Sometimes we need to trust ourselves and find a deep self-reliance.… Read more »

Update on the Property, courtesy of Ken Barker   It is always good to see wildlife thriving at the property.  They are not always easy to photograph.  Swallows and dragonflies tease me by flitting past so quick that I have been unable to capture an image.  Someday! Cooperation has been paying off.  Madison High School… Read more »

What is the balance between holding things lightly and being serious about our lives and practice? What is the place of humor in Zen practice? Genko raises these questions and is hoping that we can explore them together. This talk was given on Sunday, July 13.

Linda Hoka Bebernes This article was written as a final paper for a Dharma Rain Zen Center Seminary class on the Chinese ancestors in our tradition. The assignment asked for an ancestor from each of the three periods of Chinese Ch’an identified in Andy Ferguson’s book on Zen’s Chinese Ancestors, “Legendary, Classical, and Literary.” Because… Read more »

Holding awareness that “This is not mine. This is not my self. This is not what I am” is a classic meditation on anatta, the lack of an independent self. Gradually we learn to hold the self more lightly. But without a self, where does responsibility or integrity land? We’ll explore how agency and choice… Read more »

A major piece of good news this week: we’ve been approved for a bond, after a delay of several weeks. This was the last remaining hurdle we needed to cross to receive a building permit and get back to work on the site. One reason we hope to pay off the land this fall is… Read more »

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