Month: April 2016

This Sunday, May 1, we celebrate the Buddha’s Birthday in the annual festival of Wesak, and also open the May Sit. This is a precious time when the entire sangha – adults and kids, parents and those without children – celebrates together. The children meet before the Wesak ceremony to decorate a bower with flowers.… Read more »

Come celebrate the completion of our beautiful new Sodo and Phase I of our new campus in typical Zen style … by sitting very still for 31 days. Take advantage of this opportunity to build your own retreat. Sodo is open and staffed every day from 5:30am to 9pm (except Sunday, which opens at 8am)… Read more »

Ongoing finish work inside the Sodo is taking care of things like the trim in the back of the zendo and into the entry and dining hall, mounting fire extinguishers, signs and doorknobs for the bathrooms, laundry area in the kitchen, towel racks, fixing the doors so they all work, mounting that beautiful cedar plank… Read more »

Last month, Maitripa held an event that featured Thubten Chodron (a Tibetan teacher) and Bhante Seelawimala (a Theravadin teacher). A dialogue on Sunday morning was facilitated by Kakumyo Lowe-Charde (our very own Zen teacher). It was videotaped, and, as Kakumyo says, “this portion contains the juicy parts.” Check out the video.

Several items of interest on the environmental front have surfaced recently. First, there is a spring series of classes and workshops that DRZC is sponsoring (in connection with a grant) here at Siskiyou Square. Check out these great opportunities to learn more about our own piece of the earth. Second, the SZBA recently adopted a… Read more »

On Saturday, April 16, the Friends of Trees and FedEx volunteers worked on various projects on the land. In particular, we had to remove all of the recently-planted trees along Siskiyou Street because they didn’t meet code. We planted most of them elsewhere on the property, and those we couldn’t use Friends of Trees took… Read more »

Bukkai’s talk carries a long thread of love of mountains in zen writing and mountains in themselves. She makes suggestions for study of the walking of human beings and the walking of mountains. This talk was given on Sunday, April 24.

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 under Organizational Structure. Board of Directors The Board… Read more »

Twice a year, the sangha has an opportunity to hear from our governing bodies, to ask questions and give feedback. The spring forum is primarily sponsored by the Dharma Council. Some topics we covered were the Succession Plan, the May Sit, the Heart of Work retreat this fall, Liturgical year changes, and Sangha-building activities. The… Read more »

Our fancy new trash / recycling building is coming along. These photos were taken last Saturday, and the roof is still in process. Eventually there will be gates so that we won’t be staring at trash containers from the Sodo and the courtyard. This building is required as part of our Certificate of Occupancy, so… Read more »

How do we live with the universality of suffering? Genko follows Kyogen’s path in working with the Buddhacarita, a mythical retelling of the Buddha’s life story and enlightenment. We’ll talk about myth and read some of the story and explore how we work with the facts of sickness, old age, and death. This talk was… Read more »

This last Saturday, April 2, something like 100 people showed up for a good old-fashioned barnraising, as we worked on the new workshop. The weather was perfect, and though we had more trouble than anticipated getting up the first arch and keeping it up, we recovered on the second by getting a scissorlift to provide… Read more »

For more than a thousand years, Zen temples have been administered in particular ways. How do the rules and guidelines put in place so long ago translate to today? What does it mean to step up to leadership at Dharma Rain? Jiko will talk about the temple governance as an essential practical matter, and an… Read more »

Ikuo and Sherman worked on the steps at the east end of the Sodo, providing egress directly from the zendo. Fujaku continues to work on trim inside the Sodo, as well as other things. The mop sink got hooked up on Wednesday. We now have rods indoors for hanging up coats, robes, etc. Lots of… Read more »

Come celebrate the completion of our beautiful new Sodo and Phase I of our new campus in typical Zen style …by sitting very still for 31 days. During the month of May, the Sodo will be open and staffed every day from 5:30am to 9:30pm (except Sundays, which start at 8:30am). We will hold our… Read more »

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