Category: Blog
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 »
Part of the gay subculture, Drag and Camp have a long history. In the wider culture, we find a similarly long history involving carnival, clowns, fools, theater performances, masked balls, and the like. On a more mundane level, we all have various roles to play in the world, and find ourselves donning various costumes /… Read more »
Heavy, contracted work on the property has been stalled for the last two weeks. We’ve done most of what we can do easily without having city inspections. But our permit is held up pending a bond for the Siskiyou street improvements (widening the street and adding a sidewalk). Until we have the bond, we can’t… Read more »
On Sunday, June 22, Kyri Kengan Treiman was installed as the shuso at the Hood River / Columbia Gorge Zen sitting group, under her teacher Jiko Tisdale. The audience included members from the Sandy Sitting Group and the Portland sangha, and Abbots Gyokuko and Kyogen Carlson. Kakumyo Lowe-Charde, the primary teacher in Hood River, served… Read more »
We asked people to share their memories of the places where we practiced for a quaarter-century in southeast Portland. You can find these posts using the “MemoryBook” tag. by Sallie Jiko Tisdale The year I was shuso, we had several regular visitors who liked to sit in the back steps off the front doors. It… Read more »
Based on a Dharma Talk by Mike Gyoshi Kaplan – Feb 23, 2014 The title of this talk is from the sub-title of a 1972 book called The Peoples’ Guide to Mexico. This book was unique among travel guides in pointing to being fully present and receptive to where you are. A subtitle to the… Read more »
What does Buddhism have to offer us on this turning of the seasons? Solstice is very significant in ancient cultures and earth based spirituality, but is it irrelevant to the followers of the Noble Eightfold Path? Gyokuko will explore the natural phenomena of solstice, equinox and the changing physical environment and how this fits the… Read more »
We asked people to share their memories of the places where we practiced for a quaarter-century in southeast Portland. You can find these posts using the “MemoryBook” tag. For the recordings, click on the link below to open the file. If you wish, you can right-click as it’s playing to save it to your computer. Bukkai’s… Read more »
by Joe Shisei Niski We asked people to share their memories of the places where we practiced for a quaarter-century in southeast Portland. You can find these posts using the “MemoryBook” tag. I started attending Wednesdays and Sundays in the Fall of 1998. I decided to take the Precepts and to attend the full Daijukai… Read more »