The All Beings Zen Sangha welcomes and affirms all who come here to seek the Way, and who will work toward respectful acceptance of others across our many differences, harmonizing the one and the many. May all beings be happy!
Tonight we will have a short service followed by two periods of Zazen with an interval of Kinhin (5 minutes of slow walking in between). We will have our monthly pass the feather sharing and conclude by chanting the refuges in Pali. Please feel welcome to stay on zoom if you are able to share greetings with the sangha.
Please put your zoom in gallery mode, and keep your video link on while muting your mic until the end of the service – Feel welcome to face away from your device camera while keeping your presence visible in the frame for others in attendance to see and know you are there. Please refrain from moving your device around while others are sitting zazen with you.
Please put your zoom in gallery mode, and keep your video link on while muting your mic until the end of the service – Feel welcome to face away from your device camera while keeping your presence visible in the frame for others in attendance to see and know you are there. Please refrain from moving your device around while others are sitting zazen with you.
Order of Service (text available at highlighted links)
Join us via Zoom at 7pm for evening service and zazen. Use this link to join. If asked for a password use 794038
Please put your zoom in gallery mode, and keep your video link on while muting your mic until the end of the service – Feel welcome to face away from your device camera while keeping your presence visible in the frame for others in attendance to see and know you are there. Please refrain from moving your device around while others are sitting zazen with you.
ABZS keeps an attendance of participation at sangha events. This is done for the welfare of our members and for guidance in future programing.
Click below to see the order of service and chants.
The Branching Streams Conference is a gathering that happens about every two years. Branching Streams is a network of Suzuki Roshi lineage sanghas of which All Beings Zen is a part. Our Guiding Dharma Teacher and Senior Priest, Inryu Ponce-Barger, and Koryu Naomi had the privilege of attending the recent Branching Streams conference in-person on April 25-28 in Austin, TX. There were approximately 40 practitioners from the Suzuki Roshi lineage from Vancouver, BC, Germany, and many places in between. The conference was held at the Ancient Yoga Center, a retreat center situated on a 230-acre Hindu temple and ashram.
We practiced zazen in the mornings and evenings, with brief accompanying ceremonies, attended workshops, and connected with new and long-time friends in the larger sangha. In addition to new friendships we learned practical sangha administration ideas from each other, for example how other sanghas are approaching hybrid zendos and conducting outreach with young sangha members. We also did some spontaneous hiking!
Here’s a brief overview of the workshops from this year’s Branching Streams conference:
Healing Circles: During the first morning of the conference, we did a 2-hour small group activity called Healing Circles, a deep-listening practice based on compassionately bearing witness and experiencing our interconnectedness. It uses the basic-yet-powerful human tools of social support, sharing time, and humbly being present together creating a spirit of acceptance to explore suffering, uncertainty, and finding meaning to promote healing and a sense of community.
Poetry Workshop with Naomi Shihab Nye: Naomi Shihab Nye, a prolific awarded American poet, creative writing educator, and bright shining light of a human being, led us in a poetry workshop. She said, “We live in a poem,” and then read aloud some text (instructions for using the retreat center bathroom) that transformed our perspective of the ordinary as extraordinary. She presented many simple but powerful poetry compositions and guided us through scribbled poetry drafts. To learn more about Naomi Shibah Nye, this interview from On Being conveys her warmth, kindness, and her message that poetry loves us.
Work that Reconnects: Based on the life’s work of Joanna Macy, Stephanie Kaza, Environmental Studies Professor Emerita of the University of Vermont and Lay Entrusted teacher, led us through the four steps that were aligned with Buddhist practice which were: Coming From Gratitude, Honoring our Pain for the World, Seeing with New/Ancient Eyes, and Going Forth.
There’s so much more to share, but to sum it up: the Branching Streams conference conveyed the power of good spiritual friends, that spiritual friends are the whole of our practice, here in our sangha, and reaching across the globe. And we cannot do this bodhisattva work without each other and the friendships that sustain us.
L to R: David Zimmerman SFZC Abbot, Tova Green Branching Streams Liaison and Sosan Diego Miglioli SFZC PresidentKoryū Naomi Knoble and Inryū Bobbi Poncé-Barger atop the hill at the Conference Host Site in Austin TX
Zenshji 100th Anniversary: A Series of Lectures and Conversations is a series to commemorate Zenshuji Soto Mission’s 100th Anniversary, which is the 100th anniversary of Soto Zen in North America. The temple was founded in 1922 as the first official branch of Soto Zen in North America. Events in the series explore the diverse and emerging story of American Zen, and Zenshuji’s contribution to it. There will be one lecture or conversation a month till November 2022.
The first lecture in the series will begin Saturday, January 22, 2022, at 8pm Eastern Time offered by Prof. Duncan Ryuken Williams titled “Zen at the Half-Century: Zenshuji Temple and the WWII Incarceration of Japanese Americans.”
Please visit Zenshuji.org for more information about the lecture series which will be offered by Zoom and hybrid Zoom/in-person for those in the Los Angeles, CA, area. Email the Zenshuji webmaster to receive a Zoom link for the lectures (email information is available on the lecture series flyer on the website).
For the health and well-being of everyone, the zendo will continue be closed for in-person practice until the end of January 2022. We will continue to offer our normal services over Zoom in our cloud zendo, please join us!
We will reassess this in-person closure at the end of January and will communicate a path forward to the sangha at that time.
The calendars have arrived!! Work practice Saturday is happening!
Join us for an All Beings Zen Sangha calendar mailing party, otherwise known as work practice, in-person tomorrow, Saturday December 18, at our urban zendo!!
Can’t make it in-person, but want to be a part of the fun? Pop by on Zoom and say hi! Here is the link. If you need a password use 263968
