Rev Shokuchi Deidre Carrigan offering training for All Beings Zen Sangha Doanryo
Yuriko Beaman “KonMari” workshop Saturday May 4th, 2019
Very fun “KonMari” workshop taught by Yuriko Beaman for eleven All Beings Zen Sangha Members last Saturday. Yuriko inspired us to begin to look at our homes in a fresh way. Asking us “What do you want from your life?” “What does your ideal home after it is tidied look like?” She then outlined the way to move ourselves in that direction by focusing on one area at a time and holding and evaluating each item asking what action with this item moves us toward the tidied home and life we envisioned. She gave us direction on how to say goodbye to items we are ready to let go of and instructions on how to fold, store, displaying the items that we’ve decided to keep. She asked us to shift our mindset asking what items are joy sparking. She can be contacted for personal consulting via her web site www.joyandspace.com
Photos from our Spring 2019 Sesshin at Woodburn Hill Farm
Here are a few photographs from our 5 day All Beings Zen Sangha Spring Sesshin at Woodburn Hill Farm. In the background you can see that the trees had a neon green of pollen to drop. The bird songs in the mornings were a glorious symphony. And the full moon filled the night sky and our dreams. What a great time and place for deep diving into Dharma practice
Photography by Kaizen and Longman.
Great Turn out for the Restorative Justice and Zen Workshop
Photography by Vero Hires
Zen and Restorative Justice – a Workshop with Rev. Michaela O’Connor Bono
When: Saturday – March 23th, 2019 9-11:30 a.m.
What : Workshop: Diving deeper into Restorative Justice Practices
What are the ways we show up in conflict? Do we head into it, avoid it or some combination? What do we do when we’ve been harmed or harmed someone? How does this compare to our nation’s way of handling “crime”?
In this workshop you will get an overall understanding of what the umbrella term “restorative justice” means in different contexts. We will dive deeper into methods of conflict resolution, looking systemically and personally. We will also explore our own relationship to conflict and specifically how our Zen or Buddhist practice meets this very natural part of being alive.
No prior knowledge or experience of these topics is necessary. We will explore it together.
About Rev. Michaela
Rev Michaela O’Connor Bono is a Soto Zen Buddhist Priest, and the resident teacher for the Mid City Zen Sangha in New Orleans, LA. Ordained in the Suzuki Roshi Lineage, she has trained at both Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and Green Gulch Farm. She is a founding member of Sakyadhita USA( a branch of the International Association of Buddhist Women) and has served as a board member for Buddhist Peace Fellowship. She is active in prison meditation and chaplaincy ministry and believes everyone has a mystic heart.
Tea Discussion topic at ABZS Zazenkai at WHF Feb 23rd, 2019
The practice of zen practitioners writing death poems was the topic during the afternoon tea discussion yesterday while on zen retreat at Woodburn Hill Farm.
Here is the death poem of Zen Master Keizan which was read during the Zazenkai tea.
“This peaceful rice-field that one has cultivated by oneself, however often one has gone to sell or buy (rice) is as a virgin land. Young sprouts and spiritual seeds, infinitely, ripen and shed (their leaves). Ascending the Dharma Hall, I see men holding a hoe in their hands.” Then throwing away his brush, Zen Master Keizan passed away.
Keizan
1325
Inryu recalled the beautiful death poem of a former Abbot at San Francisco Zen Center, Abbot Myogen Steve Stucky.
Here is Myogen Steve Stucky’s “death poem,” which was placed on the altar in the room with his body when he passed in December 2013.
This human body truly is the entire cosmos
Each breath of mine, is equally one of yours, my darling
This tender abiding in “my” life
Is the fierce glowing fire of inner earth
Linking with all pre-phenomena
Flashing to the distant horizon
From “right here now” to “just this”
Now the horizon itself
Drops away—
Bodhi!
Svaha.
Myogen
12/27/13
Many Zen priests follow a form for writing death poems such as this, sometimes even with regularity throughout their lives.
In Gassho,
Inryu Sensei
Guest Speaker Rev. Choro Carla Antonaccio Saturday February 16th, 2019 at 9a.m.
Exploring the place of Women in the Soto Zen Lineage
In our long service of bowing and chanting, we recite the “Names of Buddhas and Ancestors” – beginning with the Seven Buddhas Before Buddha, and ending with the founder of our Soto Zen School, Eihei Dogen, and his two immediate successors who established the lineage of teachers that we now honor. All of these are male. In fact, we used to call them “Buddhas and Patriarchs”. In recent years, much research and collaboration by a group of Zen teachers and scholars have created a parallel document, a women ancestors document. What does it mean to have a separate women’s lineage? Why are there no women in the lineage we do chant – or are there? And what does Dogen have to say about women, gender, and separation?
Rev. Choro with Sensei Inryu in 2015
Rev. Choro Carla Antonaccio is a Soto Zen Buddhist priest ordained in the lineage of Suzuki Roshi by her teacher, Roshi Josho Pat Phelan. She began formal practice in 1999 at Chapel Hill Zen Center where she has been a resident practitioner since 2005. Rev. Choro has trained at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, San Francisco Zen Center City Center, and Green Gulch Farm. She was Shuso for the Chapel Hill Zen Center community in 2016.
January 27, 2019 All Beings Zen Sangha Half Day Zen Retreat
Photograph taken after our first Zen Retreat of 2019
2019 Women’s March in Washington DC
Fire Ceremony – Wednesday January 9th, 2019 6pm
Join members of the All Beings Zen Sangha for a Fire Ceremony. This is a ceremony were we write down the habits and tendencies, difficult states of mind, tangled aspects of relationships, and so on, that we would like to release. We will have an outdoor small fire to burn our papers along with the name cards from Memorial Services held during the past year and incense stubs and zen sewing thread bits that have accumulated throughout year. Everyone is welcome.
Following the ceremony please feel welcome to join us inside for our regular Wednesday night zen sewing practice and precept study which ends at 7:30pm.
