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Mindfulness and Intimacy

Go beyond mere mindfulness—and deepen your connection to your self, the people in your life, and the world around you.

Mindfulness is an ancient and powerful practice of awareness and nonjudgmental discernment that can help us ground ourselves in the present moment, with the world and our lives just as they are. But there’s a risk: by focusing our attention on something (or someone), we might always see it as something other, as separate from ourselves. To close this distance, mindfulness has traditionally been paired with a focus on intimacy, community, and interdependence. In this book, Ben Connelly shows us how to bring these two practices together—bringing warm hearts to our clear seeing.

Helpful meditations and exercises show how mindfulness and intimacy can together enrich our empathetic engagement with ourselves and the world around us—with our values, with the environment, and with the people in our lives, in all their distinct manifestations of race and religion, sexuality and gender, culture and class—and lead to a truly engaged, compassionate, and joy-filled life.

Ben Connelly is a Soto Zen teacher and Dharma heir in the Katagiri lineage. He also teaches mindfulness in a wide variety of secular contexts including police training, correctional facilities, and addiction recovery groups. Ben is based at Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, travels to teach across the United States, and is the author for Wisdom Publications of Inside the Grass Hut, Inside Vasubandhu’s Yogacara, and Mindfulness and Intimacy. He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota.

Well attended workshop at All Beings Zen Sangha for guest teacher Rev. Daigan Gaither. He offered a meaningful look at “sickness, old age, and death” and how our zen practice requires us to quiet down and come back to connection with the bodies we have. All were touched and supported by his compassionate responses to questions and deep diving into our bodies with guided meditation and clear question processes to see “what does our practice ask of us”.

Call to Artists! All Beings Zen Sangha is announcing a call to artists for the 2020 Sangha calendar project. Submissions are now being accepted for drawings, paintings, photography, poetry, and other forms of art and expression in digital format. Please submit up to three works for consideration by August 15, 2019 via e-mail to Inryu at inryubobbi@gmail.com or John at emailjohnf@gmail.com

(photo by Alex Lima)

May all beings be happy!

 

By REV. DUNCAN RYUKEN WILLIAMS

Tsuru for Solidarity x Buddhist Clergy and Lay Leaders: Group Photo Before the March onto Fort Sill Entrance (credit, Julie Yumi Hatta) Tsuru for Solidarity NYC (alphabetical): Becca Asaki, Mike Ishii, Linda Morris, Lauren Sumida, Carl Takei

 

To read the full report by Rev. Duncan Ryuken Williams click here 

 

Before joining the morning procession to the memorial site near the Ft. Sill Gate we were gathered for a photograph

Walking in the procession (Buddhist Clergy to the right in the below photograph)

Later in the day at Shepler park…

Tsuru (paper peace cranes) being offered in the second memorial service of the day to those who have suffered or were killed at Ft Sill Army Base in the past. The names of Indiginous Indian leaders were remembered.  The names of Americans of Japanese decent were remembered who died at Ft Sill interment during WWII and the names of the 10 children who have died in I.C.E custody or trying to get safe passage into the U.S. during the past year were also remembered thus linking past to present.

Those gathering at the park (more than two hundred mostly youth leaders) were invited to write the names of someone they mourned and remembered.  It was heart wrenching to see so many young people writing names and walking to the altar to offer the names for remembering.  So much suffering was being processed in this second memorial service of our day.  All the priests were struggling to remain steady witnessing this gravity, this solemn expression of so many young people’s life experience.

99 Paper Peace Cranes which our All Beings Zen Sangha made.  Inryu Sensei is taking these with her to Ft Sill Oklahoma today as part of the Tsuru for Solidarity gathering on Saturday.

Photography by Vero Balderas-Iglesias

Members of All Beings Zen Sangha at Green Gulch Zen Center, Mill Valley CA visiting for a five day private practice week. We had a wonder filled time. Practiced with the resident community in the beautiful Zen Temple, we worked alongside in the kitchen and fields each morning and in our afternoon evening and free time we hiked the coyote trail, visited Muir Beach, wrote death poems, brush painted Enso’s and kept a daily Segiki journal.

Rev Shokuchi Deidre Carrigan offering training for All Beings Zen Sangha Doanryo

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