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July-August 2021 CHZC Newsletter

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July-August 2021 CHZC Newsletter Chapel Hill Zen Center News P.O. BOX 16302, CHAPEL HILL, NC 27516 JULY & AUGUST, 2021 We sit to make life meaningful. The significance of our life is not experienced in striving to create some perfect thing. We must simply start with accepting ourselves. Sitting brings us back to actually who and where we are. This can be very painful. Self-accep- tance is the hardest thing to do. If we can’t accept ourselves, we are living in ignorance, this darkest night. We may still be awake, but we don’t know where we are. We cannot see. The mind has no light. Practice is this candle in our very darkest room. Kobun Chino Holiday Schedule In-person All-Day Sittings On Sunday, July 4, morning Zoom zazen will be Sunday, July 11, and August 8, 6 AM to 5:00 PM offered, as usual, at 9:00 and 9:50. However, on We are moving toward having in-person All-day Monday, July 5, there will be no in-person zazen Sittings at the Zen Center, for those who are fully or study group meeting. On July 5, Zoom zazen vaccinated. If you would like to attend, please will be offered as usual at 6:00 and 6:50 am. sign up by July 8, or August 5. Attendance will Chapel Hill Zen Center be limited. If, however, the infection rates go up for the Novel Coronavirus, we may return to Reduced In-person Schedule having Half-day Sittings by Zoom on these dates Out of a concern for everyone’s safety due to the instead. Novel Coronavirus, the CHZC is experimenting Please wear a mask inside and out of the building with a reduced in-person schedule. Currently, we and for kinhin. You may take your mask off during are offering zazen at the Zen Center on Monday, zazen. The day will include zazen, a Dharma talk, Wednesday, and Friday mornings at 6 and 6:50 zendo meals, a work period and an opportunity AM for those who have been fully vaccinated for for Dokusan, a private meeting with the teacher. at least two weeks. If you would like to attend, There will be assigned seating, so please say if you please wear a mask in and out and for kinhin would like to sit on the floor or on a chair when (walking meditation), and let us know before you sign up at: info@chzc,org. your first visit at: [email protected]. With a bow, We are considering opening for zazen on Tuesday evenings at 7:00 and 7:50 PM. The CHZC will Josho continue to post updates about reopening via the CHZC email mailing list, the CHZC website Bodhisattva Ceremony (www.chzc.org/events.htm), and the CHZC The Bodhisattva Ceremony, a renewal of vows and Facebook pages. To sign up for the email an- precepts, has its roots in ancient India. The nouncements see: www.chzc.org/mailinglist.htm Bodhisattva Ceremony will be held by Zoom, on We plan to continue having Zoom zazen while Sundays, July 25, and August 22, at 10:20, the Zen Center begins to reopen. following Zoom zazen. Zoom Zazen Study Groups The CHZC continues to offer zazen via Zoom on Monday evenings, 5:30 PM - 6:30 PM. We read Monday and Friday afternoons from 1:00-1:40; and discuss Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Transfor- Monday-Friday mornings from 6:00-7:20; and mation at the Base, or Understanding Our Mind. Sunday morning from 9:00-10:20. The Zoom Tuesday Evenings, 6:45 PM - 8 PM. A link can be found on the Event Calendar section Lankavatara Sutra study group, reading two of the CHZC website at www.chzc.org/events.htm translations by Red Pine and D. T. Suzuki. Please Chapel Hill Zen Center Newsletter — July & August, 2021 http://www.chzc.org PAGE 2 contact [email protected] for handouts. This study Eco-Dharma Discussion Group group may move to Thursday evenings in July or When you realize the whole universe as nothing August, so please check the Event Calendar to but yourself, you have to take care of it. confirm: www.chzc.org/events.htm — John Daido Loori Thursday Evenings, 6:45 PM - 8 PM. Mindful of Race: Transforming Racism from the Inside Out The Eco-Dharma group informally explores to- will have its last meeting on July 1. gether Buddhist teachings on the natural world, and caring for the natural world as an expression All the Study Groups are open to everyone, and of the Bodhisattva Vow. We support and inspire there is no charge. Please log on 5-10 minutes one another in our efforts to make appropriate before the study group begins so we can start on Buddhist responses to environmental concerns time There is one Zoom link to access all the at a personal, local and global level. We hope to Study Groups, which is found on the Event begin meeting in person again this summer. If Calendar section of the CHZC website: you are interested, or have questions please www.chzc.org/events.htm contact: Chris at [email protected] or Zenki Living with Impermanence at [email protected]. This informal discussion group meets on Zoom Children’s Program about once a month, providing the opportunity to explore conversations on aging, death and This program, like the Zen Center’s other pro- dying, as well as impermanence in general. Please grams, has suspended in-person meetings at the contact Carol Klein at [email protected], Zen Center for the time being. But there are Kris Garvin at [email protected], or Senmyo many ways we can still come together virtually. Sherman at [email protected], if you The Children’s Program has many books and would like more information. Everyone is welcome. materials that can be shared — please just ask. Also, we are constructing a new mailing list; if Sangha Net you’d like to be added to it, please contact me, The Sangha Net is a network of volunteers who [email protected], or leave a message at can offer short-term assistance to those in the (919) 265-7045. I will contact you know when we sangha in need of help due to transitions in one’s are schedule to resume the Zen Center’s in- life such as illness, disability, or death of a loved person program. one. Examples of tasks can include shopping, Organizing Against Racism arranging for meals, or transportation. During the pandemic, we will assist in ways that can allow The local organization Organizing Against Rac- for mutual safety. ism is holding virtual workshops with REI, Racial Equity Institute, instructors. See: https:// If you would like to volunteer or if you need www.oaralliance.org/ For the workshop sched- assistance, please contact Kris Garvin at ules see: https://www.racialequityinstitute.com/ [email protected], Senmyo Jeff Sherman at new-events [email protected], or Carol Klein at [email protected]. Over several years, some of us have taken this two-day workshop and have found it very informa- tive and beneficial. Chapel Hill Zen Center Newsletter — July & August, 2021 http://www.chzc.org PAGE 3 Scholarships for Racial Equity Workshops being awake; to be awake with body and mind. Talking about it and being it are not the same The Chapel Hill Zen Center has a scholarship thing. Our main practice is to sit down with our fund to help those who would like to take this body and mind upright, and “to open up as does workshop and other workshops on race who can’t a flower.’” afford the full fee. For more information or to request a partial scholarship, please contact Ken We are taught that what Buddha Siddhartha Wilson at [email protected]. Donations to Gautama shared with us was not his own innova- this fund are also welcome! tion. It was the rediscovery of timeless truths. Buddha called it an ancient path. We reference Members’ Library: New Acquisitions this in the Bodhisattva Ceremony and other Becoming Bodhisattvas: A Guidebook for Com- important ceremonies when we first pay homage passionate Action, by Pema Chodron; The Power to the Seven Buddhas before Buddha. of Denial: Buddhism, Purity, and Gender, by According to Okumura Roshi the Lotus Sutra Bernard Faure; The Rhetoric of Immediacy: A says that the teaching the Buddha wanted to Cultural Critique of Chan/Zen Buddhism, by transmit to all living beings is Shoho Jisso, the Bernard Faure; Silent Illumination, by Guo Gu; true character of all things, the true form of all The Art of Simple Living, by Shunmyo Masuno; beings. What we are to wake up to is the Stepping Into Freedom, by Thich Nhat Hanh; indescribable true reality of life. What is that? Understanding and Preventing Sexual Well, if we could say it wouldn’t be indescribable Harrassment, by Peter Rutter; Black and Bud- would it? We still talk about it all the same dhist, by Pamila Ayo Yetunde and Cheryl A. Giles. though. We use words like co-dependent arising of all phenomena. We talk about impermanence Trees - A Dharma Talk and the interdependent non-self nature of every- Zenki Kathleen Batson thing; we use shorthand for all this with words like shunyata or emptiness, or nyoze which Lately, I have been thinking a lot about the body, means “like this” or suchness. my body, in particular, trees and ceremony. I am going to try to share how I see these things In Okumura Roshi’s commentary on Dogen Zenji’s relating.
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