Sunday Afternoon with Sangha

This week after the Sunday program and the usual potluck lunch we'd like to invite you to a Sangha afternoon. Let's do something together in this gorgeous spring time! Depending on the weather and people's moods we have two options: a hike in the wild or the film "How to Cook Your Life".

"How to Cook Your Life," a film by Doris Dörrie, features Soto Zen teacher and cookbook author Edward Espe Brown. It's based on Dogen's famous "Instructions to the Cook," and will hopefully help to nourish both our everyday practice and also - via our kitchen behaviors - our physical well-being.

As to the outdoor option, we would probably be heading in the direction of Douglas Falls in Barnardsville, but may well take a turn before we get there to walk in some less known areas of the mountains. Don't be concerned about hours of driving or heavy climbing - we'll try to find a trail that will suit us all.

So, rain or shine, see you on Sunday!

Spring Equinox Sesshin

Looking for a way to deepen your Dharma practice in the midst of a busy life? Whether you’re just starting out in Zen or have been practicing for years, the upcoming three-day Step Into Spring Sesshin at Windhorse offers a chance to dive right in.

If you’ve had little or no sesshin experience, this shorter retreat will give a good grounding in the basics, to help you get going.

If you’re a veteran of many sesshins, this extended weekend of zazen is an opportunity to refresh your practice and to further deepen and integrate it into your life.

Goodbye Vlastik!

Trainee and center's cook Vlastik Karlik is leaving Windhorse to return to his home country of the Czech Republic. The morning before his flight, Dana Lundquist, also in a training program at Windhorse, sat down with him for an interview about his three-month stay with us.

DL: When did you first come to Windhorse?

VK: I was here for the first time in 2010. This is my second visit to Windhorse, and I came at the end of November.

How did you enjoy being the head cook?

It was great fun! It's wonderful to cook for a bigger number of people; then you can have a well-equipped kitchen and play with new food. I'll really miss some ingredients that are rare or unavailable back home: sweet potatoes, squashes, avocados.....and bananas are much more pricey.

 

Honoring the Buddha’s Parinirvana this Sunday, February 26th

11th century Japanese illustration of Parinirvana

This Sunday at Windhorse we’ll hold our first Parinirvana ceremony, commemorating the death of Shakyamuni Buddha.  While the traditional date for this celebration is February 15^th, and in some places February 8^th, here at Windhorse we're having it at our first opportunity after last week’s sesshin.

Parinirvana Day gives us a chance to look into the deeply moving (and at times surprising) story of Shakyamuni's passing as well as the verbal teachings that he gave during these last weeks and hours of his life. The story itself comes in different versions, but all of them bring to our awareness the fact of our own mortality and that of everyone we love and care about (a fact from which we so gladly escape). In Asian countries it is traditional, on this day, to remember relatives and friends who have passed. 

We’ll hold to our basic Sunday morning schedule, with zazen, kinhin, chanting and a teisho focusing on this crucial last chapter of the Buddha’s life. People will also have the chance to make incense offerings before the beautiful painting depicting this event and chant the Mantram of Shakyamuni Buddha: Om Muni Muni Maha Muni Shakyamuni, Svaha! Afterward, of course, we’ll have our usual potluck lunch, sharing whatever food offerings people may bring. If you can bring something, great -- if not, come anyway! 

January at Windhorse - and at Bodhidharma in Poland

Bodhidharma Zen Center in Poland

January was a pretty quiet time here at Windhorse, with Sunya-sensei and Magda K. traveling to Poland, and Lawson-sensei focusing on some of his writing projects. However, things did happen: painting projects got started thanks to Dana, and the first-floor bathroom now has a fresh new look. This is just the first step to a bigger project: painting the kitchen and the alcove where the big Florida Buddha is sitting. We're in the process of choosing colors for these areas. Also during this time, Matt Sweger, in temporary residence at Panther Branch, completed another major project: designing a staircase for the new building. 

Abbreviated Ancestral Line - Part II

Dazu Huike

After about 900 years of teacher-to-student transmission, the practice that was to become what we know as Zen Buddhism moved from India to China. This happened somewhere around the 5th or 6th century CE with Bodhidharma's arrival. This doesn’t mean, however, that the Dharma was unknown in China before that time. Buddhism in various forms had already been in that country for centuries by the time the Western Barbarian arrived (although that didn’t necessarily make Bodhidharma’s work any easier).
Read on for the continuation of the Ancestral Line essay.
 To read Part I, click here. click here.

New Year's Eve at Windhorse

These ceremonies and celebrations are a great way to end one year and begin the new! Here's what's happening at Windhorse:

On Saturday, Dec. 31, the Center will open at 7:00pm.  Tea will be available as people congregate, with a fire in the hearth if it’s cold enough outside.  Formal zazen begins at 7:30, followed by all the ceremonies—quiet and noisy—that will help us enter 2012 feeling renewed, with cleansed minds and open hearts. We end with a candlelit circle, everyone reading a few lines of the New Year's Prayer (see below), together beaming out many wishes for peace and happiness for all on the planet.

To Sangha and Other Friends of Windhorse

[First Section]
This evening we begin the week of Rohatsu, Buddha’s Enlightenment Sesshin -- our last retreat of the year. Before diving in, we’re sending out this letter with photos to show what’s happening at Windhorse, and to ask for your support in completing the new residential space. 

Once we finish the building – and we’re not so far from our fundraising goal -- we can begin to use this beautiful place in the woods! It will provide much-needed rooming for more residents, sesshin participants and visitors, and will make possible a greater range of Zen-related workshops. Such programs should help us reach more people and be more financially resilient in the years to come.

Thanksgiving at Panther Branch

Thanksgiving 2004 (!)

With our fall ceremonies behind us, we're gearing up for this Thursday's big event: Thanksgiving -- the wonderful, unique, non-religious holiday centered around communal meals and gratitude. And we're going to have a vegetarian feast and PARTY over here at Windhorse! A rare community event, open to all who wish to take part.

Please let us know if you'd like to come, what dish you'd like to bring (we'll let you know what others are bringing if you wish), and please also bring any music you'd like to hear before or after the meal. Better yet, bring an instrument and play some music!
We're asking participants to help out with clean up, and if you can also lend a hand with set-up, great!

The essence of all beautiful art, all great art, is gratitude. -- Nietzsche

The Ceremony of Gratitude

CEREMONY of GRATITUDE 

Rohatsu: Buddha's Enlightenment Sesshin

All throughout the world people sit in retreat during this special December time - this is one of the reasons why Rohatsu, or Buddha's Enlightenment Sesshin, tends to be particularly powerful and deep. This is a special time to sit, whether you’re in sesshin or not.

Our Windhorse Rohatsu begins Saturday early evening, Dec. 3, and ends the following Saturday afternoon, Dec. 10. The deadline for applying is Monday, Nov. 21st. 

If anyone’s available to come in to help on the week before sesshin, we’d love to hear from you!

Our Memorial Altar

The memorial altar, set up for our Day of the Dead zazenkai, is still in the Kannon room. Anyone who wishes to do so is welcome to bring in pictures of family members, friends or pets who have died, You may also find that you get to know the sangha a little better just by looking at this altar. So whether you bring in photos or not, be sure to glance into the Kannon room the next time you visit Windhorse.

 We're planning to keep the altar there at least through the Ceremony of Gratitude on Sunday, Nov. 20st. 

November-December Events at Windhorse

As nights lengthen and grow frosty, as the sap returns to the roots, many people feel a greater inward pull.  A fine time to sit more, and to connect with and strengthen – through ceremonies and sangha gatherings – deep energies that benefit not only ourselves but also the world as a whole.  Please join us for some or all of these special autumn events: Famine Relief Ceremony, Jukai (Receiving of the Precepts), our annual Ceremony of Gratitude, and the festive Panther Branch Thanksgiving Potluck & Party.  You’ll find more information on each of these events below.

Abbreviated Ancestral Line – part I

Vasubandhu

Although we chant it at least once a week, for most people the Abbreviated Ancestral Line is a pretty enigmatic chant – for newcomers not much different from a Dharani, actually. Even if you stick around for a few years you won’t necessarily know that Hakuun Ryoku is Roshi Yasutani, and Daiun Sogaku is Roshi Harada. However, if you make the effort of looking more deeply into the Ancestral Line and getting familiar with those mentioned in it, you may come to feel a real connection with and gratitude to those people who transmitted the Dharma to our times. This article is meant to help you do just this - make the history of our lineage a little more accessible.

Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) Zazenkai

Studying the Precepts

Photo by our Sangha member, Byron Hovey

This year our fall Jukai will take place on Saturday afternoon, Nov. 19. Jukai is the ceremony of Receiving the Precepts, and thus formally entering the Buddhist Sangha. In preparation for this important ceremony, the Windhorse Dharma study group will shift its focus from classical Buddhist texts to exploring these precepts and how they relate to our lives.

It is said that “Zen is above morality, but morality is not below Zen.” Doing our best to uphold the precepts in everyday life is an essential part of our practice, something that was strongly emphasized by Roshi Philip Kapleau. These precepts are not commandments -- who, after all, would command whom? Instead, these "items of good character" point to a way of being that occurs naturally when we live in harmony with the truth of our own deepest nature.

Bodhidharma Day Ceremony

 

Join us for this yearly autumn event that includes zazen, chanting, and a talk on – and to -- Bodhidharma, 28th Indian Dharma Ancestor and the first Ancestor in China. We’ll have a small exhibition in the Kannon Room of various renderings of Bodhidharma by famous painters (including one by Hakuin). As always, tea will be available afterward, along with whatever vegetarian lunch offerings people may bring to share.

Sunrise at Black Balsam

Tomorrow morning we’ll move our formal sitting outdoors, to take in the sunrise at Black Balsam, about an hour’s drive from the Center. With winter around the bend we want to, as Thoreau put it, 'suck the marrow' from these golden days of autumn. Word has it this is the best place around to catch the sunrise. Please join us if you can!

Sunday with Zazen - one day sitting

This coming Sunday at Windhorse we’ll be having a One-Day Zen Retreat (zazenkai), with a sesshin-like schedule, teisho and dokusan (Sunya only; Lawson will be out of town). 

People can participate for the whole of it, or just for part. Some people will be staying overnight on Saturday, to make it easier to do the early-morning section. 

Let us know if you'd like to do that, and if you'll be here for breakfast or lunch, so that we can plan accordingly.

If anyone can help out before or after this event, great! The more people who lend a hand, the easier it is to have these sorts of sittings on a regular basis.

You will find the schedule below.            

Wilderness Retreat 2011

We’re back at Panther Branch after 3 wonderful days in the Smokies, with fresh energy, stronger Sangha connections, and some great memories! We also have photos to share. So if you’re interested, read on . . .