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.

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! 

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.

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!

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.

Dia de los Muertos (Day of the Dead) Zazenkai

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.

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.            

Biodynamic Yoga at Panther Branch

Photo by Mike C. Peck

Eric Scheider has offered to lead a series of yoga classes at Panther Branch from 5:30-6:30 on Tuesday evenings, before the regular evening sitting. Those will be general yoga classes (suitable for all levels of fitness and experiencing), cultivating awareness, alignment, and balanced action, supporting each other to bring forward the Dharma with maximum vitality into our meditation practices and into our lives. The first class will take place on Tuesday, September 13th. Classes are open to all. 

Eric has been involved in both Zen and yoga practice for many years now, and is certified to teach yoga. He is generously offering to do this for us on a dana-only basis, with any offerings people make to go to Windhorse.

Read on for an introduction to some of the principles of yoga practice as Eric sees them. 

A special Sunday guest

We are pleased to let you know that well-known Zen teacher and Dogen scholar Shohaku Okumura, along with his wife Yuko, will be joining us this Sunday for the morning program at Windhorse (9:30 – 11:30).

Shohaku, founder of the Sanshin Zen Community in Bloomington, Indiana, is giving two talks in Asheville, with book signings for his recently published Realizing Genjokoan.  (The first talk was last night at Malaprops; the second, on Zen monk Ryokan, will be at 7 on Saturday evening at the Baha’i Center, and is hosted by the Asheville Zen Center.)