Mountain Rain's Annual General Meeting

 On June 14 Mountain Rain Zen Community held its Annual General Meeting, following a half-day retreat and potluck lunch. After the formal AGM we had a sangha discussion about our vision for the future of our practice community. If you were unable to attend, the minutes of the meeting, the membership report, the activities report, and notes from the discussion are available for download below. We welcome your contributions to the discussion if you’d like to send them in to info@mountainrainzen.org

AGM Minutes

2014 Membership Report

2014 Activities Report

2015 Sangha Discussion Notes

 

Buddha’s Birthday

Decorating the flower pavilion

The baby Buddha in his flower pavilion

The baby Buddha in his flower pavilion

Thank you to all the children who attended our Buddha’s Birthday celebration this year and enriched it for all of us by helping to decorate the flower pavilion and making the story of the Buddha’s birth a wonderful pageant. And thanks to the grown-up actors, too. We even had baby Misha to play the part of the baby Buddha! 

Maha Maya and the baby Buddha after his birth under a tree

photos by Barbara Everdene

April Earth-Care Month Report

Mandala from The Work that Reconnects workshop March 28   photo by Ann Gillespie

Mandala from The Work that Reconnects workshop March 28   photo by Ann Gillespie

Thank you to everyone who participated in our April Earth-Care Month events, and who gave extra consideration to your practice of mindful awareness and wise action in your relationship to the complex earth systems that support our lives. And thank you to all those who contributed items to our Earth-Care Flea Market and who “bought” items from it. Along with donations from our Earth Day Ceremony, we raised  $200 which will go to Hives for Humanity, a local organization that supports urban bees and beekeepers. Thank you to Heather Talbot for her beautiful bee art that graced our donation table for Earth Day. 

Living on this Earth—together with all beings

Dear sangha friends,

Peas, lettuce, spinach and arugula are up in our garden beds. Winter wrens, song sparrows and robins are singing their territorial songs. And a frothy white wild cherry is blooming in our front yard. No doubt you’ve been enjoying this early spring, as we have. But perhaps your enjoyment has been shadowed, as ours has, but knowledge of the harsh winter that folks in eastern Canada are still enduring, and the prospect of potential water shortages here later this summer due to the low snowpack. Perhaps we shake our heads, and say “Global warming…” and then mask our anxiety with busyness and distraction. Our practice asks us not to turn away, and yet we doubt what difference our small efforts can make.

You may notice that several of our events in the coming month  this quandary—how can we respond to what’s happening to our world? How do we live with plants, animals, earth systems, and each other in harmonious, non-harming ways? It seems, without really planning it deliberately, we’ve created a spring Earth-Care practice period, so let’s declare April Earth-Care Month and encourage each other to express our care for the earth in  meaningful and substantial ways. For inspiration let’s share our Earth Art in the zendo entry hall, and let’s raise money for a local organization with an Earth-Care flea market. Caring about what’s happening to our world does not have to be grim, despite the grim headlines. Let’s care with gratitude and joy, in community.

Planting dharma seeds, cultivating wisdom, compassion, and skillful means,

Myoshin Kate and Shinmon Michael

New Year's greetings from the teachers

Dear sangha friends,

The long dark days are beginning to grow shorter, as happens every year in our part of the world where the seasons are so distinct—well, maybe not so distinct here on the raincoast. And every year the return of the light is an object of wonder and remark, despite its familiarity.  In our darkest moments, it’s so easy to believe that our life is defined by our hurt, depression, anxiety, woundedness. That our world is defined by suffering. Perhaps the greatest gift of our practice, is not some distant ideal of perfect enlightenment, but the capacity to be fully present with life-as-it-is, moment by moment, in all its beauty and pain and absurdity.  

On New Year’s Eve close to eighty people showed up to sit together at the zendo, and to share our intention to cultivate peace in our hearts, our families, our communities, our world. It’s encouraging that so many people want to practice a way of living in this world with a quiet mind and open heart. We hope that with your support the Mountain Rain Zendo can continue to provide a community venue for dharma practice in the year to come.

With deep gratitude for your generosity and your practice, and our wishes for peace, joy and well-being in 2015.

Shinmon Michael and Myoshin Kate