News
Visit from Zen Priest Catherine Gammon

With this issue on "Sangha", we celebrate the arrival of Catherine Gammon from the San Francisco Zen Center, who is visiting our UK sangha for the next three months.

Catherine was ordained a Soto Zen priest by Tenshin Reb Anderson Roshi in 2005. Catherine has been in residential training at San Francisco Zen Center since 2000, and served as Shuso, or head monk, for the Spring 2010 practice period at Green Dragon Temple/Green Gulch Farm. She received precepts as a layperson in 1998 from Rev. Shohaku Okumura. Before entering residential training, Catherine wrote fiction and taught creative writing in the Master of Fine Arts program of the University of Pittsburgh. Her novel Isabel Out of the Rain was published in 1991 by Mercury House, and her shorter fiction appeared in many literary journals between 1977 and 2000.

Catherine will offer Dancing Mountains teachings in the South West, North West and East of England during her stay. Topics include teachings on emptiness, writing workshops and Dogen studies, as well as leading practice in the Soto Zen tradition. If you would like to attend any event, please click here for Catherine's schedule, and here for more details on the teachings that will be offered. Please note that the current schedule is provisional and subject to change. Please contact leaders of local groups for more information on events in your region.

Dharma Talk
Practice with everybody, fools and all!
by Tenshin Reb Anderson

I recently spoke about the tradition of bodhisattva vows, these huge vows; and the practice of practicing with everybody - even practicing with fools. Bodhisattvas vow to practice with fools and with geniuses. I recently heard the statement that stupidity, unlike genius, or genius unlike stupidity, has its limits. Bodhisattvas vow to practice with everybody: - geniuses, fools, and murderers. This is the amazing vow of the bodhisattva; it’s so amazing – to promise to practice with everyone. But that’s similar to promising to enter the oceanic practice of Zen meditation. So, in my description I said we would practice to enter the oceanic practice of Zen meditation – the big practice of bodhisattvas. At noon service we chant about what it’s like in this oceanic practice - in the bodhisattva practice and wholeness of practice and equally wholeness of realization. Read more...

Article
Sharing Life in Sangha
by An Ryu Chi U, Francis Checkley

Though conventionally we may speak of "Sangha", in truth it is completely inter-dependant and so inseparable from the three treasures of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha. The richness and intimacy of our sharing of life springs forth from the great Bodhisattva vow to save all beings, and from taking refuge not in our small selves but in the truth of our Buddha nature. We witness today almost unimaginable suffering as our environment is challenged by crisis after crisis, the disintegration of social cohesions, the resultant alienations and loneliness, and the widespread apathy about just what to do in the face of such challenges. It is as if the very fabric at the heart of all existence is being wrenched apart, as if the connective bond which unites all beings is in imminent danger of collapsing around us. And so we vow to meet and to sit together in silence and stillness. And to sit upright in the midst of our personal and collective suffering so that in doing so we might become more intimate with our fears and compulsions. In this simple yet profound act of faith we find the courage to share our vulnerability and our longing for meaning. Read more...

Article
Some Thoughts on Sangha
by Ko Gan Mu Ju, Michael Elsmere

Just now in late Spring, South Devon is a paradise; it’s always a paradise but at this time its true nature is more obvious. The sun shines from dawn to dusk out of a sky more reminiscent of Provence or Catalonia. Trees are alight with the green energy of the season laden with a perfection of blossom unsullied by rain or wind. The banked, steep lanes are strewn with the yellow and golds of primroses and dandelions, purpled with tiny shadowy violets. All this gathering of energy and beauty is caused by the changed relationship of the sun to the northern hemisphere of our planet. Clear evidence if we need it that the Earth, indeed the Universe, exists and depends on the constant harmonious relationship of one thing to another. Life is relationship. The world is sangha. In the Lotus Sutra, Dogen even views space and time as bodhisattvas upholding our practice. Read more...

Retreat Reflection
Meditation is a holiday for the heart
by Ko Gan Mu Ju, Michael Elsmere

On the 7th May this year I found myself in terminal 5 at Heathrow waiting for an incoming flight. A year previously I had, perhaps rashly, promised a long time Swedish friend I would accompany her to a retreat in the Theravadan tradition at Amaravati. Lena had listened on CD to many of the talks given by Ajahn Sumedho who is the Abbot. When she learned that he was to lead a 10-day retreat she was determined to take part but felt she needed a ‘like minded friend’, as she put it, to accompany her. Subsequently we applied, only to find that in the lottery for places I had obtained a place but she had not! However as May approached as she was still on the waiting list her name came up for a place. Read more...

Next issue of Mountain Silence
Autumn edition with a theme around "Suffering". We welcome your articles, poetry, pictures, letters, retreat reflections and book reviews! Autumn issue publication date: 30th September, deadline for submission of material 15th September.