Sangha Life
A Publication of the Missouri Zen Center
April-May, 2003

220 Spring Avenue
Webster Groves, MO 63119
(314) 961-6138

Visit us on the web at www.MissouriZenCenter.org
(pdf and html versions of this newsletter and the calendar are available from the website)

 
Events for April and May

• April 5, 12, 19, 26: Hosta workdays
• April 6: Daylight Savings Time begins
• Each Wednesday night —writing practice following sitting
• April 8-10: Relics Tour
• April 12: Movie Night
• April 14: Beginner’s Mind
• April 27: Tree Planting
• May 10: Hosta Sale
• May 16-18: Vesak Day Working Retreat
• May 18: Vesak Day

See the articles for more information on each of these events. Check the listserv or the closet door at the Zen Center for events scheduled after press time.

Beginner’s Mind Class, April 14

The Zen Center is offering Beginner’s Mind on Monday, April 14. This special edition of the Monday night sitting is designed for people who wish to learn how to sit Zen meditation. It begins at 6:30 pm with information on how to sit and on Zen Center etiquette. A short sitting period will let attendees experience Zen practice in a supportive atmosphere. Following the sitting there will be an opportunity to learn more about Buddhism and Zen and to ask questions about our practice. We encourage all newcomers to our practice to attend this class.

Hosta Sale Fundraiser, May 10

Help us with pre-sale and sale day activities!

The Zen Center’s 9th annual Hosta Sale fundraiser will be held at the Center on Saturday, May 10 from 8 am until noon. This is one of our three annual fundraisers. Member dues and other donations are not sufficient to pay for all the costs required to keep the Zen Center open. Each of our fundraisers offers members and other people in our community the opportunity to help maintain and spread the Dharma through the continued existence of the Zen Center and its sangha.

In order to host a successful sale, we need volunteer help. Tasks  include: digging up and potting plants for the sale; working before, during, and after the sale; publicizing the sale to family, friends, and co-workers; and buying hostas and other plants at the sale to enhance your own garden and add beauty to the world.

Every Saturday morning during the month of April, join us for sitting followed by digging up and potting the plants offered for sale.  Please be sure to wear clothes you can get dirty, wet, or muddy.  Bring garden gloves if you want them; most other tools, such as trowels and spades, the Zen Center can supply.  We’ll work until about 11:30 am and then eat lunch together. If you are unable to sit in the morning but can help with digging, plan to arrive around 9 am or so.  Enjoy feeling the warm sun, or delicate raindrops, or whatever surprise April weather may bring to us. Even if you’ve never touched a live plant before, come and help; we can teach you everything you need to know.

Suppose you want to help dig plants but can’t do so on Saturday?  We are likely to need an additional work period or two during weekday evenings in late April or early May to dig hostas or pot-up other plants at either or both of the Zen Center or at Kalen’s house.  Watch the listserv and postings at the Zen Center for information.

We need lots of volunteers to help us on the day of the sale, so if at all possible, please set aside some time on May 10 to work with us!  We need people as early as 6 am to help set up the sales tables and move hostas to their sale locations.  If that is too early, we will need more people around 7 to 7:30 am as our first customers begin to arrive. Sales will begin at 8 am.  There are lots of ways to help: answer questions about the plants; staff the cashier’s table; cart plants to customers’ cars; rearrange the displays as plants are sold; make tea; do bagel runs; and answer questions about our practice.  Please show up as early as you can.  Those of us who have worked at past Hosta Sales can tell you how pleasant it is to be outside early on a spring morning.  If you can’t show up until 9 am or later, please do come then.  You can relieve someone who has to leave early.  If you feel so inclined, you can bring a snack for the volunteers.  Even if you can’t come till 11 am or later, please still come.  After the sale ends, we’ll need people to help move the remaining plants out of the front yard and take down the work stations.  We’ll eat lunch together afterward to celebrate our success.

Yet another way to help us is to tell all the gardeners you know about our sale.  Anyone who likes hostas will want to check out our sale for its large number of different varieties. We carry other plants which like the same conditions as hostas (partial to medium shade and average to moist soil) and look nice planted with them.  We often carry some sun-loving plants as well. This year we will have dwarf conifers, rock garden plants, and selected garden stones. Included in this newsletter is a flyer you can reproduce and post at work, in your city hall or local grocery stores, or anywhere else where people gather.
If you have a garden, there is one final way you can help the Zen Center: you can buy some plants for yourself.  Hostas are easy to care for and live for many years, growing larger and more beautiful each year.  They come in sizes, shapes, colors, and prices to fit the needs of most any garden and gardener.  Beautify your garden and strengthen the Zen Center at the same time!

Plant 1,000 Trees April 27

The Interfaith Partnership will again sponsor tree planting at Forest Park in the city of St. Louis on Sunday, April 27 starting at 3 pm. These tree plantings are religious acts to protect the Earth of which we are all a part. Last year’s event was a great success; 800 trees were planted near Steinberg Skating Rink and the Science Center in the midst of rain and mud. This year the Partnership intends to plant 1,000 trees! The Zen Center encourages all members and friends to participate.

Tree planting will happen rain or shine; dress appropriately. Before planting there will be a short interfaith program. After that, it’s us and the trees. The holes will have been pre-dug. We will put the trees in their holes and add back the soil. If you have a shovel and garden gloves, bring them. People of all ages are welcome. The St. Louis Earth Day Festival also takes place on April 27 at Forest Park; enjoy the festival before and/or after planting trees!

For more information including the exact location, check the Zen Center listserv and postings closer to the date, or contact Meiku.

Relic Tour in St. Louis April 8-10

The Maitreya Project’s Heart-Shrine Relic Tour is coming to three St. Louis area locations on April 8-10. These are:

Tuesday, April 8, 2:30 pm to 8:30 pm
Thai Temple Wat Phrasriratanaram, 890 Lindsay Lane, Florissant, MO, 63031
Wednesday, April 9, 2 pm to 7 pm
Washington University, Lambert Lounge (3rd floor of the Mallinckrodt Student Center)
Thursday, April 10, 1:30 pm to 7:30 pm
Webster University, University Center

The following information is provided by the Tour:

This extremely rare and precious collection of ancient and sacred Buddhist relics is currently touring the world. Upon completion of the statue, the relics will be permanently enshrined in the Heart Shrine of the magnificent 500-foot/ 152-meter Maitreya Buddha statue being built in northern India by the Maitreya Project.

The display is open to all people and is free. Visitors can easily see the Relics because they are placed in well-lit, display cases.
Please see our website www.maitreyaproject.org for more information about the Project and the Relic Tour. Please email relictour@maitreyaproject.org for information regarding the international tour. Please email ccreviewer@aol.com for information regarding the Tour’s visit to St. Louis, MO on April 8 - 10, 2003.

Vesak Day at MABA May 18

In the southern Buddhist tradition, the Buddha’s birth, awakening, and parinirvana all occurred on the date of the fifth full moon of the year, Vesak Day. To honor and celebrate the birth, awakening, and parinirvana of the Buddha, the Buddhist Council of Greater St. Louis is offering Vesak Day on Sunday, May 18 from 9 am to 4 pm at the Mid-America Buddhist Association (MABA).  MABA is a monastery set in the rolling hills near Augusta, Missouri.

Activities throughout the day include: music and children’s activities; a lunch with a variety of vegetarian ethnic foods; guided and walking meditation; performance by Joe the Juggler; and a dharma talk by Venerable Ji Ru, Abbot of MABA. All activities are free and open to the public.

Members of the Buddhist Council of Greater St. Louis include: Fo Guang Shan St. Louis Buddhist Center; Hikoshin Ryu Buddhist Group; MABA; Missouri Zen Center; St. Louis Insight Meditation Group; Sri Lankan Buddhist Group; Thai Buddhist Temple; Do Ngak Choling and Kagyu Droden Kunchab Tibetan Buddhist Groups; Vietnamese Buddhist Association of St. Louis; Vietnamese Dharma Study Group; and Vipassana Buddhist Church. For more info see MABA's website: www.maba-usa.org.

Directions: from St. Louis, take Hwy 40/64 approximately 1 mile past the Missouri River bridge to Hwy 94. Take Hwy 94 west approximately 25 miles to Schindler Rd. on the outskirts of Augusta. Look for the road signs to MABA.

Vesak Day Working Retreat, May 16-18

The Buddhist Council of Greater St. Louis needs volunteers from all the Buddhist groups to put on the Vesak Day Celebration. There will be a working retreat for volunteers, at MABA, beginning at 6:00 pm on Friday evening, May 16, and ending with the beginning of the Vesak Day Celebration on Sunday morning, May 18.

Tentative planning is for a meal, meditation and teaching on Friday evening. Saturday morning will begin with exercise, meditation, a meal, a teaching, and then we will set up the Vesak Sites. Saturday night there will be a bonfire. Sunday morning there will be exercise, a meal, and meditation.
This retreat will allow us to practice and work together. Please make time for this important event and help make Vesak Day a success. For more info, contact Ando.

E-mail Discussion List (listserv)

To subscribe to the Missouri Zen Center’s e-mail discussion list, send an e-mail message to majordomo@joethejuggler.com, leave the subject field blank and in the message body type “subscribe mzc”. You will then receive a confirmation message (including instructions on how to unsubscribe). Please only subscribe  e-mail addresses of individuals. Also please be responsible for any information you post, including forwards. 

Living The Global Ethic: Reducing Your Contribution to Global Warming
Part 4: ChoosingYour Emission Reduction Goal
by Kuryo
This is the final article in a series based on the Rocky Mountain Institute’s document Cool Citizens: Everyday Solutions to Climate Change: Household Solutions, available to download for free at www.rmi.org. The first article concerned how to calculate the carbon dioxide emissions from your household (carbon dioxide is produced when fossil fuels are burned and is the major contributor to global warming). The second article showed how to keep records to help you determine the effects of any changes that you make to reduce fuel use. The third article discussed how to choose the most effective changes to make for your particular situation. This article will help you to decide on an overall goal for your efforts to reduce carbon dioxide emissions.

In setting your overall goal, you will want to consider factors such as your finances, whether you own or rent, whether you will be staying in the same place or moving in the near future, as well as others that are relevant to your situation. If you have little money available for actions, you could set a goal to do all possible free actions and any others up to your ability to pay. If you plan to move soon, or rent, a similar goal may be the most realistic for you. If you own your house, plan to stay there for at least the next several years, and have some financial flexibility, you can consider making your goal to reduce a large percentage of your current emissions, or even to eliminating all of them.

The 39 actions given in the table on page 14 of the Cool Citizens document are arranged from lowest to highest cost of saved carbon (CSC), with the first 8 being free. The average emissions savings achieved by implementing the eight free measures alone is 14 percent. This exceeds the commitment the U.S. would have made to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions under the Kyoto plan that it rejected. You could choose to take these actions all in one year or over a few years depending on your situation.

If you are in a position to do more, consider a 10 year plan to implement those of the first 25 measures that apply to you. Start with the free ones, then the ones that your energy use patterns suggest would lead to the biggest reductions in energy use and which are also low CSC. In later years add more of the low-cost measures and consider replacing one or more costly appliances with highly energy-efficient versions, when your current models may be reaching the end of their useful life, or whenever they require a high-cost repair. RMI suggests that the average household can achieve a 57 percent reduction in carbon dioxide emissions by following this pattern.

The most ambitious goal is to achieve climate neutrality (no net carbon dioxide emissions from your household) by 2013. A plan to do this suggested by RMI would implement all the free measures during the first 2 years. During each of the next years, three or four cost effective (low CSC) measures are implemented. The savings from these measures are used to pay for more-costly measures such as adding insulation and replacing an older refrigerator around the middle of the ten-year period. The costliest measures (replacing inefficient furnaces and air conditioners) are planned for near the end of the ten year time period, because the earlier improvements should allow for smaller units that will reduce the added cost for high energy efficiency. About halfway through, or once green power electricity providers are available in your area, choose one of these providers as your electricity source. After taking all these measures you will still use a small amount of fossil fuels. The final reductions to zero net carbon dioxide emissions come from planting two new trees each year and going to a solar hot water heating system and/or purchasing carbon “credits” from a renewable power provider (see www.nativeenergy.com). Meiku and I hope to achieve this goal.

April and May are great times to plant the trees to help offset your carbon dioxide emissions! If you don’t have the space to plant trees at your house — and even if you do — you can add to your treeplanting total on April 27 at Interfaith Partnership’s treeplanting event. See the article elsewhere in this newsletter for more details. 

E-mail Discussion List (listserv)

To subscribe to the Missouri Zen Center’s e-mail discussion list, send an e-mail message to majordomo@joethejuggler.com, leave the subject field blank and in the message body type “subscribe mzc”. You will then receive a confirmation message (including instructions on how to unsubscribe). Please only subscribe the e-mail address of individuals.

LIVE PURE LIFE

By Rosan (3/23/03 C.E. morning) 

Good morning! Today is the spring equinox. The Japanese people celebrate it, calling it higan, the yonder. It means nirvana, unconditioned peace, complete equanimity, tipping neither way. When you sit, stopping all karmas, formations (physical, verbal and mental), you are in perfect balance and full function, like a top settled and spinning, completely calm and clear. Full function penetrates through and through.

“The entire world in ten directions is a clear crystal ball.” (Xuan-sha)

“All are, oh bhikkhu, ablaze! What, oh bhikkhu, are ablaze? Eyes, oh bhikkhu, are ablaze. Forms, oh bhikkhu, are ablaze. Eye-consciousness is ablaze. Eye-contact is ablaze. Eye-feeling, either pleasant or painful, originated from the eye-contact is ablaze. By what are they ablaze? I tell that by the fire of attachment, by the fire of aversion, by the fire of delusion, they are ablaze. By birth, aging, death, sorrow, pain, lamentation, suffering, mourning they are ablaze...”   (Samyutta Nikaya)

The world is ablaze by bombardment of rage, greed and deception; screaming, suffering and mourning. On this fine warm spring Sunday, all are scared and sickened all over the world. Why do we need to darken this brilliant sunny day with flowers blooming, birds singing? What a tragedy and folly only in human societies, never in the natural Dharma world! Stupefied specialists call these smart bombs, a successful operation; they engage in prosecuting, shooting, showing, commenting sagaciously.

Ego-bubbles, nation-foam, war-waves brew and burst. The great ocean underneath stays solid and serene in truth and peace, undisturbed and unagitated. Bubbles and foam neither reflect reality nor settle in peace. Cessation of fabrication in nirvana (cessation of blowing): bubbly ideas and actions stop, seeing immovable immortality, here and yonder unified, beyond man-made madness.

Path of Purity
by Rosan
No other single dhamma, oh bhikkhu, is so uncultivated and unfit for cultivation.
That is, oh  bhikkhu, the mind. The mind, oh bhikkhu, is uncultivated and unfit for cultivation.
No other single dhamma, oh bhikkhu, is so cultivated and fit for cultivation.
That is, oh bhikkhu, the mind. The mind, oh bhikkhu, is cultivated and fit for cultivation.
 (Anguttara Nikaya)

The mind makes the man. The mind lives the life. The mind creates the world. The world makes the mind. The mind makes karma and karma makes the mind. Only conscious cultivation counters the beginningless karma. The path of purity provides one the opportunity to stop and see one’s running on the tread-mill. Upon moving, one runs on and in it. Thus one needs to step off and see the stinky skin-bag in the dark dungeon of devils.

Whatever a hater may do to a hater, or an enemy to an enemy,
Nothing can do greater harm than the mind wrongly directed.
Whatever a mother, father or other relatives may do for one,
Nothing can do greater good than the mind rightly directed.
                                (Dhammapada)

“Bhikkhu” means seeker, not the seeker of food or money, but the seeker of truth and peace. Bhikkhu is not only seeker, but striver, actual practitioner. Only the seeker starts the first step. Only the striver continues making steps. Only practice makes perfect. Only the backward step from karma to dharma, from selfish sins to holy harmony, makes purity perfect with limitless life, light, law, love and liberation.

Regular Zendo Schedule

Sunday
     6:20-7:00 am Zazen
     7:00-7:20 am Service (sutras)
     7:20-8:00 am Zazen
     8:00-8:10 am Kinhin
     8:10-8:30 am Zazen
     8:30 am  Talk/discussion, work period, tea

You are welcome to come throughout the morning, but please do not enter the zendo during zazen. Enter quietly at other times.

Monday
     6:00-6:40 am Zazen
     6:30-7:00 pm Instruction
     7:00-7:20 pm Zazen
     7:20-9:00 pm Discussion/questions

Tuesday
     6:00-6:40 am Zazen
     7:00-7:40 pm Zazen
     7:40-9:00 pm Tea/discussion

Wednesday
     6:00-6:40 am Zazen
     7:00-7:40 pm Zazen
     7:40 pm  Writing Practice

Thursday
     6:00-6:40 am Zazen
     7:00-7:40 pm Zazen

Friday
     6:00-6:40 am Zazen
     7:00-7:40 pm Zazen
     After sitting:  Dinner out

Saturday
     8:00-8:40 am Zazen
     8:40-9:30 am Discussion

Work periods may be scheduled following zazen.
Any changes to this schedule: please contact the Zen Center.