Sangha Life
A Publication of the Missouri Zen Center

December 2003-January 2004

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 December and January
• December 15: Due date for input to Long Range Planning Committee
• December 21: Board Meeting
• December 27-28: Sesshin
• December 28: Lay Ordination and Potluck Dinner
• December 31: New Year's Eve Sitting and Potluck Dinner
• January 4: Board Meeting

Rosan returns in mid December
We welcome our teacher Rosan back for the winter holidays. He is expected to arrive on December 17 and to remain here through January 11. Please come and sit with us before, during, and after his time in St. Louis.
Sesshin and Lay Ordination, 
December 27-28
The Zen Center will offer a day and a half sesshin on Saturday, December 27 starting at 6:20 am, and continuing on Sunday, December 28 following the normal Sunday schedule. Then on Sunday starting about 11 am, we will hold lay ordination for the people who are taking the precepts. Following lay ordination we will enjoy a potluck vegetarian lunch. Please join us for the sesshin and lay ordination to honor and support our lay ordainees, and bring a vegetarian dish to the potluck lunch. 
The Saturday portion of the sesshin includes an oryoki lunch.  The oryoki lunch offers us an opportunity to slow down and really taste the foods—a chance to bring our practice off the cushion into our daily life.
Suggested donation for the sesshin is $30. Those of you who will be attending the oryoki lunch, please contact the Zen Center so we know how much food to prepare. You may choose to attend part or all of the sesshin. We encourage you to try sitting longer than you normally do, whether that is for two, three, or four periods or for a whole day or the full sesshin. Please enter or leave the Zen Center during kinhin, the morning service, the work period, or other breaks before, after, or between sittings. We will post the schedule at the Zen Center and on the listserv.
Sleeping space is available at the Zen Center for Saturday night. You will need to bring your own sleeping bag and towel.
New Year’s Eve Sitting 
and Potluck Supper
Please join us for a special sitting on Wednesday, December 31 beginning at 9:00 p.m. with 40 minutes of zazen followed by 10 minutes of kinhin.  Zazen and kinhin will continue until just before midnight, when the bell will be rung 108 times to mark the changing of the year.  Following the bell-ringing, enjoy a potluck supper  (bring a vegetarian dish to share). There will be no 6 a.m. sitting on January 1 but the evening sitting will be held as usual.
Long Range 
Planning Committee 
Seeks Member Input
A Long Range Planning committee was recently formed to gather input and make recommendations.  Members include Steve Taylor, Kalen (Karlene McAllister), Rokan (Ron Bodine) and Tenmo (Tim Nelson).  As part of the process they would like to find out how members view the Center.  We encourage you to consider the following questions and let the committee know what you think.
1. What do you imagine the Zen Center will be like in 5 or 10 years?
2. What would you most like to change about the Zen Center?
To get your responses to the committee, you can e-mail them to Tenmo (tenmo@earthlink.net).  You can also drop them off at the Center in either the donation box or Tenmo’s mailbox by December 15.
Board of Directors 
Letter to Sangha
“So, it is essential to sit and stop small ideas and actions. Only then can we cultivate and verify great mind, mature mind, and joyful mind which counteracts delusion of small self, attachment and aversion. So, we enjoy the Limitless Life and share with all.” — Rosan Daido
Dharma Sisters and Brothers,
As we approach the end of another year, I thank all of you for your efforts to promote the Awakened Way.  I also encourage you to continue and expand those efforts by committing more of your time, effort, and money to the work of the Missouri Zen Center during the coming year.
At the Missouri Zen Center we endeavor to spread the Dharma, the teachings of the Buddha, to all beings. This year, we welcomed Shoken Winekoff, of Ryumonji Monastery, and Zuiko Redding, of the Cedar Rapids Zen Center. These teachers from our Dharma family gave Dharma talks and discussed the Awakened Way with our membership. We were also honored to be host to Swami Chandramani, a follower of the Hindu Way, who gave a presentation on his work at his Ashram, Heaven’s Place, where Swami teaches and cares for over fifty homeless children. The membership of the Zen Center has been supporting his work for the past year and intends to continue to do so. This year the Center started working with two regional juvenile centers and 23 Missouri state prisons, teaching meditation at the juvenile centers and offering the dharma through visits, letters, and other forms of support at several state prisons. Due to the efforts of many Buddhists statewide, including members of our Sangha, meditation classes will begin soon at the state prisons.  The Center also offered classes on Voluntary Simplicity and Challenging Corporate Power. 
This year, as we do every year, we held a Hosta Sale at the Center on the Saturday before Mother’s Day. We also sold vegetarian food and fruit slushies at the Japanese Festival, during the Labor Day weekend. Both events raise funds to finance the day to day operation of the Zen Center. Proceeds from both events were less than average due to rainy weather.
We have created a planning committee that will meet and gather member input to determine the direction that our Zen Center should take in the coming years. We are researching the possibility of procuring land for a retreat and training center. To make this big step we must have a commitment of practice, time, and funds from a dedicated membership.
I hope you will join our Abbot and Teacher, Rosan Daido, as he works to build a Zen Center that is an active force in carrying the message of the Awakened Way to more people. The end of the year is a good time to catch up on membership donations and to plan to make a commitment to further serve others. Thanks to all of you!
Limitless Peace, Love, and Light,
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”.

Live Awakened Life!
Rosan Daido
A Greek wise one said, “The best thing for you is unattainable, that is, not to be born, not to be, to be nothing.” A Greek philosopher said, “If you don’t have wisdom, you had better have a rope (to hang yourself).” The Buddha said, “The world is ablaze. The eyes are ablaze. The ears are ablaze...The mind is ablaze.” The world is on fire and in the darkness. Without wisdom, all transmigrate in suffering. The masses (putthu-jana, pritu-jana) live alienated (putthu-jana, pritag-jana), leading a limbo life, lying, exploiting and killing.
Humans are enslaved by matter, money and minds, engulfed in gain/loss, praise/censure, life/death, ignorance/arrogance. All these are vain, volatile, hurting and harmful. Humans are deluded, demeaned and destroyed, taking the three steps of delusion, action and suffering in the three poisons of nescience, attachment, and aversion. This is called “living in drunkenness and dying in dreams.” They suffer in dreadful dreams and sink in the suffering sea. They suffocate in the five calamities of delusion, bondage, discrimination, exploitation and extermination.
The only way out from such living is awakening from the nightmare and attaining to the island. Right awakening and pure land are attainable only by purifying the mind, the root of all actions, action results, the world perceived and participated in. “When the mind is purified, the world is purified.” Otherwise, no legal, economic, political, social, cultural
systems would avail, since they are always soiled by dark minds and dirty tricks. We simply continue “living in the dark dungeon of devils.” The more dynamic, the more devastating. The real countermeasures to the three poisons are the three learnings of morality (sila), concentration (samadhi) and insight (prajna, prognosis, awakening, wisdom). 
These must be actually practiced here and now and continuously penetrated throughout our actions (physical, verbal and mental). No names, titles, certificates, and so forth replace the actual practice, and only practice makes perfect. The habits and habit energy (karma) are so early instilled and so deep-seated that practice must be strong and sustained. However, the simple truth is that karma (action-results) are stopped by stopping actions. That is why solid sitting makes the mind and the world still and serene. It is the “come and see” way; anyone can realize unconditioned peace (nirvana) and unsurpassed awakening (bodhi) anywhere any time, realizing the three minds (great, mature, joyful), and the five blisses (awakening, freedom, equality, compassion and peace).
“Only truth wins.” Only truth/peace prevails, no delusion!

Houses and spaces: impressions of Nepal
by Garyo
Ed. note: Garyo recently returned from a trip to Nepal. Below are some of her observations during her trip.
The Western need for big places to live in, to spread out, to occupy, was not the Nepalese way of living. It hit me the first time when we visited the Mitrata children’s home.  The space of the house was maybe not bigger than my own house in St. Louis, which is 2,200 square feet.   Three people live in my home in St. Louis.  We think that this is the minimum space we can manage. Yet, in the Mitrata home, 17 children live in a similar place.  There is no garden around the house where they can run out and get rid of their energy, only a small front yard with some flowers and weeds.  No playground or anything to entertain them.  But whenever I visited the home, I hardly felt the presence of the children, not in a way I would feel the presence of American or European children.  These children only needed the space they were directly occupying with their body, nothing more.  They did not expand the space with their voices, or physical activities, or attention getting behavior.  It was a pleasure just being with them.  They came to me when I invited them to come and kept their distance when I talked with adults.  What a difference from our children. Recently, my good friend visited me with her 3-year-old daughter.  We hardly could talk.  Her daughter knew how to get attention, with whining, demanding, and all kind of tricks she had learned during her short lifetime.  The same happened with my own children when they were small.  They occupied the space and they enforced it with all kinds of attention getting behavior when they felt they did not get enough.
In Nepal I never heard screaming, never saw a fight, did not see or hear anything that emphasized the “me, me, me” we are so used to in the Western world.  The children had their eating spot in the room beside the kitchen, a space on a concrete floor covered by a straw mat. They had their own bed, sometimes not even that.  If they were still small, 2 children used one bed. They did not have any closet.  They had one outfit for the home, one for school.  The school uniform was hanging on the wall on a nail.  They went to bed with the same clothes they were wearing during the day.  However, each had their own toothbrush.  They were all in a container beside the sink, different colors so they could distinguish their own.  Only once a week was shower time.  Hot water is rare, energy is expensive.  There is no heating in the house.  The winters are chilly.  It was fall when I was there, I saw already many running noses. 
The children are happy with basic things, help each other and act as a group, not like in the West, where we educate our children as individual fighters for the best cake.  The children know how to be patient, grateful, and happy despite their simple life. This is a big, natural gift they got from their environment, which will help them in life, when they are helped by us.
I was very fortunate to see a typical Kathmandu house from inside.  Many houses in Kathmandu are several hundreds of years old. I was stunned about the smallness of
spaces people live and work in.  Shops, workshops, tailors, butchers, all these stores facing the street are often not bigger than an average bathroom in an American home.  Many families live in one room they rent.  Rent is expensive. 
Nanda, my Nepalese friend, took me to her home to show me her house.  It was a typical house in the old part of Kathmandu, near Thamel, the famous tourist area.  Her house is on a very busy street where tuk tuks, rikshas, taxis, motorcycles, pedestrians, often get stuck in the heavy traffic. Despite the pollution and noise, just beside the  bright blue colored wooden door leading into her house, there was a tailor shop where the tailor was sitting in front of his sewing machine and doing his work. The wooden doors wide open, he was basically sitting on the street, waiting for customers.  Nanda rented this space to him.
Nanda’s house is a brick and clay house, like so many houses in Kathmandu.  It is 4 stories high, with an accessible rooftop. We stepped  into a pitch dark room, after bending our heads because the doorways are always much lower.  She had to search for the electric light.  The entrance consisted only of one steep, wooden stairway up to the second floor.  The second floor had one room with two beds, the bedroom of her two sons.  Nothing else had room in it.  A small window looked out to the street, letting only dim light into the space. Floor and the walls were clay covered which gave the room a very warm and earthy atmosphere. The whole house had clay floors and walls, even the upstairs rooms.  We went up another steep stairway and came to the second bedroom, used by her other son.  On the third floor, Nanda had her bedroom.  Simple, but very cozy.  On the wall, she had posters of Hindu gods and Buddhas—very typical mix for Nepalese people.  No closet, no bathroom nearby, not even a mirror I saw. The fourth floor, reached by walking up another stairway, was the kitchen. It was directly under the roof, the roof structures visible.  There was only a simple gas cooking stove, a shelf with some dishes, and a storage place which was in the area under the slope of the roof, too narrow to use for anything else.  Dishes were washed outside on a little balcony leading into the inner court.  From here, stairs led up to the roof, my favorite place.  The roof was covered by an aluminum sheet, but I could step on it.  This roof was used to dry laundry.  It had an absolutely stunning view over the rooftops of Kathmandu.  Beautiful little garden terraces with flowerpots became visible, and the big sky with clear, clean air.  It was great being up there.
Nanda had been living in this house since her marriage.  She raised 4 boys in it.  I did not see any space for dining, nor did I see a shower.  However, I might have missed that, because I did not ask about it.  Her kids are now betweem 19 and 25.  They would like to live in a modern, concrete house.  I understand that; however, I was intrigued by the charm, simplicity, and simple beauty  of their house.
Behind Locked Doors
by Kalen
The prison project began about a year ago with a single letter from an inmate at Bowling Green Correctional Center. Since then it has grown into the formation of a Buddhist group that will go into 23 prisons statewide and offer classes and meditation periods. 
After answering a few letters to inmates we discovered that Buddhist practice in Missouri state prisons was limited to “level 1” practice.  This meant that a Buddhist prisoner could have certain meditation supports such as a rug, a picture, or a small altar in his cell, but he had to meditate alone in his cell.  Since most cells are about 8x10 feet in size and house 2 inmates, the climate is not the best for meditation.  A prisoner’s “cellie” might be listening to music or watching a raucous television show while he is trying to sit quietly counting his breaths.  Because many of the inmates had become interested in Buddhism only after being locked up, they had not received instruction on how to sit or meditate. Our group set a goal of bringing Buddhist practice in state prisons up to “level 2”, meaning that Buddhist prisoners can meet in groups to meditate and receive teachings but only when an outside volunteer/teacher is present. This would provide a further grounding in Buddhist practice for those prisoners desiring it.
This summer, after petitioning and filling out loads of paperwork, our group went to Jefferson City and met with the Department of Corrections Religious Advisory Committee.  Shortly afterwards we were approved for “level 2” practice.  
Because what is offered in one prison in the state needs to be offered in all of them, our group formed three teams: one covering the Kansas City area and western Missouri, one covering central Missouri and one covering eastern Missouri.  These teams consists of Zen, Chan, Insight Meditation, Tibetan and Vipassana Buddhists. All the teachers have to go through state-offered training, receive TB tests, and get certain immunizations. At this point we’re almost ready to start our first classes.
In the meantime volunteers at the Missouri Zen Center made 50 zafus for the prisoners as well as raising the money for the materials.  Many members of the Zen Center are visiting and providing support for individual prisoners. Missouri Zen Center members have donated books and magazines, written letters, and reached out in other ways to help these men. We have started a monthly newsletter to publish their articles and distribute it to all prisoners asking for it. 
This program can use volunteers in many different ways.  There is no funding for the program and individuals are paying their own transportation costs to visit, paying for printing the newsletter and mailing, and purchasing books and paying shipping costs.  Besides financial help we could use more letter writers, visitors, and someone to mail the packages out. If you are interested in learning more about the program or helping in any way, contact Kalen at kalen1@aol.com.