For our ongoing schedule please see our website at smszen.org
Practice Period, which begins February 28 with our “Lotus in the Fire” weekend integrative retreat and stretches through our May 6-10 meditation retreat.
This is a time of deep inquiry in our community, of re-imagining a path for a time which can seem intensely pathless. What is it to be thoroughly, genuinely a human bodhisattva in this time of great uncertainty? Our tradition is made for this, so we enter it with hearts full of wondering.
A practice period is an invitation to listen—to listen to your own heart-mind and honor the calls that come from there. To listen to whales and lichen,
songbirds and refugees, friends and opponents.
Concentration, unconstrained awareness, inquiry, service, whole-bodied expression….these can be called upon in the service of our awakening together,
in the vast community of all beings.
March
Monday, March 2: Sutra Night (Practice Period Booklets will be handed out)Monday, March 9: Community Night.
March can be so cold in Colorado, way past Christmas! Please bring any blankets, warm clothing, socks, school supplies, personal care items you’d like to donate. We will bundle and deliver them.
Monday March 9: 5:15 “Holding Your Seat” A good time to attend if you are new to our sangha and would like some orientation to meditation and our customs.
Monday, March 16: Dharma Talk, Sarah Bender
Tuesday, March 17: 6:30-8:30 PM- Ecodharma Group at Creek Bend
Great Master Ma and Shitou Xiqian meet Our Time of Crisis: What is it to “do what cannot be done, remedy what cannot be remedied” in this time of ours? Everyone is welcome!
Saturday, March 21: Work in the Room with Sarah Bender, Roshi
Monday March 23: Dharma Talk, Andrew Palmer
Monday March 30: Wayfaring Mind talk by Regan Arntzen
SMS Winter-Spring Practice Period, February 28 to May 10, 2020
During a practice period the sangha offers support for members to intensify their commitment to practice in several ways. Practice period booklets will be handed out Monday March 2. These include a listing of opportunities, topics for 5:15 discussions, koans to travel with you (which will be brought into our koan series) and contact info for support people.
MARCH – APRIL
Spring Koan Series
Saturdays, March 7, 14 and 21; April 11, 18 and 25. 10 AM to Noon at Creek Bend.
with Sarah Bender, Roshi at Creek Bend Zendo
Saturday Mornings 10 to noon
March 7, 14, 21
April 11, 18, 25
Suggested Dana: $10 per session. No registration required. It’s okay to attend some of the sessions.
contact: Sarah Bender, sembender@gmail.com
~UPCOMING EVENTS~
Spring Meditation Retreat
with Sarah Bender, Roshi
Pueblo Mt. State Park
Beulah, CO
Tough as Dragon Girl, Quick as Lingzhao:
Koans for Stepping off a Pole
May 6 – 10, 2020
Pueblo Mountain Park
Beulah, CO
Our koan tradition began in a time of chaos and horror in China to meet that impossible time and find grace, courage and freedom right in the midst of it. Koan characters: demon girl and courtesan, inkeepers and nuns, warriors and peasants, frogs and crows, snakes and dragons–we wake up with them, discovering a place to stand and a way to walk where there seems to be no ground.
The deadline for registration is Friday, April 3 at which time full payment is due.
The late deadline for registration is April 21 (and carries a $100 penalty).
Long retreats in our Open Source Koan Zen tradition are moments in time when we, in community, can step away for a bit, replacing the conventions of our efficient, tightly packed modern lives with the graceful simplicity of sitting and moving together, somewhat formally, in silence. The forms allow us to fall, individually and collectively, into a vastness that holds us differently——a deep quiet that invites our hearts to open and our minds to release what we’ve been clutching. In such a container, we take up the ancient stories of our koan lineage, stories that can awaken the radiance and power of our very own lives.
The cost of the retreat is as follows:
$455 for camping and (2) RV sites
$555 for a dorm room
$615 for a double room
$815 for a single room * the 10 single rooms fill quickly
Retreat Coordinator and Registrar is:
Robert King, Retreat Registrar
P. O. Box 571
Green Mountain Falls, CO 80819
Email address: kingrh5722@gmail.com
Phone number: 719-684-0130
Registration Form:https://www.smszen.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Retreat-Registration-Form_.pdf
Support for Cloud Dragon
An easy way to support Cloud Dragon, the Joan Sutherland Dharma WorksAmazon shoppers, sign in at smile.amazon.com and choose Cloud Dragon Dharma Works as the charity you would like 0.5% of your purchases to go to. It costs you nothing extra. We’re grateful for your generosity.
See also Joan Sutherland’s new Patreon site,
https://www.patreon.com/posts/do-you-trust-yr-31567633
This is another good way to support Joan’s work and receive fresh teachings from her.