October 8, 2014
Springs Mountain Sangha Fall 2014 Practice Period
October 15 to Dec. 8
What’s a practice period?
It’s a period of time during which you hike Zen practice up a few notches on your priority list and do more of it….which might mean doing less of something else, or might mean doing what you are doing, but with a difference.
So then, what is practice? I like something I heard Bernie Glassman say (at least I think this is what he said): Practice is using skillful means to bring about the experience of non-duality.
That leaves the field pretty wide open. Skillful means: doing whatever works to call forth the spaciousness, the unpindownable, indivisible and yet utterly individual nature of the phenomenon of now.
Because the more of this experience we have—-the more capacity we have to touch into this experience of what is real, and beautiful—- the more we are able to respond to life with equanimity and simple kindness. And then there is more happiness to go around.
A number of you have already said you plan to make a personal commitment to your practice period. You can design your own, or you can work with a teacher (either Sarah Bender, Sensei or Andrew Palmer, Sensei) to design and support your practice. You can contact us at sembender@gmail.com or alpsensei@gmail.com .
Here are some examples of things people do:
Start your day with a brief reading and a brief period of meditation.
Try a practice of deep bows (prostrations).
Set up (or take down) your altar, and investigate sacred space.
Memorize a sutra or two.
Copy out, by hand, a reading that is especially meaningful for you.
Take up a meditative physical practice, or an art. Or sing.
Put a pad and pen by your bed, and each night, set the intention to record any dreams that come to see you.
Before sleep each evening, read something brief and encouraging, or recite a prayer or a sutra.
Make one act of gratitude, or one act of generosity, or one act of forgiveness, each day.
What does this mean in the Sangha?
During this period, there will be (in addition to our regular schedule) some offerings that will support your practice:
Our Autumn Meditation Retreat, Oct. 15-19, includes evening talks that are open to everyone, Oct. 15, 16 and 17.
I will be offering a koan series on Sunday afternoons, 3 to 5 PM at the Creek Bend Zendo: Oct. 26, Nov. 2, 9, 23 and 30. For each of these weeks, we will take up a koan, and we will take up as companion to the koan a selection from our founding teacher, Joan Sutherland’s manual for koan practice: Acequias and Gates.
In Pueblo, we will be starting a series of sessions on the Zen Precepts. We take these up as ethical inquiry, and as vows. The first two sessions of this series will be on Nov. 1 and 15 (Saturday mornings, 10 AM to 12 noon).
On Nov. 8, Andrew Palmer will offer a one-day retreat with the Wet Mountain Sangha in Pueblo, to which all of us are warmly invited.
December 6-7 we will hold our “Buddha Wakes” retreat leading up to Bodhi Day, when we commemorate Siddhartha Gautama’s enlightenment.
So please watch for these and other opportunities, and let us know if you have a particular request.
It’s a good time to connect with sangha, both offering the energy of your practice to others and drawing from the energy of others to support your practice.
Whether you participate in the community in new ways or not, I wish you an Autumn of entering deeply: entering the time when earth begins to rest in our hemisphere, when living things slow down and take shelter, letting some of the outward impulse rest so that the light that lives in the darker places can be seen.
warm regards,
Sarah Bender