Sunday, May 4

A few weekends ago a few members of our sangha celebrated Earth Day by joyfully participating in the Earth Holding Theme Weekend at Deer Park Monastery. Brother Phap Ho gave a talk where he gently invites us to look at our world with open eyes. He encourages us to see that we are not separate from the trees, the rocks and other humans. We have the potential to wake up to our true boddhisattva nature to protect the Earth and nurture the boddhisattva in others. Marge will bring to our sangha some of the highlights from the weekend and will share part of Thay’s Letter to Mother Earth. We will walk peacefully upon Earth, sit together in meditation, and share our aspirations for appreciating this amazing home of ours.

Sunday, April 27

Keith will facilitate this Sunday:

The monastics at Plum Village spent the 3 month winter retreat in the deep practice of understand our mind. Thay wrote a book about it called Understanding Our Mind. All the Dharma talks from the retreat are online at tnhaudio.org. I have enjoyed listening to them all and contemplating the teachings along with the monastics. I'll share some of my insights with you and lead us in a practice designed to awaken us to the nature of our minds and heal and transform our consciousness, our experience of being alive. The Buddha handed us down a very powerful and complete guided meditation practice in the Sutra on the Full Awareness of Breathing, the 16 breathing practices, and we'll use them to understand and transform our minds.