Weekly Sitting/Teaching on Tuesdays and Fridays
Tuesdays 7:15-8:45 p.m. (except first Tues. of month) in "Loka" building

Fridays , 9-11 a.m.   --in the "Gallery" building

O'Hanlon Center for the Arts
616 Throckmorton Ave. Mill Valley, CA

Half and One Day Sittings at the O'Hanlon Center
Usually Sundays every month. See home page for dates and description.. 
For info or to sign up call 415-381-3015 or email vimalasangha@earthlink.net
 
MONTHLY NEWSLETTER 

 

March 17, 2009

 

It is almost the Spring equinox, and with the early advent of daylight saving, quite light as we walk to the Loka building for zazen. We had our first study class Wed. March 4 and took up the first Noble Truth of dukkha , usually mis-translated as “suffering.” I like to say “Things don't last” because that makes things more precious. It's not just about suffering. The next class will be Wed. April 8. Drop-ins welcome!

 

This Sunday we host Zen teacher Darlene Cohen in a workshop on practicing with Pain and Disability. Darlene, who is an expert in this field, will spend a day taking participants through a variety of physical and mental exercises to transform our experience of physical and emotional pain through the transformation of meditation. Darlene is the first of several woman teachers I hope to invite throughout 2009.

 

I hope all of you are receiving the new Constant Contact emails. This is a much more efficient and professional way to send out group emails; if you find they are dropping into your spam folder, you might want to classify this send-to as accepted by your email program (The send-to line is in the header of the email).

 

I know many of you are following or subscribing to my new blog, www.AgingAsASpiritualPractice.com . If you haven't checked in on it lately, just click on the link here or on the Vimala Sangha homepage. I am posting every five days on a variety of topics, not all of them closely related to aging; it is my teaching window out onto the wider world.

 

The Vimala schedule for much of the year is now on the Vimala Sangha website homepage, so you can see what is coming. We are planning more half and full day sittings this year, and other special events yet to be firmly scheduled. I am planning to do more Dharma teaching in a variety of venues this year, including co-teaching with Lama Palden Drolma, a Western woman who teaches in the Tibetan Mahamudra tradition, and leading an Aging as a Spiritual Practice at the Insight Meditation Center in Redwood City in the Fall.

 

“I'm not sitting still for that” is an English expression we hear from time to time, with interesting echoes of what we do in zazen. Of course in zazen we do “sit still for it,” and that is the whole point. The magic of it is that from our the point of view of our frustration, it is totally counterintuitive; we are not going to “sit still from it.” But from the standpoint of our Buddha mind, it is the most natural thing in the world. Sometimes it is the only thing we can do.

 

--Lew Richmond