Words from the teachers

Dear sangha friends,

We hope that today you have stood, walked, breathed, worked, even danced in the rain. The first thing I did after getting up was to go outside in the downpour and lower the plastic covering over our tomatoes (yes, in our climate they need protection from the rain). The air smelled so good, as though the earth, grass, and trees, had breathed a huge sigh of relief.

How we take for granted the basic elements that support our lives: earth, water, fire and air. Yet too much or too little of each, and we perish. On such intricately balanced systems our lives depend. When will we humans be humbled enough by earth systems we ourselves have disrupted to give them more care and respect?

In July, 26 participants attended our first Mountains and Waters Sesshin at Sea to Sky Retreat Center. We practiced outdoors much of the time, looking directly into the nature of mountains and waters, which is our nature.  Soon after that Michael and I spent two beautiful weeks hiking in the Rockies. We saw shrinking glaciers, forests recovering decades after wildfires, wildflowers past their peak but still lovely, Perseid meteors despite smoky haze, and an amazing array of mushrooms! We walked, looked, listened, and opened to the dharma of the mountains and waters. We hope you have received the wisdom and nourishment of earth-dharma over the summer, too.

Now that the rains have come, and the days are growing shorter, it is time to return to the zendo and sit together in stillness, study dharma, and apply our practice in our everyday lives. Fall Practice Period is an opportunity to strengthen and intensify our practice with the support of community. We want to encourage you to read the Practice Period Guide and Schedule and consider how you might like to participate.

Warm bows,

Myoshin Kate McCandless and Shinmon Michael Newton

Stanley Glacier, Kootenay National Park

Mountain Rain's Annual General Meeting

 On June 14 Mountain Rain Zen Community held its Annual General Meeting, following a half-day retreat and potluck lunch. After the formal AGM we had a sangha discussion about our vision for the future of our practice community. If you were unable to attend, the minutes of the meeting, the membership report, the activities report, and notes from the discussion are available for download below. We welcome your contributions to the discussion if you’d like to send them in to info@mountainrainzen.org. 

AGM Minutes

2014 Membership Report

2014 Activities Report

2015 Sangha Discussion Notes

Buddha’s Birthday

Decorating the flower pavilion

The baby Buddha in his flower pavilion

Thank you to all the children who attended our Buddha’s Birthday celebration this year and enriched it for all of us by helping to decorate the flower pavilion and making the story of the Buddha’s birth a wonderful pageant. And thanks to the grown-up actors, too. We even had baby Misha to play the part of the baby Buddha! 

Maha Maya and the baby Buddha after his birth under a tree

photos by Barbara Everdene

April Earth-Care Month Report

Mandala from The Work that Reconnects workshop March 28   photo by Ann Gillespie

Thank you to everyone who participated in our April Earth-Care Month events, and who gave extra consideration to your practice of mindful awareness and wise action in your relationship to the complex earth systems that support our lives. And thank you to all those who contributed items to our Earth-Care Flea Market and who “bought” items from it. Along with donations from our Earth Day Ceremony, we raised  $200 which will go to Hives for Humanity, a local organization that supports urban bees and beekeepers. Thank you to Heather Talbot for her beautiful bee art that graced our donation table for Earth Day. 

Living on this Earth—together with all beings

Dear sangha friends,

Peas, lettuce, spinach and arugula are up in our garden beds. Winter wrens, song sparrows and robins are singing their territorial songs. And a frothy white wild cherry is blooming in our front yard. No doubt you’ve been enjoying this early spring, as we have. But perhaps your enjoyment has been shadowed, as ours has, but knowledge of the harsh winter that folks in eastern Canada are still enduring, and the prospect of potential water shortages here later this summer due to the low snowpack. Perhaps we shake our heads, and say “Global warming…” and then mask our anxiety with busyness and distraction. Our practice asks us not to turn away, and yet we doubt what difference our small efforts can make.

You may notice that several of our events in the coming month  this quandary—how can we respond to what’s happening to our world? How do we live with plants, animals, earth systems, and each other in harmonious, non-harming ways? It seems, without really planning it deliberately, we’ve created a spring Earth-Care practice period, so let’s declare April Earth-Care Month and encourage each other to express our care for the earth in  meaningful and substantial ways. For inspiration let’s share our Earth Art in the zendo entry hall, and let’s raise money for a local organization with an Earth-Care flea market. Caring about what’s happening to our world does not have to be grim, despite the grim headlines. Let’s care with gratitude and joy, in community.

Planting dharma seeds, cultivating wisdom, compassion, and skillful means,

Myoshin Kate and Shinmon Michael