New Year's Greetings

Dear sangha friends,

We hope your holiday season was nourishing, with time for quiet reflection, as well as good food, and good company. In these challenging times we need to make space and time for renewal, and the turning of the season from darkness to light is a good time for that. 

We were grateful to be able to ring in the New Year at the zendo for the first time since 2019, joined by both the in-person and Zoom sangha. As we enter this year, what better practices could we affirm and strengthen than wisdom and compassion, the two wings of our practice. Without both in balance we do not have the freedom to respond to the world around us with open, supple mind and warm heart. Michael's calligraphy for the New Year (above) shows the characters for compassion (jihi in Japanese) and the Zen enso, expressing the wisdom of boundless interconnection and impermanence. You can download a PDF to print: click here. 

There are some important changes in store this year for our practice community. Please see the posting below about our new sesshin/retreat venue, Brew Creek Centre.  Stay tuned for more developments in the weeks and months to come.

We want to thank you for your support of Mountain Rain this past year and for your practice--it makes a difference to you and to all beings. 

With warm bows and wishes  for peace, joy, and well-being in 2023,
Myoshin Kate and Shinmon Michael

New Year's Greetings

Hanatsu Releast, let go!

Dear sangha friends,

The last year was challenging in so many ways: Covid morphed into new forms, the climate crisis manifested in forest fires, heat domes, and flooding from atmospheric rivers. Divisiveness and animosity grew. During all last year our practice continued on Zoom and for six months in person at the Wall Street Zendo with precautionary measures. We have been very moved by your steady practice over these challenging months, and deeply appreciative of your generous support of Mountain Rain Zen.

In Japan there is the tradition of purifying the home, body, and mind to prepare for the New Year. A few days before the New Year, people make an effort to pay off all debts and to mend broken relationships so the New Year can be welcomed without burden. The house is cleaned from top to bottom and on New Year’s Eve or New Year’s Day one takes a bath.  After all this, is the first visit to the local Shinto shrine to express gratitude and wishes for the New Year. These purification practices lay the foundation for spiritual life.

Here in the West, we often see New Year’s as time to clean up our act. We resolve to exercise more, eat healthier food, take a class or spend more time with family and friends. This year, you might also consider what you can let go of, how you can be content with having, being, and doing just enough.  Michael brushed a calligraphy just before the end of 2021. The character is pronounced hanatsu and the meaning is release.  What can you let go of this year that will allow for more ease and kindness in your life?  Our zazen practice is really a practice of release—we let go of our turbulent thoughts and emotions with each breath, opening to the next moment.

According to the Chinese zodiac, this is the year of the tiger.  As a spiritual animal the tiger represents willpower, courage, personal strength, and a strong sense of justice. Doubtless, these are some of the attributes we will need as we face 2022. Let us foster these qualities in ourselves along with compassion and wisdom as we meet this new year.

Warm New Year’s wishes for peace and well-being to you and all beings,
Myoshin Kate and Shinmon Michael

Download PDF of Hanatsu calligraphy: Click here

New Year's Greetings

Fudoshin Steadfastness by Shinmon

Dai-i Great Healing by Shinmon

Dear sangha friends,

What a year this has been! We certainly never imagined a year ago when the Mountain Rain Zendo was packed with meditators from local sanghas on New Year's Eve, that the zendo would sit empty for most of 2020. But last night, an intrepid band of Zoom practitioners bravely chanted the Metta Sutta from their home places, and rang in the New Year on a motley array of bells, each in their turn. We have been so moved by your practice over these pandemic months, uplifted when downcast by the latest news, and grateful for your generous support of Mountain Rain Zen. (This includes those who have not been so visible on Zoom--it doesn't work for everyone--we know you're out there practicing with us, just as you know we're sitting with you.)

In Japan there is a tradition of kakizome, brushing a calligraphy that expresses one’s hopes for the New Year. The custom is to write it on New Year’s Day or the day after, but Michael brushed a calligraphy several days before the end of 2020. He wrote the word fudoshin, which consists of three characters, not-moving-heart/mind and then added an enso, or brushed circle with a stylized ox head as part of it since 2021 is the year of the ox according to the Chinese calendar. Fudoshin means steadfastness or patience, a quality we needed so much in 2020 and one we will need to continue to cultivate to meet the difficulties we will face in 2021. In talking with Kate, she agreed that steadfast practice has been deeply sustaining through these pandemic months, but something more would be needed in the months to come, healing. So, next Michael wrote a calligraphy with the word dai-i*, great healing, with the wish that 2021 be a time of deep healing for all. He added a blue enso, the traditional colour for healing in the Buddhist tradition.

Our sincere hope for 2021 is that all of us will remain steadfast in the face of any challenges that arise, as we turn our hearts and efforts towards healing ourselves, our relationships and the world around us.

Warm bows and wishes for peace and well-being to you and all beings,
Myoshin Kate and Shinmon Michael

p.s. If you would like to download a PDF copy of these kakizome to print on a colour printer, please click here: Fudoshin Dai-i

* Not coincidentally, the dharma name of sangha leader Dai-i Flo Rublee!

Songs of Humans--Art by Michael Drebert

photo and art by Michael Drebert

Much gratitude to Michael Drebert for hanging his work in the zendo entry hall during the pandemic. Only those who have attended in-person have been able to enjoy it. So here is this photo for the rest of you, as well as Michael’s artist’s statement below.

Songs of Humans, 2020

India ink on canvas, 4’x4’

This work is part of a larger body of ink drawings responding to life-lived near the Pacific

Ocean.

In particular, for Songs, the inspiration was a result of reading a book, which contains examples

of Ainu epic folklore. The book’s title is, Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans, written by Donald

L. Philippi, originally published in 1979.

The book itself, as an object, is beautiful — a striking Ainu design printed on cloth covered

hardback. It seems to almost smell of the North Pacific’s salted air, somewhere along the

Hokkaido coastline.

But also, inside the book’s cover, is an incredible exploration of Ainu epic folklore, “[t]his

collection and English translation by Donald Philippi contains thirty-three representative

selections from a number of epic genres including mythic epics, culture hero epics, women’s

epics, and heroic epics. This is the first time, outside of Japan, that the Ainu epic folklore has

been treated in a comprehensive manner.”1

I was enchanted by the book, and responded by making this drawing. I call these works

‘drawings’ as I propose that the texts hold the possibility of acting as a kind of picture. Or,

perhaps more suitably, Songs of Humans might be a kind of ‘calligraphic’ work — one, which

attempts to tell a story or give an impression through both a literal ‘reading,’ but also through the

way that it is rendered on the canvas. Regardless, it’s my hope that the work, in some way

reaches back, and across the Pacific Ocean to a time and place of unique human experience.

With respect to this intent, I sensed something ‘universal’ in these mythic epics. Something to do

with the experience of hearing the human voice as it sings, and being borne away without

necessarily understanding the songs’ literal, or applied meaning(s). I wonder if it is no different

from, say, hearing the Three Refuges chanted in Pali, at the end of a Zen sesshin — where a

transmission of intention through tone, form, consonance, dissonance, can leave attendants

overcome with wonder at its sensual offering.

Songs of Humans, then, acts as an homage to the history of human voice as it relays a ‘gift’ of

intention to the human community.

1 Princeton University Press. (n.d.). Songs of Gods, Songs of Humans: The Epic Tradition of the Ainu