Jikai Vicki Turay's Lay Entrustment

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“I am just an ordinary person, stumbling and fumbling along the Way into the extraordinary position of Lay Entrustment. This position of honour and trust is only possible through the support, encouragement, confidence, and sometimes prodding I have received from my teachers Michael and Kate, guiding teacher Norman, the Mountain Rain Sangha, family, friends, and the entire world. Ultimately it is the gift of the Buddha Dharma flowing throughout space and time that is lighting all of our ways.”—Jikai Vicki Turay

To listen to Jikai’s dharma talk regarding the lay entrustment ceremony, see our podcast page HERE

We honour our lineage of ancestors, acknowledging effort and practice. We take refuge in the shelter of the rakusu.

Lay entrustment is a ceremony expressing the confidence of the teachers in a long-time practitioner, and authorizes them as a lay teacher.

The line of questioners is long. The responses from Jikai Vicki Turai on point.

Mountain Rain Zen is proud of the sangha - we are diverse, supportive, and wide-reaching.

Zoketsu Norman Fischer, Shinmon Michael Newton, Jikai Vicki Turay, Mysoshin Kate McCandless

Myōshin’s Bookshelf

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Myōshin’s Bookshelf

Note: I had hoped to assemble a list of readings referenced in my 2023 dharma talks, since many of you have asked for book titles and author names, and now it’s almost June, 2024… so, here are the titles from 2023 talks AND from 2024!.

As you know, I am an omnivorous reader, and I love finding dharma all around and in unexpected places. Here is a sampling. Please enjoy.

2024 talks

Turtle Dharma

On Time and Turtles, Mending the World, Shell by Shattered Shell, by Sy Montgomery

Tsimtsum: Practicing Restraint

The Taste of Silence, by Bieke Vandekerckhove

Notes on Silence

In Pursuit of Silence, film by Patrick Shen and Cassidy Hall (available on YouTube), and companion book Notes on Silence

Celebrating our Women Ancestors

Women Living Zen by Paula Arai

Love in the Time of Climate Crisis

Orion Magazine, Winter, 2023. Courting Disaster: Romance in the Climate Crisis

Hope for the New Year

Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities by Rebecca Solnit, 2003

Not Too Late: Changing the Climate Story from Despair to Possibility edited by Rebecca Solnit and Thelma Young Lutunatabua

Practices for Pilgrimage

The Narrow Road to the Deep North, Basho, translated by Sam Hamill

Easter talk

The Love of Impermanent Things by Mary Rose O’Reilly

“Spring” poem by Mary Oliver

Earth Day talk

Dirt: the Ecstatic Skin of the Earth, by William Bryant Logan

2023 talks

Bodhisattvas in Our Midst

Artist Tsuneko Kokubo website: https://tsunekokokubo.ca/  photos of her paintings, films of her dance and costume design, with interviews about her life and work.

Bodhisattvas Without Borders

Deaf Republic by Ilya Kaminsky (poetry)

Orion Magazine, Winter, 2022.  Ilya Kaminsky interviews three Ukrainian women writers with excerpts from their work. 

Jaan Kaplinski  Estonian poet  - any of his work

Kintsugi

The Quiet in Me, by Patrick Lane (poetry)

“Poetry, Permeability and Healing” essay by Jane Hirschfield