CoronaCast This Week

The latest: CoronaCast from Roshi: May 28.

Memorial Service for the 100,000

To mark the terrible milestone of our now having reached 100,000 U.S. coronavirus deaths, this Sunday, May 31, Roshi will read aloud the prayer at the heart of the standard Buddhist memorial service (adapted from the Tibetan Book of the Dead) that we have used at the Center for decades. We considered doing the whole memorial service, but concluded that it would be hard to pull off remotely.

An abbreviated teisho, of sorts, will precede the memorial prayer, and start at 9:28, as usual. Listeners who have a current RZC chant book and wish to read the prayer aloud in unison with Roshi can find the prayer (and whole memorial service) in that book. You can find the memorial prayer on page 44 of the Rochester Zen Center Chant Book on the Center’s website.

Zoom Evening Sittings

We’re continuing to adjust our schedule of Zoom sittings. For now, we’re dropping the Saturday and Sunday evening sittings, but we’ll hold sittings every weekday evening from 7:00 to 8:00. Morning Zoom sittings (7:00 to 8:00 am) will continue, Mondays through Saturdays.