St. Andrew’s Food Cupboard
In the run-up to Thanksgiving, every year, a large basket is placed in the Center’s Link for food (and other) donations. All donations will go to St. Andrew’s Food Cupboard, a local organization dedicated to the needs of the hungry: you can look here for the non-perishable foods and items that are needed for donation (including toiletries and baby items).
From Roshi on This Season of Ceremonies
Starting on Thursday, November 21, we usher in the late-fall run of ceremonies at the Center. Each of them offers a way to have our root Zen practice enriched by the “leaves and branches” that are the more religious features of traditional Zen practice. Devotions transmit the Dharma by non-verbal means – by action, liturgy, ritual, and decoration. We can enact these teachings this month through the following special events:
- Ceremony of Aid – Thursday, November 21. Our annual remembrance, a week before feasting, of the hundreds of millions of people worldwide who suffer from hunger every day. Residents here at the Center will fast that day so that they can experience in a very small but visceral way the hunger that millions of people around the world live with. The ceremony includes the opportunity for participants to offer monetary donations to Oxfam America (oxfamamerica.org), and these will be matched by the Center within the limits of the Center’s budget.
- Ceremony of Gratitude – Gratitude may well be the most sublime of emotions. Come on Sunday, November 24, and have your heart warmed in the zendo on hearing people’s personal expressions of gratitude and by voicing one of your own. The ceremony includes a circumambulation of the zendo with an offering of powdered incense at the altar. Stay afterward to enjoy some special light fare in the dining room.
- Temple Night, on Friday, November 29, when we transform the Buddha Hall into a space for free-form devotions and sitting, buoyed by exquisitely appointed altars bathed in soft light.
- Taking the Precepts (Jukai), on Saturday, November 30, at 5 pm in the Buddha Hall. This annual ceremony, second in importance only to ordination, gives us the opportunity to ground our practice by pledging to do our best to live up to the basic sixteen precepts of Buddhism: the Three Treasures, the Three General Resolutions, and the Ten Cardinal Precepts. Don’t shy away from this ceremony because you think you’re not “ready” for it. Nor will you be held accountable to anyone other than yourself. The power this ceremony has to support our spiritual aspirations is boosted by joining with some 50-100 others who also want to renew theirs. This ceremony really is not about navigating right and wrong, but about fortifying our natural desire not to cause harm. We do that by actually voicing these precepts, bringing us closer to embodying them.
In honor of Jukai, a special Saturday teisho (preceded by 8:30 sitting) will be devoted to the ceremony itself. As a complement, you can listen to one or both of these two recordings from previous years:
November 26, 2016: Receiving the Precepts
November 30, 2013: An Overview of the Sixteen Precepts
Here’s a link to the schedule for Thanksgiving and Jukai; you can also pick one up at the Center.
Paintings by Larry Keefe
Sangha member Larry Keefe is having a one-man show of his paintings at the cad red Gallery, 34 South Main Street, Pittsford, NY. Larry’s show opened November 14 and will end on December 11. The show includes several dozen paintings from around the Finger Lakes and Lake Ontario, many of them taken from Larry’s sailing experiences, and all of them using unique techniques he developed while teaching at the Memorial Art Gallery workshop. You can view an example here.