Special bows for today:
- Please offer bows for Lisa McCrossen, Dainuri Rott’s niece, who is recovering from COVID-19
- Please offer bows for Michael Tieri Ricaud, Dainuri Rott’s brother, who is suffering from MS
- Please continue to offer bows for Jeff Ghazarian and his family; Jeff was a friend of Lilliana Mendez-Soto’s nephew; he died on March 19th at the age of 34 from COVID-19
- Please continue to offer bows of well-being for Carmen Ibanez, Lidia Luna’s mother, who is recovering from surgery for sciatica
- Please continue to offer bows of well-being for Rev. Les Kaye, Misha’s Zen teacher, who is undergoing chemotherapy for bladder cancer
- Please continue to offer bows of well-being for Brendan, Kate Haimson’s son, who is recovering from surgery for a brain aneurism
- Please continue to offer bows of well-being for Lilith Armitage, Shannon Bergman’s daughter who is recovering from knee surgery
Our new ZHS on-line schedule (go to our
website for more information: zenheartsangha.org):
- Mondays: 7-8:30pm - zazen, short service, lecture/discussion
- Tuesdays-Fridays: 5:30-6:10pm - zazen, offering of merit/bows
- Saturdays: 8:00-10:15am - zazen, short service, tea, discussion/study
Thanks to those of you who were able to attend the Annual Meeting
today via Zoom—lovely to see your faces and share our practice so
intimately! For those of you who could
not make it, I am including the story that I read in my message at the end of
the meeting. Knowing that there is a
strong possibility that each of us will be personally affected by the current
COVID-19 crisis—whether through our own illness or death or of someone we care
about—Kisa Gotami’s story reminds us of two important things: that death comes to us all eventually and
that we are not alone. May you too find refuge in this practice.
At the time of the Buddha a story is
told about a young woman named Kisa Gotami who experienced a series of
tragedies. First her husband and another
close family member died. All that
remained for her was her only son. Then
he was stricken with illness and died as well.
Wailing in grief, she carried the body of her dead child everywhere
asking for help, for medicine, to bring him back to life, but of course, no one
could help her. Finally, someone
directed her to the Buddha who was teaching in a nearby forest grove. She approached the Buddha, crying with grief,
and said, “Great teacher, master, please bring my boy back to life.” The Buddha replied, “I will do so, but first
you must do something for me, Kisa Gotami.
You must go into the village and get me a handful of mustard seed (the
most common Indian spice) and from this I will fashion a medicine for your
child. There is one more thing,
however,” the Buddha said. “The mustard
seed must come from a home where no one has died, where no one has lost a child
or a parent, a spouse or a friend.”
Kisa Gotami ran into the village and
ran into the first house begging for mustard seed. “Please, please, may I have some?” And the
people seeing her grief responded immediately.
But then she asked, “Has anyone in this home died? Has a mother or
daughter or father or son?” They
answered, “Yes. We had a death just last
year.” So Kisa Gotami ran away and ran
to the next house. Again they offered
her mustard seed and again she asked, has anyone here died?” This time is it was the maiden aunt. And at the next house it was the young
daughter who had died. And so it went
house after house in this village. There
was no household she could find which had not known death.
Finally, Kisa Gotami sat down in her
sorrow and realized that what had happened to her and to her child happens to
everyone, that all who are born will also die.
She carried the body of her dead son back to the Buddha. There he was buried with all proper
rites. She then bowed to the Buddha and
asked him for teachings that would bring her wisdom and refuge in this realm of
birth and death, and she herself took these teachings deeply to heart and
became a great yogi and a wise woman.
(From ‘Stories of the Spirit, Stories of the Heart’ by Christina
Feldman and Jack Kornfield)
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Thanks to everyone for making Saturday happen.
ReplyDeleteI am so heartened by the sangha as I struggle to stay clear-hearted and grounded. I sought out these words from the 13th Dalai Lama: "The bodhisattva is like the mightiest of warriors but his enemies are not common foes of flesh and bone. His fight is with the inner delusions, the afflictions of selfishness and ego-grasping. . . . He is the real hero, calmly facing any hardship in order to bring peace, happiness, and liberation into the world." —the thirteenth Dalai Lama (1876–1933)
bows, Kathleen