UNSUI – Dharma Cloud Hermitage

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Please join us for our first day-long retreat that will be held on Sunday, March 14, from 7 am till 5 pm.

The retreat will be a full day of formal practice, including two chanting services, a formal Mt. Baldy style lunch, a Dharma talk, lots of zazen, kinhin, and the opportunity for an informal meeting with a Zen teacher. In the morning there will be an informal, self-serve breakfast for those who participate in the early morning schedule. The early schedule will continue with the general Sunday morning schedule at 10 am for those who want to join later.

In any case, if you are planning to attend, please let us know so we can plan for the appropriate amount of food for the meals. The suggested donation for the full day (including two meals) is $40, for any part of the day including lunch $30, members receive a $5 discount. Nobody will be excluded due to financial reasons. Please see the vice-abbess or contact us to make arrangements if you experience financial hardship.

The full schedule will be announced in detail. Please remember that registration is required. You can use the contact form on this site or send mail to retreats-at-unsui.org.

It is winter, it is cold, and sometimes the weather gets not only nasty but increases the likelihood for accidents.

Zen students like to brave storms, cold, heat, rain, snow. Well, you can do that for yourself if you’d like, but don’t do it on the way to the Zendo. Sometimes it is more prudent to stay home and be safe than putting oneself into harms way. That includes looking ahead: how bad will it be when Zendo closes?

Please use common sense and make your own judgment if Zendo is not officially canceled but conditions are bad. We don’t want you the get hurt on the way here or on the way home. We’d much rather see you in one piece when the weather has cleared.

For tonight, Wednesday, February 10, 2010, we have not canceled as of 4:30 pm. It may be bad later, or after Zendo, so please take care and check before you come (on the phone message 617-491-8857) or this web site if the program has been officially canceled. We trust your judgment to stay home when it is better to do so.

We greeted the New Year with a Joya-no-kane sit on New Year’s eve. There was a good number of friends who came to the CBA to help us celebrate the old and welcome the new. It was nice to be able to share the 108 strikes of the large bell with everyone who came.

The Open House events in January and February were well attended, and some new faces have joined the sittings. It is nice to see that the practice at the CBA draws seekers without having to advertise.

Shinge Roshi gave a teisho at the CBA on January 10, 2010 on the Rinzai Roku. We were very glad to have the opportunity to have her visit the former place of her practice (with Maurine Stuart) and to have a teisho presented. Although there are many different schools and traditions it is very important to keep the wonderful fact in mind that we all are working on investigating the same Great Matter. Many thanks to Shinge Roshi for her generosity.

During the Rinzai-ji Dai-sesshin in January Sasaki Roshi’s Inji called up and told Shuko that Roshi was looking for a particular translation of the Hekigan-shu (Blue Cliff Record) Case 1 and Case 2 by D.T. Suzuki. Roshi remembered that he used to have it, but he could not find the translation. Several scholars were contacted, but none was able to come up with it. Shuko did a little investigation about it on the Internet and found out that the translations were published in a particular periodical out of Otani University in 1968, The Eastern Buddhist. With the help of that knowledge and the OCLC WorldCat (a catalog of holdings of libraries around the world) we were able to find out that Harvard Divinity School should have the 1968 Vol.1 and Vol. 2. Dai-sesshin had already progressed to the second day without translation of the cases. Shuko had the brilliant idea to go and look at the CBA if we had these volumes in the library – and voila! Right there, on the shelf, just what Roshi was looking for. A quick scan, email to Rinzai-ji, and the Dai-sesshin had finally the required translations. Many thanks to Shuko for her investigation and brilliant idea!

At this time we are deciding when to hold our next day-sit. If it does not work out in February, we’d like to have something in March. Please come back to the site and check for news about that, or check the RSS feed that you can susbscribe to at the bottom of this page.

We also wish Taigen a quick recovery from his injury – six screws in his clavicle. We miss him at the Zendo and send him our best.

Shinge Rōshi (Roko Sherry Chayat) will be giving a Guest Teacher Talk on Sunday, January 10, 2010 at the Cambridge Buddhist Association. Shinge Rōshi practiced at the CBA under Myōon Chikō Maurine Stuart and later became a Dharma successor to Eidō Tai Shimano Rōshi. It is our privilege to welcome Shinge Rōshi back to her former place of studies and to hear her speak about a portion of the Rinzai Roku.

Please note that the CBA is subject to a strict 35 people limit of occupancy, which will be strictly enforced. Seating is on a first come basis. The talk is part of the regular Sunday schedule, which begins at 10 am. If you plan to come just for the talk, please arrive by 10:45 am. We are able to provide chairs for those who choose not to sit on the meditation cushions.

On Sundays parking on Sparks Street is not restricted, so please feel free to park close to the center. A donation of ten dollars is suggested.

Please join us on December 31, 2009 to say good bye to the old year and to welcome 2010.
We will have a three hour program from 6pm through 9pm at the Sparks Street Zendo. There will be some formal cleaning to help us realize to not leave traces, followed by zazen, a brief talk, and the communal ringing of the large bell. The program finishes at 9pm so you’ll have a chance to celebrate the ‘scientific’ new year with your friends and families.

Please come and get your turn ringing out the old and welcoming the new.

Our regular schedule consists of

• Monday, Wednesday 7:30pm – 9pm  (except Monday holidays)
• Tuesday morning 7am – 8am
• Sunday 10am – 12pm (please note the new start time)

Open House: The first Open House will be on January 6, 2010.

Please come by the Cambridge Buddhist Association on the evening of the first Wednesday between January and April. The dates are January 6, February and March 3, April 7, and May 5. We will start around 7:30 pm. If you arrive earlier we can send one of the sangha members to give you a tour of the house; otherwise, please come by 7:30 pm so we can start on time!

• January 6
• February 3
• March 3
• April 7
• May 5

It is Sunday morning, and we are just about the start the regular morning sitting. This is the second day of our retreat to commemorate Buddha’s enlightenment.  About ten participants joined us for the retreat, some of them part-time, the majority full-time for both days.

The Saturday schedule looked like this – if you’re ever interested in joining one of our retreats:

6:00 am Sarei – formal tea, followed by the morning chanting (choka)
7:00 am Zazen (seated meditation), kinhin (walking meditation) alternating unti
8:10 am Informal, silent, self-serve breakfast
9:30 am Zazen, kinhin (alternating)
10:30 am Dharma Talk, followed by zazen, kinhin
11:45 am formal lunch followed by 20 minutes of cleaning (nitten soji)
1:15 pm Zazen, kinhin
1:50 pm Hosan sarei (tea) followed by afternoon chanting (banka), zazen
3:30 pm Samu, one hour of meditate action, i.e., “work”
4:45 pm Gyodo – walking chant (Heart Sutra), zazen, kinhin
5:45 pm Closing

The officers were:
Joju
Shika: Shuko
Shoten: Hogen

Donai
Tanto: Dokuro
Jikijitsu: Myoki
Shoji: Jodo

Members
Eigetsu
Taigen
Paul
Eileen
Peter

Participants had a chance to sit for an extended time, chant the entire Sutra Book three times, and reap the benefit of a strong group sitting together. The formal meal also offers a good entrance into the world of extended formal practice and surely is a good preparation for participation in a Dai-sesshin with Joshu Roshi. Participants also had the option the meet privately with Dokuro.

We are going to plan the retreat dates for the coming year and will announce them here, so that we have a longer lead time and our friends can make plans with plenty of notice.

Jodo-e is the celebration of Shakyamuni Buddha’s enlightenment. We are holding this special event in the evening of Monday, December 7, 2009. While the celebrations are traditionally held early in the morning – to reflect the Buddha seeing the morning star on the eighth day of his sitting under the Bodhi tree -we will have the ceremony in the evening to accommodate the sangha.

Celebrating this event is a celebration of our innate ability to walk the same path the Buddha walked and the possibility to realize the same fundamental insights and be enlightened to the nature of the universe. Guests are welcome.

For the upcoming year we – as a sangha in conjunction with the abbot and the vice-abbess – have decided to move the Sunday morning schedule back thirty minutes. Instead of starting at 9:30 a.m. we will be starting at 10 a.m. sharp, following the same schedule that constitutes the regular Sunday morning. We hope that this change will help to accommodate those who need just a little more time on Sunday morning before joining us here at the Zendo.

We have also started a new process in which all sangha members who have received jukai and a dharma name will be responsible for running the retreats under the supervision of the ordained members of the sangha. This will help us come up with the dates for retreats earlier and as a community.