Zazen Schedule, News & Retreats

Due to lack of interest after 15 years Mansfield Zen Center is closing it's doors. There will be no more formal zazen (sitting meditation) for the foreseeable future. There were just not enough committed people in the area.

Thanks to all for your support.

2010-05-31 - 21:02:48

Michael

Now that the smoke's gone
and the air is all clear
those who were right there
got a new kind of fear
you'd fight and you were right
but they were just to strong
they'd stick it in your face
and let you smell what they consider wrong.
that's why I say hey man nice, nice shot
what a good shot man.

~Filter

breakdown below:

(Please be early)
Zazen
(sitting meditation)
20 minutes
Zazen is a particular kind of meditation that functions centrally as the very heart of Zen practice. Basically, zazen is the study of the self. The great Master Dogen said, "To study the Buddha Way is to study the self, to study the self is to forget the self, and to forget the self is to be enlightened by the ten thousand things." Upon his own enlightenment, Buddha was in seated meditation.
Kinhin
(walking meditation)
for 5 min.

Zazen again
for another
20 minutes
People often confuse meditation with prayer, devotion, or vision. They are not the same. Meditation as a practice does not address itself to a deity or present itself as an opportunity for revelation. This is not to say that people who are meditating do not occasionally think they have received a revelation or experienced visions. They do. But to those for whom meditation is their central practice, a vision or a revelation is seen as just another phenomenon of consciousness and as such is not to be taken as exceptional.

The meditator simply experiences the ground of consciousness, and in doing so avoids excluding or excessively elevating any thought or feeling. To do this one must release all sense of the "I" as experiencer, even the "I" that might think it is privileged to communicate with the divine.
--Gary Snyder

Soto Zen Liturgy
(Bowing & Chanting)
for 10 min.
Liturgy (A rite or body of rites prescribed for public worship) In theistic religions, liturgy reaffirms our relationship with God. Zen Buddhism, by contrast, is nontheistic, so its emphasis is on realizing our Buddha nature, the nature of the self. Therefore, all of Zen's rituals point to the intimacy between the self and the ten thousand things. Zen liturgy is upaya, skillful means. Like zazen and all the other areas of training, it functions as a way of uncovering the truth which is the life of each one of us.

Dharma Talk
and Discussion
(when a teacher is here).
A Zen Buddhist Reading,
Audio or Video and discussion
when there is
no teacher.
1 hour
(all times are
approximate)

END

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