Gasshō,
Each January for the last five years we have started the new year with a workshop called Your Best Year Yet. We invite Jan Letendre out from North Carolina to facilitate our progress through a series of exercises designed to bring completion to the previous year and start us out in a conscious, compassionate direction for the months ahead. I say often and truthfully that for those of us who are regulars, it is our favorite workshop.

Last year we invited Jan to stay on to do with the Board of Living Compassion a form of Your Best Year Yet for organizations. Just one year ago we sat in the meditation hall of what was then the Mountain View Zen Center, and under Jan’s skillful and kind guidance took the first steps in figuring out what we wanted to accomplish as Living Compassion and how we wanted to accomplish it.

We knew we wanted to make this awareness practice that has saved our lives available to more people. We wanted to make clear the relationship between one’s own spiritual practice and service; to find an active way of expressing that what the Buddha taught is not “ending MY suffering” but “ending suffering.” We wanted to assist people in seeing how offering the life you want to others is the best way to have it for yourself. To help folks make real for themselves the notion that, “You will do for the love of others what you would never be willing to do for yourself.” Rather than approaching awareness practice in the “rugged individual” style for which the good old U.S.A. is famous, to realize the Buddha left us with Bodhi, Dharma, and Sangha to guide us—awakening, the practice, and the community of people who practice together. Practicing as a community means we are willing to go beyond our own personal karma and participate in the interconnectedness that is life.

The past twelve months have taken us to places we could not have imagined just one short year ago. We have realized service is only one way of talking about what we’re doing. The practice we offer is a practice of peace. In the past we haven’t talked about it as such, and, truth be told, it took us a surprisingly long time to make that connection for ourselves. The vision I had in Assisi, Italy, of an international center that would tell the stories of and teach the practices of peace from around the world remains a vision we want to bring into physical reality. But we realized we already have a Peace Center in our own Zen Monastery Practice Center. That’s what’s practiced here—peace! We learn to be peaceful with ourselves, we practice being peaceful with one another, and we do our best to live peacefully with the creatures, trees, and plants with which we share the earth.

This realization has brought us to what is looking like our primary focus for 2006—sustainability. We’ve always tried to “walk softly on the earth,” but with our growing attention to the oneness of practice/community/service/peace, our commitment to being the way we want the world to be is expanding and deepening. Our quarterly newsletter for this winter is full of information about what we are doing to make the Zen Monastery Peace Center (yep, we’re going with a new name) a more peaceful, kind, and inclusive environment. In other words, what we are doing to make it more sustainable.

Perhaps the biggest differences in 2005 for Living Compassion have been in communication and technology. When we say “we” or “our” (in the sense of “our own Zen Monastery Peace Center”) we mean “we” as in all of us. If you’re reading this as your first introduction to Living Compassion, as far as we’re concerned, you are part of the we. (Actually, we consider you part of the we even if you don’t want to be, in the way my teacher would say everyone is Buddhist. Buddhist just means “one on the path to awakening.” We all are on the path to awakening whether we know it or not. Even when we don’t want to be, we are!) Our increased efforts to keep in touch, to keep everyone informed, to extend (constant!) invitations to participate are examples of our focus on improving communication. We’re working hard to be a hub for an ever-expanding Sangha.

Our improved technology is aiding us in communication and every other area of life. I hear myself saying a lot, “This is a great time to be alive,” and I’m often referring to technology. Most of what we do couldn’t happen without all these miracles of the modern world: Email classes, the radio show, messages such as this one, high-speed internet access beamed from a neighboring mountain to a property with only solar power, and so much more.

And with all that, here’s the one we’re most excited about: For the first time in our twenty-two years of existence as A Center for the Practice of Zen Buddhist Meditation, we can let folks know about our finances. By the time I write to you again, I will be able to tell you details about our donations, the costs to operate the Zen Monastery Peace Center (including away retreats and workshops), what the various projects are costing, and, if all goes well, even give you projected costs for the coming year.

This may not sound like much, but it is a huge accomplishment for us. Gathering everything that needed to be collected and organized to come up with a complete financial picture has involved new, complex technology and months of labor, which I will tell you more about next time.

Until then, please know that we are willing and eager for the unfolding of the next stages of Living Compassion and most grateful to be taking this journey together.

In lovingkindness and gasshō
Cheri

 

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