Gassho,

I recently had a conversation with a woman who has been around this practice for nearly as long as I have. In the gentlest way possible she let me know that we are just not very good communicators.

Her essential message was, I love you guys, but first and foremost I love the practice, and I would really appreciate being kept better informed because with all these changes I get afraid we're going to lose the practice.

I hear that. I can see that. And, I really appreciate both her honesty and her kindness. With those kinds of feelings it would be easy to lash out or even to write someone off. But she didn't do that. She used all of it as an opportunity to deepen her own practice, and also to offer that practice to a larger community-in this case, us! It's a real gift.

I made a personal commitment to her that once a month I will write to give folks my version of where we are with the practice. I know that sometimes it's difficult to follow the leaps we make. When practice has looked one way for a long time, it can be hard to see how new things fit in. This note to you is my first attempt at that communication, and I would like to include a little history for those who either weren't around for or weren't informed about some of our past changes.

I apologize for my faulty memory that requires me to give history without dates. In the late 1990s I first announced I was growing weary of the rigorous daily schedule required to oversee the Zen Monastery Practice Center and the Mountain View Zen Center. I was recovering from Graves' disease and knew that maintaining the pace I had been keeping was simply not possible. What to do? Back and forth we went with a dwindling monk population that seemed destined to make the decisions about our future for us-not enough monks to run a monastery, no Monastery.

Then, about the time the population stabilized, the economy took a turn. Now we had people, but not enough income. The monks were working themselves to a frazzle offering workshops and retreats at the Monastery and around the county, keeping up with all the office work, cooking and cleaning, growing as much food as possible in our gardens, but we couldn't make ends meet. People had a diminishing amount of money to donate, and even with everyone doing the best they could, financially we were going under in a hurry.

It occurred to us to sell the Monastery and move to a less expensive, more accessible place somewhere in the center of the country. The Monastery did not sell. By this time our monk population had stabilized and gelled into the amazing, hard-working, committed, sincere, and wise group of individuals you know and love. Also, by this time, this extraordinary group of people had taken on much of the work of Living Compassion, simply because they were so energized and inspired by the chance to assist children in Africa and the opportunity to participate in the creation of an international peace center. The work they began doing with Living Compassion deepened their commitment to the work of ending suffering through There Is Nothing Wrong With You retreats and the other workshops they were offering.

We all felt the infusion of excitement and willingness in our practice as we saw our possibilities growing. We were no longer just a little group of folks out at the end of a dirt road, meditating and waiting for people to come to our little comer of paradise to do the work of ending suffering. With this new, more expansive approach we could see and feel the possibility of the entire Sangha working and moving together into a much larger role in the world. Rather than simply getting together for a retreat, we could truly move practice into the center of our daily lives and reach out a helping hand to folks around the world who don't yet know that ending suffering in this lifetime is an option.

So, here we are. We are making Peace Flags so people can live with daily reminders of peace and compassion and joy. We want to start a sewing cooperative in Zambia so good people living in abject poverty can make the money they need to provide for themselves the kind of life we all take for granted. We want to help build a community school so children for whom education is not even a hope can have access to the world of learning that is so much a part of our lives we don't even notice it. We want to bring people from around the world together to get to know one another in a process of sharing and understanding that will make war and violence impossible. We want every child, woman, and man on the planet to be able to have the experience that there is nothing wrong with them. And, we want everyone with access to a computer and a telephone to be able to participate in a regular conversation that will support their efforts to move beyond the suffering of egocentric, karmic conditioning.

We are lit up, excited, enthusiastic, and optimistic. Our practice is alive and vibrant, and we want to share the joy in which we live each day of our lives. We want to share our joy with people around the world, and first and foremost, we want to share it with you, the people who have been with us on this journey, with you, our Sangha.

We invite all who are inspired as the visions unfold to speak up; let us know you are interested, let us know how you want to be involved; let us know if you have questions or concerns. In future communications we will suggest ways to become more involved with Living Compassion programs and, through those programs, with practice. We offer participation as a way to deepen practice, to live life as fully and joyfully as we are discovering is possible.

I hope you will let us know how we're doing with our communication. If you're not feeling included, we're making big mistakes and are committed to fixing them.

In lovingkindness,
Cheri

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