There are many of you who are instrumental in keeping our Zen center up and running, helping to sustain our practice opportunities. I want to express my gratitude to all of you. In this season that is so challenging (and always!), it’s a good time to acknowledge everyone that contributes to the quality of our lives and our ability to continue to deepen our spiritual practice. This is the very nature of our interdependent awakening, otherwise known as the Bodhisattva Way. To the ancestors, living and dead, who have embodied the Great Way and transmitted it to us through the ages, “Thank you.”
To those who lead the sits and you who show up for practice on and off zoom, and the family and friends that encourage you to do so, “Thank you.” To those who teach the orientations and help newcomers get settled, “Thank you.” To our guest teachers, “Thank you.” To the team that puts the newsletters out, the program committee which sets up the schedule, I say, “Thank you.”
To the temple manager who guides and tracks and coordinates so many strands of the program, “Thank you.” To the finance committee and the fundraising committee, who keep a close eye on the fiscal health of Sangha Jewel and continually articulate upcoming needs, “Thank you.” And to those who faithfully send in your membership dues, and to those who contribute generously to our requests for funds so that we can pay our bills, including to repay the members who loaned us the money to complete this center, “Thank you”.
And then there are the numbers of folks who are tending to the physical center, so that it’ll be in great shape when we finally can resume in-person practice. To the guys who have built a beautiful deer fence to give the growing garden a chance to establish its glory, “Thank you.” There are the garden tenders and weeders and those helping to redesign and replant, and the irrigation team. “Thank you.” Inside the building there are those who’ve been finishing the doors and woodwork and planning the curtains for the front sanctuary windows and ordering the fabric, now on back-order. “Thank you.“ Above those curtains when they are in place, we will see only sky.
Let’s all join together and honor, by how we live, Dogen Zenji’s instruction, “Continuous practice, day after day, is the most appropriate way of expressing gratitude. “
❤️ Mushin
