NWDA News

From President Tim Tapping:
Help NW Dharma Meet Urgent Cash Crunch

Ven. Tulku Yeshe Gyatso leads a calligraphy workshop at the Arts as Buddhist Practice festival, organized by Northwest Dharma Association in March, 2014.

Here in the fall of 2016 the Northwest Dharma Association bank account is low — will you help? Even though your NWDA has been frugal and has cut expenses to the bone, donations have recently been falling behind expenses. The dharma community needs to be generous and chip in, if your Northwest Dharma Association is to continue supporting and connecting the larger Buddhist community in the region. Here are some examples of the work this association, of 110 Buddhist groups in the Northwest U.S. and Western Canada, is doing just in October: – On October 8 NWDA is co-sponsoring the annual Buddhist Global…

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Compassionate Action

White Buddhist Practitioners Gather in Seattle
To See, Challenge and Break Tangles of Racism

The three teachers guided participants in better understanding their whiteness, and unconscious attitudes about race.

In June more  than 60 people, most of whom self-identified as white, gathered at the Seattle Insight Meditation Center for a “Day of Mindfulness for White Allies.” They brought their open-hearted willingness to learn and grow, and a commitment to support one another to heal from the inner and outer effects of racism. They came from their own eagerness to learn and participate in their Buddhist sanghas’ efforts toward authentic inclusion and safety. Our honest and vulnerable work together, to understand racism, exposes some of the deepest obstacles to our personal and collective liberation. Many of the core teachings and practices…

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Dharma Education

New Seattle Buddhist Teachers Tread Own Paths

Happy new teachers Bonnie Duran, Tim Geil and Keri Pederson, at Spirit Rock. Embracing them is Andre Alton Hardy, a former Seahawks player who is now an author, grad school student, and partner of Against the Stream co-guiding teacher JoAnna Harper.

This summer four Seattle-area practitioners completed a four-year teacher training in Buddhadharma  and vipassana meditation, through Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California and  Insight Meditation Society (IMS) in Massachusetts. The four new Seattle-area teachers are Bonnie Duran, Tim Geil, Brent Morton, and Keri Pederson. IMS and Spirit Rock are leading institutions in the evolution of insight or vipassana meditation in the United States. IMS, the older of the two, just celebrated its 40th anniversary. (Here’s a story about a Portland teacher, one of the founders, who attended that celebration.) Together the two affiliated institutions created the teacher-training program as a…

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Dharma Healing, Arts

Buddhas Span 13 Centuries at Asian Art Museum

Three standing Buddhas, made of limestone and marble, from China and Thailand, are as old as the sixth century.

Seattle’s Asian Art Museum is displaying 20 images of historic Buddhas in its new installation, “Awakened Ones: Buddhas of Asia.” The installation is currently on view at the Asian Art Museum in Capitol Hill’s Volunteer Park, until the end of February 2017. Then the museum, a unit of the Seattle Art Museum, will temporarily close for renovations. The pieces come from Seattle Art Museum’s own extensive collection. “Awakened Ones: Buddhas of Asia,” showcases sculptures and works of multiple Buddhas. These include the future Buddha Maitreya, the western pure land’s Amitabha Buddha, and the cosmic and transcendent Vairochana. The exhibit includes…

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Prison Dharma

Just Out of Prison? Where Will You Live?

Long-term volunteers like these are essential in prison work. Left to right: Emmanuel Go, Rev. Genko Blackman, Bruce Munson, Ven. Tsering Motup, Shirley Tam, and Chung Chun Chan.

Just-released prison inmates are struggling to find housing in the Seattle area’s white-hot housing market, while Buddhist supporters and others try to help them, before and after release. The vast majority of inmates in Washington state release into King, Pierce, or Snohomish counties, where skyrocketing rents and low vacancy rates create a perfect storm of housing issues. Seattle is the worst, with an average apartment rental over $2,000 a month, one of the fastest growing in the nation. This amount dwarfs the Washington state Housing Voucher Program for eligible former inmates: just $500 a month for no more than three…

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Sangha News

A Brief History of Nothing Special…
30 Years of Practicing Zen in Anchorage, Alaska

After Sunday zazen and service. Front row from left to right: Cindy Bonney, Genmyo Jana Zeedyk, Resident Teacher, Judy Saha, Ronn Rasmussen and Traci Webb. Back row left to right: John Moriarty, Ralph Jordan, Matthew Rasmussen, Kirby Kauffman and Todd Blessing.

The Anchorage Zen Community is acknowledging its 30th anniversary this year, after evolving in an Alaskan city better known for snow and oil workers than Buddhist groups. The not-so-large sangha, with about 20 regular members, offers a regular program of zazen, the meditation practice common to Zen tradition. The biggest weekly event is a Sunday morning service, which includes periods of sitting zazen, walking meditation called kinhin, and a dharma talk. We also offer morning zazen sessions on Mondays, Wednesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, plus an evening session on Thursdays. For elementary school-age children we offer a monthly dharma school that…

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