Steve Wilhelm and an Indian boy whose parents took this photo, during Wilhelm’s 2014 pilgrimage to Sarnath, India, where the Buddha first taught.

Northwest Dharma News will be offering scaled-back editions for the fall of 2015 and the spring of 2016, as the result of a very kind accommodation offered by the board of Northwest Dharma Association.

We will publish a fully updated issue for the winter of 2015, and resume full issues on a quarterly basis in the summer of 2016.

The two-issue relief was granted at the request of editor Steve Wilhelm, as I faced a seriously overloaded schedule in the year ahead.

In particular this was caused by my new participation in the fifth Community Dharma Leaders Program, a training for those wishing to share the dharma with others.

I asked for this adjustment only reluctantly, because I deeply believe in the publication’s mission of communicating the activities of the Buddhadharma community to the Mahasangha. However, over the years I’ve learned that living a life so full of dharma projects that there’s little time left to practice, to be kind to those around me including my wonderful wife Ellen, or to simply be, is not what the Buddha taught.

We hope you enjoy this issue, with so many examples of the vibrant maturing of the dharma throughout the region. We look forward to providing readers like you with more material like this.

Thank you to the board members, Board President Tim Tapping, and Administrator Timothy O’Brien, for this accommodation. And thank you to all of you, who with your financial and other generosities make the activities of Northwest Dharma Association possible at all.

I’d also like to offer special appreciation to Bob Baumgartner and Jamyang Dorjee from the Seattle area, and Tom Kaczmarski from British Columbia, all of whom have become regular contributing writers, completing a variety of stories with good cheer, promptness and great skill. (If any of you want to volunteer to complete the occasional assignment, please email me.)

I welcome any communications from any of you, about this brief respite, about any news tips you might have, or about anything else.