Many in our community belong to local practice centers in various traditions where training is available. Others have elected to join the Zen Peacemaker Order two-year training program. With our Zen Peacemaker Core Trainings offering, we want to make the very most important and fundamental Zen Peacemaker practices of meditation, Council, and the Three Tenets easily available to everyone. These Core Trainings are free, offered at different times to support work and school schedules, and repeated quarterly. These can be taken à la carte and repeated as you wish.
“Living for one hundred years does not compare with living for one day and arousing determination for the way.”
– Eihei Dōgen (永平道元)
We will offer a basic, introductory training in meditation, unattached to any specific tradition, that participants can put into personal practice immediately. It has been said, “Stillness answers every question.” Let’s explore that together. This class can be taken multiple times.
Human beings have been practicing mindfulness or meditation for millennia. It is a natural activity, like sleeping, walking, or moving about.
This practice is often part of a religious or spiritual tradition, taking on many different forms. Meditation is inherently unaffiliated with any doctrine or lineage.
In this Introduction, we will briefly present the history of Council, explain the guidelines we use, and then experience a short Council session.
Council is one of our most important core Zen Peacemaker practices. We share Council during our Bearing Witness retreats most every day. In Council, we come together in a small group in a profound way. We create a shared liminal space that is safe, confidential, and perhaps sacred. We each listen and speak from the heart, encountering and experiencing one another gently and with awareness. We are not solving problems or debating issues or making plans. We are making a healing space for each of us to hear and be heard, see and be seen.
In our hour-long session, we will present and describe the Three Tenets and have time to take your questions.
Bernie Glassman articulated the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers early in the evolution of the organization. But these three, simple, profound, vows or commitments can also be taken as a complete practice for our life:
We can practice and manifest our true selves in every situation and with everything that arises, using the Three Tenets. This is a lifelong practice, one we never complete.
Our mission is to realize our oneness and relieve suffering through contemplative social action.
ADDRESS:
190 Valley Vista Lane
Boulder, CO 80302
email: info@zenpeacemakers.org
Phone: (INT +1) 917.633.9550 (USA) Monday – Friday
© 2023 Zen Peacemakers