BRC Online Events and SANGHA SUPPORT - Letters from lockdown - 22 May 2020

The Buddhist Retreat Centre

Online Programme May and June

News From Ixopo

For those who have been waiting patiently for the reprint of the BRC’s innovative recipe book: “The Cake The Buddha Ate”, we are pleased to announce that the Cake has risen again!

After being out of print for a couple of years, the book is at last back on our shelves with all the BRC’s favourites like “Beans in a sizzle”, “The good shepherd’s pie” and “Cry the beloved crunchies” to tempt the palate. If you would like to order the “Cake” to support the BRC, please call the office on 0878901687 or email: .

We are also putting together a “Care Package” for those who would like to send a ‘friendship gift’ to someone to lift their spirits. With a recipe book, you can add a beautiful Woza Moya “Labyrinth Bag”, or Sock Monkey or embroidered card or cushion cover, some pure Japanese incense or a mala bead necklace.

Psychoneuroimmunology With Dr Ian Weinberg - In Your Home

Ian Weinberg, a neurosurgeon and pioneer in PNI, has led his renowned retreat “A neurosurgeon probes wellness and performance: Psychoneuroimmunology: PNI” for 12 years, twice a year, at the BRC. His retreats are hugely popular and always fully subscribed to.

In these uncomfortable times in which we are challenged at every level of our being - physical, psychological and emotional - Ian’s expertise and insights will provide one with practical tools to explore optimal, integrated wellness, and to understand how our thoughts inform our immune system - and how by reframing the way we react to the world around us, we can completely alter our health and quality of life.

Ian is offering to assist the BRC to raise funds to ensure its continuity. He has uploaded his full, comprehensive, PNI weekend retreat onto his website in 5 edited modules: See www.neuronostic.com under COURSES – ONLINE MENTORING COURSES. The programme includes slides in PDF format, an online diagnostic and workbook.

If you would like to support this fund-raising venture, please consider purchasing his online programme through the BRC at a significantly discounted price (R3,000) relative to the online listed price (R5,500). Proceeds will go to the BRC.

To register, please contact Annie Sanders in the office on 0878091687 or for details on registration and payment.

Thank you to all our BRC friends for once again showing what the BRC means to you!
We miss you all and are holding you in our hearts.

With affection,

Louis

Poet, author and Zen teacher, Antony Osler, was the first resident teacher at the BRC forty years ago.

Reflections From Poplar Grove

Another week has passed in lockdown. Despite our mutterings, we are becoming accustomed to the routine. Regularity, repetition and routine are part of our lives. They are how we run households, raise children, feed animals, thread a needle, and maintain sanity in the workplace. It is also a feature of monastic life; doing simple things over and over again. Boring? Of course! The practice of meditation is itself a set-up for boredom. We sit without moving and are asked to pay attention to our breathing or to count the breath. And when we try it, we find that it is impossible – some days we can hardly count to 2. Our idea of ourselves as heroic meditators is blown to pieces. Our idea of meditation as a continuous state of thought-free bliss is demolished. We either have to start again or go home. If we go home, the prospect of a life-beyond-self still tickles us and won’t let go. If we are willing to start again, we have a chance to let go of our ideas about meditation, our ideas about ourselves, and be willing to find out more about boredom. We will find that sometimes we are bored to desperation. But if we keep going, if we allow ourselves to be bored to death, we may discover something interesting and alive inside of it. Boredom is a gateway. What will we find there? Go look.

With great sadness we have just cancelled our winter retreat. So Margie and I are asking ourselves how we can best support our sangha during this time. For the cancelled retreatants Margie is sending some zendo texts and then some Dharma talks will follow during that week. The two of us will be following a simplified retreat schedule in the zendo at Poplar Grove – sitting, walking, chanting, working….. Whatever comes, we just sit zazen. In the Zen tradition this is spoken of as practising ‘for all beings.’ Doing something for all beings does not mean meditating with a pious sentiment in our minds. It means letting go of all thought of self and other; it means sitting completely, allowing the mind’s scenery to come and go, finding the blue sky and making the blue sky our direction. So practising ‘for all beings’, as the Bodhisattva vow asks us to do, is simply to give ourselves 100% to whatever we are doing. In this, the sense of self and other is absorbed into the greater activity of living life completely.

So we can all do zazen at home. But what about the rest of our life? My Zen practice does not stop when I get up from my cushion or my chair. Lockdown is a unique opportunity for each person to take stock and re-shape their life. In a time of uncertainty, what is truly important? How will I prepare food, eat it and clean up? What food do I eat? What about my housework, my reading, my relationship with my spouse or children or neighbour or cat or society? How about learning new skills, looking at health, energy, fitness, hobbies? It is for each of us to take responsibility for this. My monk preceptor, the late Sasaki Roshi, used to say, ‘Taking responsibility for my life is called compassion.’ To the extent that we attend to this, lockdown can become the moment that turns our life around. If we give ourselves to this question, our response will appear naturally from our selflessness, or (to use once more the words of the Kodo Uchiyama) it will arise naturally from the middle of our life. In this, too, we can begin to embody the words ‘a life for all beings.’

All this is the koan of our time; how will we respond? How will this pandemic define my life and the life of the society in which I live? How can I emerge from this with my head held high? These are such wonderful, important questions. Among the many fears that surface during lockdown, my greatest is that I fail to use this chance to make my life sing.

With great affection and respect to you all, as always.
Antony Dae Chong and Margie Tae Ja, Osho

Hold Onto Yourself. This Too Will Pass.

The BRC Team is eternally optimistic and has been since day one. We cannot wait to have our BRC family back. It is wonderful being here during lockdown, but it can do with having a few extra retreatants sharing our sunny days and nippy evenings. We are seeing the most amazing night skies and at times (well maybe once) the deer were roaming around close to the dining room. It's as though the old stars have given birth to millions of new stars over the past two months.

With love,

Annie Sanders and the BRC Team