Zen Open Circle Membership

You are warmly invited to become a formal member of Zen Open Circle if you have been sitting with us regularly for several months and have begun to recognise in yourself a genuine desire to wake up in this life and to support the awakening of others. Belonging to Zen Open Circle is a conscious choice to deepen this process.

The many benefits of membership include:

• deepening your student-teacher relationship and strengthening your community ties and friendships;
• receiving regular email updates on all of our activities;
  
• a copy of Open Secret, our quarterly community newsletter and journal;
  
• automatically receiving early notice and advance registration forms for all of our retreats and sesshins;
• enjoying members rates for retreats and other events;
  
• contributing to organizational costs and insurance coverage for group events, as well as to worthy causes we may support from time to time;
  
• a seat at all Zen Open Circle Sangha decision-making meetings, including Council meetings and the Annual General Meeting;
  
• most importantly of all, forming a clearer commitment to the path of Zen practice and a stronger sense of belonging to the community that supports it.
  

Privacy Statement
Your privacy will be protected carefully. Personal information, such as
your contact details, will not be given out to anyone. The email list of
members shall be used solely to advise you about Zen Open Circle matters and other events connected with our teacher, or to notify you of important talks or events in the wider Buddhist community which carry no commercial advantage for any ZOC member.

Membership Fee
Suggested membership pledge is $100+ for waged members (renewable in July and covering the financial year), or $60+ unwaged concession. or member at a distance.

Payment Options
Electronically - payment can be made by electronic transfer into the Zen Open Circle bank account: BSB 06 2438 Account Number 10094519. To help identify your payment please put your name in the description space. Please email, post or hand in your completed membership form accompanied by the date and transaction receipt number for your electronic transfer.

By Hand - your form and payment can be handed in on Friday nights.

MEMBERSHIP FORM

	Click to download Membership Form

Zen Open Circle’s Purpose & Guidelines

Zen Open Circle exists to enable and support Zen practice and study at all levels through shared meditation, regular access to teaching, retreats for intensive practice, and other community activities.

Each aspect of our structure and program aims to respect, tend and develop the three key relationships which support this journey of waking up – the three Buddhist treasures of Buddha, Dharma and Sangha.

The first is each student’s relationship to their own bodhicitta – the mysterious pull that draws us to the path and helps us endure and be in there for the long haul. Bodhicitta is the seed, the sapling and mature great tree that shelters our practice of waking up.  Our relationship to our own practice is the treasure of Buddha.

The second is each student’s individual relationship with the teacher, a co-creative space known only to the two people concerned, and with the teachings, encountered in talks, koan enquiry, reading and deepening practice. The student-teacher relationship is at the core of the treasure of Dharma.

Finally, the relationship of each of us with the friends and companions with whom we walk the Way, the tending of community harmony and a widening relationship with the world and with all beings, is the treasure of Sangha.