Taking Part in the Gathering, term 2, 2025

Dear Bodhisattvas

Get to know your local Zen Ancestor

All our great Zen Chinese and Japanese ancestors are local – you’ll find them sitting on your zafu with you in time, and you can’t get more local than that. 

Time to get to know them, to sit and walk and shoot the breeze with them - we call that ‘koan encounter’, responding to them face to face, and heart to heart, and finding in time they have become our own close companions of the Way!

We call many of them into the dojo when we recite and venerate their names.  So let’s begin to sit and get to know them, discovering the circumstances of their lives and times, and tasting their own flavour of the ‘family style’.  We’ll encounter their earthy, direct transmissions the Buddha-dharma straight into our own heart-minds, and also open up direct koan inquiry and play in their company, from time to time.

Mazu, Zhaozhou, Linji, Fayan, Dahui, Hongzhi, among others… and if the journey feels rich, we’ll just keep going until we arrive all the way up to now, taking tea with the Ancestors, getting to know and share the family style of direct entry into reality..

As you know by now, these timeless evening online opportunities now interleave with the regular weekly Silent Sits, with some open group sharing afterwards, led by our Practice Leader, Deborah Chadwick -- happening at the same 4-5.30pm time, on first and third Sundays of the month, falling between the Taking Part afternoons.  One weave of Sangha relations.

And throughout this term, you are invited to join the "Dawn Dojo" , sitting for 108 days in the Open Dojo from 6- 7am, AEST, sign up if you like or just join in.

Also, take note that each term of practice will culminate with an opportunity for Dokusan with Susan Roshi & Kynan Roshi.

Roshi Susan Murphy.

Please note to join this gathering, you must be a member of Zen Open Circle,  https://www.zenopencircle.org.au/member-fees