Thursday Evening Practice

This is a hybrid event: in person at our Hospital Drive location, and also on Zoom at our regular Zoom link (click here). We begin at 7:30 and sit together for 40 minutes. After this Gareth will offer a talk about a segment of source material (e.g. a sutta/ sutra, or extract, or a practice text), then open up for questions, reflections and discussion.

This is open to all and no prior knowledge of the source texts - or even of Buddhism! - is required.

Schedule

• Core Buddhist Concepts: Gareth will pick a core Buddhist teaching or concept (eg kamma, emptiness, non-self, the three marks, nibbana/ nirvana) for each of the monthly sessions as the topic for his talk and the subsequent group conversation. 
• Koans from the Mumonkan, which is one of the classic Zen koan collections. Gareth will be using Shibayama's "Zen Comments on the Mumonkan" as the primary text and translation source.
• Female Stories of Awakening. The primary texts Gareth will be drawing from are "First Buddhist Women" by Susan Murcott, "Daughters of Emptiness" by Beata Grant, and "The Hidden Lamp" by Florence Caplow and Susan Moon.
• Poems from the Attakavagga (Book of Eights). This is a very early collection of Buddhist teachings in the Sutta Nipata. It's name comes from the eight verses in many of the poems. A recurring theme of the poems is not holding to views. 

Future Topics