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Finding Your Seat

Finding Your Seat

Daibutsu
4 nov 2024 Registration
  • Currently via ZoomLocation
  • 7:00 PM - 8:00 PMTime

Finding Your Seat, is a program designed especially for new members and trial members of the Centre. We meet at 7 p.m. once a month on a Monday, currently via Zoom.

If you have become a trial member, we will automatically send you email notices of upcoming sessions, so please check for announcements. You can register for the next meeting by clicking on the registration link above and filling in the short form. After submitting the form, please check your email for the autoresponse which contains a link to the Zoom information you'll need in order to join the session. If you don't see it in your inbox immediately, take a look in your spam folder as they sometimes end up there.

Purpose

We hope the program will help newcomers acclimate themselves to practice so that they can become more easily involved in Zen Centre activities. The monthly meetings are an informal opportunity for new and trial members to ask questions about the practice and procedures of Zen. For example:

  • What is the importance of ceremonies?
  • How and why do we do prostrations?
  • How does one become a student of Roshi?
  • How and why do we keep our attention in our hara?

Other aspects of the program include informal question and answer periods, as well as:

  • Talks by members about how and why they began spiritual practice
  • Panel discussions of various practice themes
  • Demonstrations of zendo protocols, such as getting on and off the sitting platforms (tans)
  • How to do walking meditation (kinhin)

The program sessions are responsive to the needs of participants, so please do not hesitate to tell us—James MacKinnon and Barbara Lamb—what you would like to know about or practice doing. You may come to one session or as many as you like.

We hope to see you at the Centre!