Peacemaker Circles UK

On the weekend of 15th-16th March, Sheikh David Bellak of the Mevlevi Sufi Order, Rumi's lineage, gave a guest teaching to members of the Manchester Zen Peacemaker Circle. On Saturday in Howard's house, Shaikh David gave a generous account of his own spiritual journey and his time in Turkey with the late Suleyman Hayati Dede, late heart-master of the Whirling Dervishes in Konya. Shaikh David gave much advice relating to what the Zen Peacemakers call Not-Knowing, and he gave a rough model of the spiritual path in terms of four stages: 1 Not knowing that you don't know 2 Coming to know that you don't know, and letting go of fixed conditioning 3 A 'knowing' that opens up beyond this (the focus of 'Rememberance'/Zikr in the Sufi tradition) 4 Not knowing that you know! He also led some chanted Sufi meditation with us in the Mevlevi way. On Sunday a few of us met with Shaikh David in John's house and learned more together, then finally visited the William...

The Manchester Zen Peacemakers held their first meeting to discuss posssible socially-engaged business projects, rooted in the vision of the Three Tenets and Bernie Glassman's work in the USA. The latest project over there is the develpment of "Zen Houses" to serve people in areas of urban deprivation, and we discussed possible ways of doing something similar here in Manchester. Eight people were present and gave an overview of their backgrounds and possible skills they would have to offer any project- everything from housing knowledge to community arts and cooking. Stacie said she would like to make Zen chocolate! The meeting felt very fresh and created many questions- hopefully we'll have a second meeting in the near future to see how our inspirations are developing!