Peacemaker Circles UK

The weekly Great Heart Circle drop-in meditation sessions are going to be on Fridays now for the foreseeable future, still in Howard's beautiful music room in his house in Withington, South Manchester. Phone 0797 2152148 for more details or email: greatheartzendo@gmail.com Arrive 7.15pm to start 7.30, finish around 10pm. £5/3 suggested donation. Please bring a little vegetarian food to share in our mini-feasts at the end!

Barbara Wegmueller is the main coordinator of the Zen Peacemaker Circles in Europe, and a Preceptor in the Buddhist tradition coming down via Bernie Glassman and Taizan Maezumi Roshi, through two thousand years of Indian, Chinese and Japanese preceptors, all the way back to the Buddha himself. She's coming to teach in the UK for the first week in December- Wed and Thursday will be a 2 day Steward Training event- it's open to all, and anyone who takes part will then be qualified to set up a new Zen Peacemaker Circle or be democratically voted in as Steward of an existing one. Then on Fri and Sat she'll be leading an event on the Buddhist ethical precepts, especially from a peacemaking perspective, and sitting in zen meditation. Sunday will be a "Jukai" ceremony for those studying with her- passing on the Buddhist "Refuges and Precepts". More details to be posted soon!

We had a small Zen Peacemaker Circle on Saturday afternoon, on the theme of looking back over the past year of circle meetings. Howard, Stacie, Steve, Sarah and Zang were present, and the circle was held in Zang's flat in Manchester city centre. We practiced a forgiveness meditation together using a recording by the Buddhist vipassana teacher Jack Kornfield, and discussed a little what forgiveness means to us. Steve led a meditation on "heart wish" - linking into a sense of what you really want in your life, then resting in that sense within your heart. We held a Council Circle on the past year, going round once to discuss things we've enjoyed, and once to look at things we've not been so happy about. Then we studied the last chapter of Bernie Glassman's book "Infinite Circle", about the Three Tenets of the Zen Peacemakers that he created to help people see how to take Zen practice into social action; and about the practice of "no separation...