Barbara's Visit, 22nd August 2008

Happiness is to reach

the next post every day

like flowing water

free from stillness

and melancholy

yesterday is gone and

took away its tale

today we must live

a fresh story again

Rumi

Barbara Wegmueller, Zen Buddhist Preceptor and senior representative of Roshi Bernie Glassman's vision, visited our Friday night Great Heart Community meeting on 22nd August. It was a delightful and vibrant evening, in which we shared meditation and a mini feast, and Barbara talked about her own life and practice.

She talked about her background in the Sufi lineage of Irene Tweedie, and then how on meeting Zen master Bernie Glassman she felt him to be her Sufi teacher! Together with her husband Roland she joined and later helped coordinate the annual Bearing Witness retreats in Auschwitz, and became part of Bernie's experimental study circle in Paris. They would all get together several times a year, and studied the chapters of his book "Infinite Circle" as he wrote each one.

She talked about the unusual approach to study they took! They spoke of their responses to the chapters from 3 personas... First, their own impressions. Second, Bernie gave them one of the Buddha Families to represent, corresponding to their personality type, and they had to talk from the enlightened and the neurotic aspects of this! Finally, they had to choose a figure from the past or present who inspires them, and talk from that perspective too... Barbara chose a medieval Kashmiri wandering naked mystic-poet woman called "Lalla"!

Barbara also visited Steve Suleyman Hart in Leeds to discuss his ideas for the new Leeds Zen Peacemaker Circle and continue Precept studies with him and Zang.