Leeds Peacemaker Circle, 11th October
The second Leeds Zen Peacemaker Circle was held at Anna's house again on Sat 11th October. It was an afternoon of lots of meditation practice, plus a Council Circle. The scene was set by Kim leading a Pure Land session. He spoke first about the nature and history of Pure Land Buddhism, especially in Japan, and then we did some practice based on the English 'Amida Trust' approach. We set up a shrine to Amitabha, then we circumambulated chanting "Namo Amida Bu" and "Namo Amitabha", and sat in quiet for a while too. Zang then facilitated an approach to Zazen-style meditation. First, we sat in a comfortable posture for 5 minutes, trying to find a sense of stability and comfort and pleasure in sitting and having time for ourselves in this way. Next, we sat in full Zazen posture, hands in cosmic mudra, listening to some Japanese flute music- the point of this was to try to 'tune' your body to the sound and the stillness, so you physically became o...