North of England Zen Peacemaker Circle, 11th Sept


We held the North of England Zen Peacemaker Circle meeting on Saturday, from 10.30am till 6.30pm. The venue was Steve Suleyman Hart's lovely house in Rothwell, outside Leeds. The loose theme for the day was "Bearing Witness".

We began with a checking-in circle, and then Kim led us in a little Nembutsu chanting- Namo Amida Bu. Then Steve led a guided relaxation/metta meditation following on from the one he did at the last circle... soften/allow/love.

We then read together a section from Roshi Joan Halifax's book "Being With Dying", and explored an exercise together where we look with innocent child-like eyes at the person sitting opposite us and imagine their own child-like innocence present at the same time as their current state. We discussed the exercise in depth afterwards.

We had a shared lunch together- Tom made soup with a pumpkin from his mum's garden. Then we did a 30 minute exercise in Silent Sitting meditation led by Zang. We began in silence, and then we introduced some vibrant Jewish klezmer music... the exercise was to move between preserving and bearing witness to the stillness and our "inner" exerperience, and listening and responding outwardly to the music- even getting up and dancing occasionally. Shikantaza meditation was explored as this celebratory meeting place bewteen listening inwardly and listening outwardly- dancing on the threshold between two worlds!

After discussing this exercise, and drinking Turkish coffee together, we watched a dvd on Trance and Shamanic dance, looking at Orisha dances, Sufi dances, and modern 5-Rhythms and trance dances. This led into a talk prepared by Steve on "Bearing Witness to the UK Zen Peacemaker Circles and the Mandala Principles". Steve considered our community history in light of the "9 Mandala Principles" he learned from the Tibetan Buddhism teacher lama Shenpen Hookham- different angles on how we link together and interact. He asked us to make notes about how we've experienced the Circles so far, and how we would like them to develop in future. We presented our ideas in a Council Circle.

There were many ideas for the future, and our visions both converged in some aspects and clashed in others. We will explore these further through discussions and emails leading into future Circle meetings...

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