Peacemaker Circles UK

We held a Zen Peacemaker Circle Day in Steve Suleyman Hart's house in Leeds on Saturday. We began at lunchtime with some excellent home-made stew (by Steve). Then we spent a relaxing hour listening to sounds of nature and wild-life from Ayre's Rock in Australia, on an album called the 'Experience of Uluru' from www.listeningearth.com. After that we began discussing another of the Five Buddha Energies, following on from the last meeting. This discussion didn't get too far however, because several people expressed that they didn't really want to study a new system of ideas and symbols, but would rather focus on simple meditation practices. This led into a Council circle where we explored what our underlying reasons for coming together are, which was very frank and honest. We had tea and biscuits to finish, and discussed the possibility of offering two halves to the day next time- in the morning, study (such as Five Buddha Families) for those who would like to ...

I'm delighted to let everyone know that on Easter Sunday, 24th April 2011, Barbara and Roland Wegmueller were given Dharma Transmission as "Sensei" by Roshi Bernie Glassman in the Zen Peacemakers lineage, flowing down from the Japanese lineage of his teacher Taizan Maezumi Roshi. The Wegmuellers, based in Switzerland, are our senior link to the Zen Peacemakers here in Europe... The rite of passage of becoming a Sensei marks full entry into life as an independent (but interconnected!) teacher in the Zen lineage. Since Barbara and Roland also focus on the Zen Peacemaker Circles, Bernie's experiment in less-hierarchical Zen, the role will I imagine also function as something like "Great Elder" for those of us training in Circle Zen. The Wegmuellers are already Circle Dharmaholders (visionholders and teachers) in Circle Zen, and Zen Buddhist Preceptors, empowered to pass on the Buddhist lineage. The ceremony took place in New York during one of Bernie's ...

On Thursday's monthly Great Heart Circle we were lucky to have some live meditation music played by Mike Petterson and his friend Richard. They used wooden flute, guitar, tabla and bells. To link into this, we had a short workshop on 'Whirling', the dance of the Mevlevi dervishes from Turkey, exploring how this relates to Zen meditation. We learned a simplified form of the movement together, then tried it out during the live music. It was a good evening- the music was great, I hope we have it again!