Peacemaker Circles UK

From Zang: I was invited today by the Leicester Unitarian Gathering, one of the two Unitarian communities in Leicester, to facililtate a workshop in the spirit of our Great Heart Circle gatherings. Most of the participants had been to a workshop the day before on the Dances of Universal Peace, and have an interest in Sufism- so the theme I brought along was "Zen Meditation and the Sufi practice of 'Adab' ". We did some guided meditation together, including loving-kindness practice, and held a short checking-in talking circle. Then I introduced the four training principles we used to use in the Manchester weekly group, which are an attempt to bring the Turkish Sufi spirit of "adab"- beautiful behaviour/manners, to our regular training. These are 1) Come to the training house without expectations 2) Come in a spirit of generosity 2) Respect the intimate relationship between you and everyone/everything in the training house , and finally 4) Welcome an...

On Saturday from 11am-6.30pm we held the Manchester Zen Peacemaker Circle meeting in Howard's house. Tom, Kim, Howard, Suleyman and Zang were present. We began as usual with a little silence and a checking-in circle, and then we had a 90 min workshop on Chi Gong and Pranayama led by Kim. Because it was such a beautiful sunny day we held this in a nearby park, and we were joined by Simon Gupta who often came to our meetings last year. Kim led us through a series of relaxing and invigorating movements, and then taught simple breathing exercises. We came back to Howard's for a shared lunch, and then began the afternoon studying Chapter 2 of 'A Deeper Beauty' by Paramananda. The chapter was about the value of our bodies, how we don't appreciate them enough or their value in spiritual practice, talking especially about our hands as an example. Tom led us in the guided meditation from the end of the chapter, reflecting on how much we do with our hands each day. We ...

We had the first Manchester Zen Peacemaker Circle of 2010 on Saturday in Howard's house, from 11-6pm. It was the first of our "closed circles" for this year- between now and the end of 2010 we decided to have a few meetings only for those who have been involved with the ZPC before and who are able to commit to coming to every meeting during the year. The aim of this is to be able to deepen our practice together and work more on understanding what it means to meet as a circle- last year we had many wonderful days of training, but they were more like drop-in sessions with many different people coming each time. The aim is to "reopen to public events" in Deceember 2010, starting with our annual celebration of the Islamic mystic poet Rumi. Five of us attended the circle on Saturday- Howard, Tom, Suleyman, Kim and Zang- travelling from Oxford, Leeds and Leicester, so we're beginning to have a broader geographic pull than in the beginning, when people only came...

This evening we launched the weekly public Great Heart Circle in Leicester. We will be meeting every Thursday from 7.30pm in the Unitarian Chapel, 45 East Bond St, LE1 4SX. There will be guided relaxation, council circle, a short Dharma talk, and silent Zen meditation... ending each week with a celebratory shared meal. It's a delightful unplanned coincidence, given our tradition's links with the Islamic meditation schools of Sufism, that this evening also marked the beginning of the Prophet Muhammad's birthday, many blessings upon him. May this be an auspicious sign for our practice together in Leicester!

Barbara Salaam Wegmueller from Switzerland came this weekend to lead a workshop for us on the Zen Peacemaker Precepts. The venue was Eco House, an environmental show-home set in snow-covered Western Park in Leicester. On Saturday we studied the "Three Refuges of the Zen Peacemakers" - Oneness, Diversity and Harmony, reflecting deeply in a circle about what each of these principles mean for us in our own life experience. After a shared lunch we had some silence, and chanting from Pure Land buddhism led by a member of the Amida Order. Then Barbara talked about the Zen Peacemakers, the Auschwitz retreats, her social projects with Muslim women in Switzerland, and Bernie Glassman's new Zen House project for service in socially deprived areas. On Sunday we had a frank and deep discussion of two Zen Precepts: Not Being Angry and Not Elevating Oneself by Blaming Others . Barbara explained the three ways of approaching the ethical principles- taking them literally; interpret...

We held a small gathering in honour of the Islamic mystic poet Jelaluddin Rumi on Friday evening in Leeds, and then a full day's practice in Manchester on Sunday as a Zen Peacemakers Day of Reflection. Our theme for the day was 'The Voice of the Heart', and in honour of Rumi we explored and reflected on elements of Sufi practice, especially in the manner of the Mevlevi tradition (famous as the 'Whirling Dervishes'). We also had silent Zen meditation, Council Circle, and we read together from the book "A Deeper Beauty" by Paramananda, a member of the Western Buddhist Order. One of our guests, Amitashuri, told stories from her trip through Turkey and Iran, and sang to us in Farsi! This is the third year our UK Zen Peacemakers group has been able to celebrate the anniversary of Rumi's death (known as his 'Wedding Night', his day of union with Reality). He died on 17th Dec 1273 in the city of Konya in Anatolia.

We held a Day of Reflection on Saturday at Howard's, on the theme "Seeing Others with the Eyes of Love". We began the day with a checking-in council circle, then we listened to a 40 minute guided meditation on cd of the Metta Bhavana, the same one we listened to last month. After that we did an exercise based on a painting of Green Tara that Sheila Hixon gave us from her house. We looked at the painting, and had 3 sessions where we wrote down: 1) What Buddha qualities the image and the symbols/colours etc. suggested to us. 2) What good qualities of Ourself we could see reflected in the painting and symbols. 3) We chose someone we know well, and reflected what qualities of them were reflected in the painting. We had 4 periods of silent meditation, one between each reflection, and at the start and finish. After a shared lunch (big feast again!), we did some singing together from the Arabic from a beautiful cd of chants I found last month- half of us chanted "Y...