Sangha Life
A Publication of the Missouri Zen Center
June-July, 2004

220 Spring Avenue
Webster Groves, MO 63119
(314) 961-6138

Visit us on the web at www.MissouriZenCenter.org
(pdf and html versions of this newsletter and the calendar are available from the website)

Coming Events
• June 12: Garden work period 
	after morning sitting
• June 13: Board meeting
	following samu
• July 18 or 19: Rosan returns
• September 4-6: Japanese Festival

See the articles for more information on each of these events. Check the listserv or the closet door at the Zen Center for events scheduled after press time.

Rosan Returns to St. Louis in July
We expect our teacher Rosan to return to St. Louis during the second half of July, probably around July 18 or 19. He will remain in St. Louis until October 3. We wish him a safe trip and look forward to sitting with him. Please come sit with us before, during, and after Rosan’s time in St. Louis!
Japanese Festival, Labor Day Weekend
Our biggest fundraising event of the year will occur on Labor Day weekend, which this year is Saturday, September 4 through Monday, September 6, when the Zen Center runs a food booth at the Japanese Festival taking place at the Missouri Botanical Garden. For many people in our sangha, the food booth, or Rosan’s talks during the Festival, have been their introduction to the Zen Center or to the practice of Zen. Thus this event is not only an important fundraiser, helping to keep the Zen Center in operation, but is also an opportunity to put our practice into action and to bring it to the wider public. It takes many volunteers to make our food booth run safely and in an enjoyable manner for all involved. Please plan to spend a few hours working at our booth on one or more days during the Festival. More details on how to participate will be forthcoming in the next issue of Sangha Life. Be sure to enjoy the Japanese Festival’s many activities when you are not working at our booth; the Festival is one of St. Louis’ premier cultural events and is a great way to learn more about Japan and Japanese culture.
Inside Dharma is Incorporated
The group formed by individuals from several Buddhist organizations across Missouri to work with prisoners in the Missouri state prison system is now officially incorporated as “Inside Dharma, Inc.”  
We also have a new mailing address...
Inside Dharma, Inc.
P.O. Box 220721
Kirkwood, MO 63122
The next step will be to go for 501C3 not-for-profit status and then do some fund-raising and grant writing.
If anyone would like to make a donation and have one prison newsletter put out in their name, it would be greatly appreciated.
Storm Damage                  at the Zen Center
One of a series of severe thunderstorms with high winds, hail, and heavy rainfall to strike the St. Louis region during the period of May 24 through May 27 brought down the oak tree which formerly grew next to the back porch of the Zen Center. The tree fell onto the pond and waterfall, with its top ending up on the neighbor’s garage. The good news is that no people were injured and neither the zendo itself nor the neighbor’s garage suffered any damage. However, the back porch, the pond and waterfall, and the Japanese maples and azaleas and the redbud surrounding the pond suffered heavy damage. The tree did miss the very rare evergreen Japanese Umbrella Tree. A few fish were rescued and relocated, but most died when the pond was ruptured by the falling tree. The tree’s rootball extended underneath part of the back porch and the sidewalk next to the porch. When the rootball uprooted, it heaved up the sections of sidewalk and the portion of the back porch above it. The Zen Center is in the process of getting estimates for tree removal and repair of damages. Updates on the situation and ways for the sangha to assist will be included in the next issue of Sangha Life. 
E-mail Discussion List (listserv)
To subscribe to the Missouri Zen Center’s e-mail discussion list, send an e-mail message to <majordomo@joethejuggler.com>, leave the subject field blank and in the message body type “subscribe mzc”. You will then receive a confirmation message (including instructions on how to unsubscribe). Please only subscribe  e-mail addresses of individuals. Also please be responsible for any information you post, including forwards.
========================
Living the Global Ethic: Preparing for Changes in Energy Supply
Part 3: Potential Consequences of Peaking Oil Production
In the last two issue of Sangha Life, we summarized the first four chapters of an important new book on patterns of energy availability: The Party’s Over: Oil, War and the Fate of Industrial Societies, written by Richard Heinberg. The book’s first three chapters presented evidence that a peak in the rate of worldwide oil production is likely to occur in the next 5 to 15 years. Substitutes for oil will then assume much more importance than they have to date. Chapter 4 of the book looked at each substitute in turn; it appears that no combination of known substitutes will be able to provide for all of oil’s uses as a form of easily transportable energy and as a feedstock for many useful materials. With this in mind, Chapter 5 considers possible consequences of a growing shortfall between energy supply and energy demand. We’ll summarize Chapter 5 in this issue. Next issue we will look at the last chapter, which explores ways we can minimize the suffering which might occur as a result of mismatch in energy supply and demand.
It is difficult for us to visualize a world in which the supply of energy falls short of the demand for it. Heinberg points out that for the last two centuries the supply of energy, primarily in the form of coal, natural gas, and oil, has exceeded the demand every year. Our economic system has institutionalized growth as a given; people expect to have and  do more with less personal effort each year. Heinberg suggests a thought experiment to imagine a world in which energy availability is declining. Start by asking yourself where and how energy is being used at that place and in that moment. You might note energy used for transport of people and goods, energy used for space conditioning, energy used for lighting, energy used to prepare, serve, and store foods, energy used to produce goods like machinery, clothing, and foodstuffs, energy used to supply fresh water and deal with wastewater, energy used to produce and maintain office equipment and the information it stores, and so on. After 20 minutes or so of appreciating some of the vast web of relationships between sources of energy and the lifestyle we have become accustomed to, try to imagine what the scene might look like if there were 10 percent less energy available. Then imagine what the scene might look like with 25, 50, or 75 percent less energy available. Heinberg suggests that given the known forms and amounts of energy sources at this time, what we’ve done is taken a trip into the future, to perhaps the year 2050, a time when some of us, and many of our children and grandchildren, expect to be alive. 
Based on the material from Chapters 1 through 4, Heinberg speculates about possible effects of energy availability declines in various critical areas such as agriculture, transportation, and economics. In the first subsection he examines potential effects on financial systems. At some point, reduced energy availability will translate into reduced economic activity. To see what might happen then, Heinberg offers a very brief explanation of money creation.  He points out that money is created by  making loans, and the process of making loans depends on compounding interest. Interest on current loans can only be paid back from the economic effects of new loans taken out elsewhere. If new loans aren’t being taken out, for instance if new products are made less slowly because there is less energy available to make them, somewhere in the system people who took out loans earlier will not be able to pay back their loan and will be subject to bankruptcy. It appears likely that when energy availability declines past a certain point, a financial crisis will erupt. The effects could include a sharp increase in unemployment, rising rates of personal and business bankruptcies and mortgage foreclosures, and possibly something like the Great Depression of the 1930s unless and until financial systems adjust. 
In the next several subsections Heinberg looks at transportation, agriculture and food, heating and cooling, the environment, public health, information storage and use, national politics and social movements, and the geopolitics of energy-resource competition in different regions of the world. The last subsection, Taking It All In, deals with the emotions that are likely to be stirred by reading this chapter, for the picture Heinberg draws is of “a century of impending famine, [increasing] disease, economic collapse, despotism, and resource wars.” Heinberg indicates that most of us will have a range of emotions to pass through before we can accept what appears to be likely and at the same time work toward averting the worst of the projected impacts. In the next issue, we will look at some of Heinberg’s suggested actions to take in response, for it is his belief that action now can go a long way toward softening the inevitable difficulties of the transition to a lower-energy future.
========================
From Karma to Dharma
by Rosan Daido
Here are the Buddha’s words:

“Go not into the realm of anger.
Let not friendship go decayed.
Blame not one not to be blamed.
Speak not the words of discord.
As s mountain crashes man down,
Anger crashes the foolish down.”

“The one who is unmoved 
By pain and pleasure,
Crossing over the muddy marsh,
Breaking through carnal craving,
Extinguishing human follies,
Is the true renunciant.” 

Here are Dogen’s words in his Universal Recommendation for True Zazen:

“In exhaustive pursuit, the root of the way is perfectly penetrating....
And yet, if there is even the slightest discrepancy, you become separated as far apart as heaven and earth....
Therefore, you must stop comprehending conduct of investigating words and chasing discourses. You must learn to step backward by turning your light around to reflect on yourself....
All the Buddhas...equally held the Buddha-seal and all released their styles of teaching. They were fuly devoted to this total sitting and were firm in this unmoved state. Even though there are a thousand differences and a million nuances, they engaged devotedly
in practicing zazen and realizing the way....
Furthermore, form and substance are like dew on a blade of grass, and life is as fleeting as a flash of lightning, quickly emptied and instantly disappearing. 
May respectable Zen practitioners constantly learn the right form and never doubt the true dragon.
Urgently strive for the way that points directly to the center, revere the authentic and unconditioned person, fit into the awakening of the Buddhas, and rightly inherit the concentration of the patriarchs. Practice in such a way constantly, and you will never fail to realize suchness. The treasure house will open by itself, and you will appreciate and use it at will.”

 We must first REFLECT on ourselves, how long and much we have cultivated ourselves, how deep and wide we have realized the Dharma, how much and dedicatedly we have devoted ourselves to the Awakened Way, Zen, Zen Center, etc. 
And then, we COMMUNICATE which is beyond communication. Words may be explained in philological, etymological derivations, but are never realized without verification. How can we explain shunyata, without witnessing it? 
The universal truth is penetrating through space and time, wherever and whenever, right in front of you and me. But you never realize it without cultivation/verification. 
Furthermore and foremost, we need to SIT and LEARN much more and deeper to realize the unsurpassed right complete awakening and unconditioned peace, much higher to transcend the three poisons of anger, attachment and delusion, much wider to attain the proper perspective and prognosis.
========================
Regular Zendo Schedule

Sunday
     6:20-7:00 am Zazen
     7:00-7:20 am Service (sutras)
     7:20-8:00 am Zazen
     8:00-8:10 am Kinhin
     8:10-8:30 am Zazen
     8:30 am  Talk/discussion, work period, tea

You are welcome to come throughout the morning, but please do not enter the zendo during zazen. Enter quietly at other times.

Monday
     6:00-6:40 am Zazen
     6:30-7:00 pm Instruction
     7:00-7:20 pm Zazen (Beginner’s Night)
     7:20-9:00 pm Discussion/questions

Tuesday
     6:00-6:40 am Zazen
     7:00-7:40 pm Zazen
     7:40-9:00 pm Tea/discussion

Wednesday
     6:00-6:40 am Zazen
     7:00-7:40 pm Zazen
     7:40 pm  Writing Practice

Thursday
     6:00-6:40 am Zazen
     7:00-7:40 pm Zazen

Friday
     6:00-6:40 am Zazen
     7:00-7:40 pm Zazen
     After sitting:  Dinner out

Saturday
     8:00-8:40 am Zazen
     8:40-9:30 am Discussion
     10:00-10:30 am Family Sitting

Work periods may be scheduled following zazen.
Any changes to this schedule: please contact the Zen Center.