WANT TO HELP GROW BMINDFUL?

1. IF you have a LITTLE time
.tell us about - any events you hear of, any books or articles you have read
.share your own experiences and questions on the blog
.attend as many of our activities as you can
.tell friends about mindfulness
.send us your ideas and suggestions

2. IF you have MORE time
.write about your experience for the blog
.research community events and resources
.contribute to book reviews for the blog

3. IF you have LOTS of time
.volunteer for events (advertising, logistics, etc)
.become a co-facilitator (with Ray or elsewhere)
.participate in our online discussions
.build our resource database

Most of all, you can help, us and yourself, by maintaining a strong and sincere mindfulness practice and lifestyle of your own.

WELCOME BACK TO BMINDFUL

This is a message I shared with about 50 friends and grads today
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Greetings mindful-friend,

We held our CYM Week &/Grad Reunion this past weekend and it was a huge success. There were about a dozen each of current participants and grads. Thanks to all who made it such a success.

A couple of follow-up details:

1. the CHC will work towards another “reunion” event, likely sometime on a Saturday in late February at the Marg again;
2. there is a ‘germ’ of an idea to establish another bi-weekly drop-in practice group which would alternate between Renfrew and Pembroke/Beachburg
3. I have re-started the mindfulness blog and will re-work it over the next few months to present
a. Announcements of any events or training I hear of for the general area (Renfrew County, not Ottawa)
b. Resources of use to practitioners
c. “mini-lessons” for people developing a practice
d. A forum for comment or Q/A for anyone working on their practice.

More of this will happen if there are others who are interested in helping out (salary range $0.00 to 0.00, with no benefits other than satisfaction). If you have some time and energy. Let me know.

We are the small but leading edge of bringing these invaluable practices to our lives and the lives of others. I welcome everyone who wants to make mindfulness more of a force in our communities.

The “new” BMINDFUL Blog is at http://www.bmindful.blogspot.com

You are invited to share this information with all you know who may have an interest in mindfulness meditation in Renfrew

LETTER TO EDITORS 28

Greetings to all,

       
 LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Here is the text of a letter I submitted to local newspapers:

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To the Editor

The hype and hysteria which has arisen this year around so-called Black Days of Christmas shopping calls for a serious reality check. There is no doubt that gift-giving has a place in Christian celebration and that seasonal shopping is an excellent way to demonstrate support for our local merchants and their employees. Nonetheless, the encouragements for us to act like frenzied animals does nothing but debase the beauty of the Christmas message.
If we are determined to get swept up in any spending orgies this month, may I suggest we leap fully into spending in support of our local and critically underfunded hospitals, hospices and health care services. May I suggest we go crazy with support for Bernadette McCann House, Lanark Interval House and Living without Violence who have worked ceaselessly to keep our wives and daughters safe from abuse. May I suggest we completely lose our minds in supporting our local animal shelters, our food banks and organizations trying to protect our suffering natural environment. If these suggestions are not compelling enough to encourage more responsible spending orgies, it will not be difficult to identify countless other struggling causes who depend on our financial support much more than the malls of up-state New York or the trash-makers of China. This is the season to remember the birth of Peace not the cancer of Greed.

We wish all our Christian neighbours a joyous Holiday,
Rev. Innen Parchelo
Red Maple Buddhist Congregation
Renfrew, ON
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CYM BLOG RE-BORN

This blog has been dormant for a couple of years but, because of current interest ,its being re-named and re-developed. please bookmark the blog and come back again for news and resources,

Ray
December 01, 2011

A SERIOUS CASE OF KARMA

Hi Sangha and Friends

Last night’s Buddha Café film, A Serious Man, stood out on the store rack as a simple story of a man’s loss of faith and his grappling with the events that challenge him. It was that at least, and more. It begins with almost a cartoonish version of events in the lives of Larry’s Eastern European Jewish ancestors whose own doubts generate a family curse. Jumping ahead to Larry and family in 1960's suburban America, it follows a few days in Larry’s life that unfold the curse. In true Coen Brothers’ style, the screen is populated with a combination of odd-ball, grotesquely-recognizable characters from Larry’s routine life. From there we witness splinters of crises of mid-life, puberty, sexual awakening, career, adultery, Jews in America, religious leadership and, yes, faith. 

What began as a comic curse unfolds as the fulfilment of that curse in and as the lives of all those around Larry. The narrative is far too complex to encapsulate, in fact that may be the true message of the film. The usual dramatic arc of American cinema is the resolution of some simple moral issue which plays out on the stage of some elaborated setting. This film innocently drops you into the incomprehensible flow of karma. Rather than a simple cause-and-effect morality tale, this cross-section of Larry’s life becomes the playing out of the mystery of interdependence. This is not a maudlin story of how “underneath it all we are connected” or cheesy example of “what goes around...”. That simplistic version of karma and interconnection has no place in this tale. We see a broad landscape where lives criss-cross, good and evil interchange in a blink and the arc becomes a kind of Indra’s Net where all lives impact each other. No one story drives the drama, no one character is fully redeemed or condemned. The film has no happy or unhappy ending, and in fact , as with karma, implies no ending at all. As with the Japanese Buddhist teaching directs, we view “the whole universe in an instant”.

.... in the Dharma, Innen, doshu

TALK : THE WINDOW OF TRAGEDY

Hi Sangha and Friends

Why do bad things happen to good people? Innen gave a talk on how we might understand tragedy, especially from a Buddhist perspective. You can read the talk here:


http://www.realperson.com/site-documents/dtalk-aug11-karma.pdf


Your comments and feedback are welcome.
, .... in the Dharma, Innen, doshu

RED MAPLE AND TENDAI.CA WEBSITES - NEW VERSION

Hi Folks,

The final version of the new Red Maple site is now available. Go to www.realperson.com

The same link will also set you up to go to the new site for Tendai Canada and to the Flowing Rivers site.

If you have comments or notice errors, broken links and the like, let me know.

thanks,

Innen