10th Street Zendo

06/12/2024

Unfortunately we have lost our little zendo. It has become the bedroom/art studio for a homeless person, our son. So for the past six months we’ve been meeting in our living room, with people sitting zazen on the sofa or wherever they want. Now we’ve decided to break for the summer, and hope to find a better venue in the fall, possibly the church on the corner.
And we haven’t been posting on FB for quite a while.
If you’d like to be informed about our sangha send me an email at jannorri@gmail.com
Happy summer all!

04/22/2024

The Saskatoon Community of Mindful Living is holding a weekend retreat at Queens House of Retreats here in Saskatoon May 10-12. Michael Ciborski, ordained as a monk and a teacher by Thich Nhat Hanh, will be coming from New Hampshire to lead it.
It starts Friday evening and ends Sunday afternoon and you can stay at Queens House overnight or go home to your own place. The cost is $155 for non-residential and $300 to stay in one of the little rooms at Queens House.
If you're not familiar with it, Queens House is right on the river, and has beautiful grounds for walking and contemplating.

Here's the poster with more information. Or contact Janet at:
janetmacfarlane@gmail.com if you're interested.

fil:///home/jan/Downloads/Poster%20-%202024%20v3.pdf

08/05/2023

Today we’ll be “examining the nature of unborn awareness”, the third of the Lojong slogans.
Neuroscience may someday prove them wrong, but our teachers tell us there is no “me” in our minds. Search however we can, quiet our thoughts and feelings until there’s nothing but a sense of present awareness, and the ego is no where to be found.

Here’s the link (11 am SK time, which is Mountain time these days):

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07/28/2023

We’ll be looking at the second Tonglen slogan tomorrow: “Regard All Dharmas as Dreams”. Could one actually live like that? And still be an effective person, citizen, parent, worker etc.? And how can we change our decades-long way of viewing the world as solid and real?

It does sound like fun though.
Here’s the link for tomorrow at 11 (Saskatchewan time, which these days is the same as Mountain time):
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/244303515
or come round to the zendo and sit with us.

Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, confer...

07/19/2023

People thought I was being alarmist back in the early 90s - I was milquetoast compared to Lucien Bouchard - Brian Mulroney’s Minister of the Environment. !
This episode is from 1989. Have a handkerchief handy if you listen to it.

"If we don't move now, it will be a disaster," said Lucien Bouchard in 1989 when he was the Conservative Environment Minister under Brian Mulroney. He was addressing the need to cut back on fossil fuels in the face of climate change, saying the survival of our species is at stake. In an attempt to u...

07/14/2023

Here’s a quote I like from Norman Fischer regarding the first of the four key aspects to remember in training the mind: that everyone dies including you (but not me -lol)

The reality of death is the most important factor of every moment of our lives, because it’s thanks to death that we can cross over from one moment to the next. If this moment doesn’t die we can’t have the next moment.
But one day a moment will come like all others but different in one respect: it will not be succeeded by another moment.
“Oh, he died,” people will say then.
One of the disturbing things about this moment is that you never know when it will come.
[addressing the second aspect to bear in mind: that we don’t know when death will come]
Not cheerful things to meditate on, but necessary in order to live a compassionate life?

07/08/2023

We’re looking at the Lojong practices today, and starting with the first of the 59 slogans: Train in the Preliminaries.
This means - for one thing - reflecting long and hard at four key aspects of human life:
1. Its preciousness and rarity.
2. Its inevitable ending - ie. death
3. Our actions matter - cause and effect holds.
4. Suffering is unavoidable.

Norman Fischer shares some wise words on these four points. We’ll take a look at them this morning. Join us in person or online at 11 CST.
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/244303515

06/30/2023

The Tibetan lojong teachings are about training our minds (which is basically I guess what most Buddhist teachings are about). They are based on a text from the 12th century, but a number of contemporary teachers, including Norman Fischer and Pema Chodron, have practised them and written books about them.
I’m hoping we find it both fun and useful to take them on - in particular the 59 slogans, maybe we could cover one every Saturday (or more, or skip one if it seems appropriate). But also the practice of tonglen, giving and taking.

Everyone is welcome to join us tomorrow where we’ll start at the beginning.

Sit with us in the zendo or zoom:

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06/02/2023

Tomorrow, June 3rd, will be the grande finale of our discussion of the 10 Grave Precepts of Soto Zen.
The 10th is a bit of a strange one: Not Abusing the Three Treasures, ie. the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha,
sometimes interpreted as the One, the Many and the Harmony.
They are what Buddhists "take refuge" in.

Feel free to take refuge with us tomorrow at 11 am, on 10th St.
or here:

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05/06/2023

Tomorrow we'll start off with our usual period of zazen, then a discussion of the 7th of the 10 grave precepts: Not elevating oneself and blaming others. I keep thinking if I could just forget my Self, like Dogen suggests, following the precepts would be a cinch.

Join us at 11 in the zendo or online at this link:

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04/29/2023

Join us tomorrow, April 27, for a discussion of the 6th grave precept: not talking about others' errors and faults. Zen places a great deal of importance on speech and the way we interact with each other, not least of which is the way we separate ourselves from others by criticism - of self and others.

04/22/2023

Join us tomorrow at 11 to talk about getting intoxicated and whether one glass of wine is breaking the 5th precept or do we have to be really addled?
On this subject I've always loved Rumi's poem, The Many Wines, which we can read tomorrow:
There are thousands of wines that can take over our minds
Don't think all ecstasies are the same...

Buddhist teachers interpret the precept on not getting intoxicated in vastly different ways, as we will too I'm sure.
Here's the zoom link:

Zoom is the leader in modern enterprise video communications, with an easy, reliable cloud platform for video and audio conferencing, chat, and webinars across mobile, desktop, and room systems. Zoom Rooms is the original software-based conference room solution used around the world in board, confer...