Asian American+ Awake-in-Life: Zen & Crafting a Life Fully Lived (online)
8+ months Practice Program: May 13 - December 9, 2023
Access to Zen (A2Z) invites you to participate in a program which emphasizes practices geared especially for those who live and work outside of temple or monastic settings! This program will give you the container in which to frame how you can live fully, manifesting and sharing what’s important to you with your loved ones, your community, and the planet.
How it’s geared for you
Currently, most United States practice programs have generally emphasized meditation to practitioners. This may be due to how Zen has been promoted in Western convert practice settings. It’s been a very useful way. Yet, now, with the maturing of practices in the US, it’s time to reclaim how the laity — called “householders” in the Buddha’s time — was a large and important aspect of Buddhism and Buddhist practices.
Therefore, the revitalizing of this term for the laity is fitting in our current times as we seek to make accessible the teachings and practices which traditionally have been offered first and foremost to ALL practitioners: studies and engagement with the precepts.
Enacting values framed around these Compassionate /Ethical Conduct Aspects:
16 Bodhisattva Precepts are: (Rev. Liên own wording. More traditional ones can be find on the web)
3 Refuges — Exploring how to know & be in: Awareness/Buddha, Teachings/Dharma, & Community/Sangha
3 Over-Arching Aspirations — To not engage in harm. To promote life-affirming practices & actions. To know for myself, & with others, our interconnectedness.
10 Guiding Values —- Living to realize & promote: life; contentment; love/connection; honesty; clear-heart & mind; kind speech; equity/non-competitiveness; sharing & receiving; openness of mind-heart; and non-separation/interconnectedness.
These are essentially a set of values which, in the engagement with them, acts as guides for us to see how we can live more fully.
