February Zen Center Schedule

Check out the new location of the Des Moines Zen Center at 822 - 35th St. in Des Moines. I did and was really impressed.  The following is from the Center's communicator Jon Shelness:

• Wednesday sittings at 6 pm. On April 10th, we will have our monthly discussion group after we sit.
• Sunday, April 14th will be the Dharma talk. We just sit once at 8:00 a.m. followed by the talk
• Tuesday, April 16th, 7-9 pm, is the Intro to Zen class. For members, please feel free to join us on occasion for these important classes. There are always things to learn and it is nice when seasoned practitioners share thoughts with visitors who have beginner's minds.

Please take a quick look at our Website as we have made a few updates. The schedule is all the same. www.dmzencenter.org

Also, we've been posting pictures on our Facebook page. www.facebook.com/pages/Des-Moines-Zen-Center/221408704569569  

Summer at its height -- and snow on the rocks!
The death of winter -- and the withered tree blossoms!

Class: Intro to Meditation & Mindfulness

INTRODUCTION TO MEDITATION AND MINDFULNESS:  If you or anyone you know is interested, I'll be repeating my two session class on meditation and mindfulness practices, 6:30 - 8:30 pm, Mondays, April 1 and 8, for the Des Moines Public School Community Education Program.  It will include regular sitting meditation, a lovingkindness and compassion meditation, standing and walking meditations, eating meditation, and different mindfulness practices, as well as a brief introduction to Buddhist philosophy. The class will be at Roosevelt High School, Room 2870. The class is $30. To register call 242-8521, online at www.dmced.org, or register when you come to class. Peace, Charlie

MEDITATION IS MORE THAN YOU THINK

Friends: Following is an excellent article by Family Psychiatrist David Drake, D.O., who is a personal friend and long-time participant in our Des Moines Meditation Group Tuesday meetings and occasional Saturday retreats. It appeared in the Des Moines Register March 16, 2013,* and details the development of his meditation practice, including the impact our group had on him, and how his psychotherapy patients now benefit from what he's learned about meditation and Buddhism.

Meditation Is More Than You Think

DAVID E. DRAKE*

Anthropologists and sociologists must have been busy in these past 25 years, seeing how human culture and our society have changed so dramatically. We live in a world now that bears little resemblance to the world where those of us over 40 grew up. This new world is one in which we are increasingly bombarded with information — news from TV, radio, newspapers, magazines, the Internet and all sorts of ways that people can contact us, including fax, phone, text, email, Twitter and Facebook.

How do we manage all this information? How do we get respite from all the noise and demands? How do we get our minds to take a break, to turn off? Twenty-four years ago, I made a naive and daring move. I signed up for a one-week meditation retreat in a rigorous Zen tradition in the mountains of North Carolina. At that time, my wife and I had a 1-year old child; we had just moved from Kansas to South Carolina, where I began my first position as a new psychiatrist; we bought our first home, and she had just taken on a new twist on her-then public health career in AIDS volunteer training.

I needed some respite and a little adventure.

I came across an ad for a week-long sesshin, or meditation retreat, at a quaint place called the Southern Dharma Retreat Center near Asheville. I thought to myself, “Wow, I could use some relaxing time like that!” At that time, having never “sat,” or meditated, in my life, I had no idea that I would be subjecting myself to rising at 4:30 a.m. and sitting cross-legged on a round cushion for some nine 40-minute periods every day — all in silence — and for an entire week. So there I was. Stuck, as it were, just me and my head in silence for a week.

We each sat on a little round cushion called a “zafu” on top of a larger rectangular cushion known as a “zebuton.” My legs and knees were quickly getting sore and my back hurt. The sitting mediation was interrupted every 40 minutes with 20 minutes of slow, deliberate walking meditation on an outside porch that wrapped around the sitting hall. Walking in single file, one after the other, some 20 of us with our gaze to the floor and our hands clasped loosely together at the waist.

When I came back from this retreat, I was aware that I was very focused — paying attention to each moment more intensely — as I ate, as I drove, as I did anything. My wife made note of how I so intentionally and slowly drank a cup of tea when I first arrived home. Then with the fading of sitting practice, I went back to my usual ways until I repeated a similar retreat two years later.

Once again, the practice of paying attention — of slowing down — was lost in the return to my regular rhythm of life. Then a couple of years after my move to Des Moines, where I have lived since 1995, I came across Charlie Day, a man known to many in the Des Moines area as a master meditation teacher. He is a retired psychologist who has given his life in his more senior years to teaching the value of living in the “now,” in the moment, of realizing the specialness of living our lives fully in the present. Charlie was presenting a talk on the psychological teachings of the Buddha at a retreat at the First Unitarian Church in Des Moines. I became a student of his work and later friends, and I have meditated almost daily ever since.

Now I teach the basics of meditation to folks in my practice — as a way to learn about and watch the mind, the “monkey mind,” as meditators call it, and to learn to step back and not be so attached to all that comes to us as thoughts. We are all troubled by our thoughts. I joke with friends that if any of us were to tell others what we were thinking through the day we would lose our friends, our jobs and might end up in jail. Thoughts are just thoughts. We can learn to observe them — to watch them come and go — without attachment and with less emotional reaction. It is as though the mind has a Velcro attachment to the stream of thoughts that flow through our experience.

The time to start is now.

Here are Internet resources at which you can learn more about meditation:

 www.DesMoinesMeditation.org
 www.dmzencenter.org
 www.Ryumonji.org
 www.TM.org
 www.shaktiyogadm.com

*David E. Drake, D.O., is a Des Moines Family Psychiatrist in private practice and can be contacted at: ddrakedo1@qwestoffice.net. This article appeared as an Iowa View quest editorial in the Des Moines Register, March 16, 2013. It can be accessed online at: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?aid=/201303160405/opinion01/303160016

Class: Buddha's Four Noble Truths & Eightfold Path

Mondays, March 4, 11, 18, 6:30-8:30 p.m.

Plymouth Church, 4126 Ingersoll Ave., Des Moines, IA 50312, Room: Rehearsal Hall

Taught by: Charlie Day

Fee: $25

Register online or contact Nancy Slotterback, nslotterback@plymouthchurch.com or 255-3149

Or show up at first meeting and register.

Buddha’s first teaching was on the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path. It outlines the causes of suffering and how to end them through eight practices in wisdom, virtuous conduct, and mental discipline. Class lectures, discussions, meditation exercises, and home assignments will assist participants in intellectually and experientially applying the eight practices in daily life: Wise Understanding, Wise Thought, Wise Speech, Wise Action, Wise Livelihood, Wise Effort, Wise Mindfulness and Wise Concentration.

While especially recommended for those new to Buddhism, the class is also open to experienced meditators who would like to review this teaching. It’s the same class taught by Charlie at Plymouth a couple of years ago. Participants are asked to commit themselves to meditating at least 15 minutes on at least three days each week during the course and, hopefully, more often thereafter.

It is recommended but not necessary to use the following book as a resource during the course: “Eight Mindful Steps to Happiness” by Bhante Henepola Gunaratana, Wisdom Publications, 2001. Order from local book stores or online at www.amazon.com.

Charlie Day graduated from Roosevelt High School, received a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Iowa and has worked in California, Iowa, India, and Thailand as a psychologist, psychotherapist, and teacher. He returned to Des Moines in 1994 to work for the Des Moines Child and Adolescent Guidance Center until retiring in 1997. Charlie has studied meditation practices and spiritual traditions for over 45 years. He founded and is the guiding teacher of the Des Moines Meditation Group; leads weekly meditation groups and occasional retreats in Des Moines and at the Iowa Correctional Institute for women in Mitchellville; administers the Group’s website www.DesMoinesMeditation.org, on which many of his articles appear; and guides individuals in their meditation and spiritual practices.

My thanks to Des Moines Zen Center member Jon Shelness for the following email announcing upcoming Center activities:

Zen in the Art of Ferbruary:

Dear Sangha Members,

An Iowan suffering from terrible cabin fever in the deep and penetrating cold of an upper Midwest winter, sought out a Plains monk for advice. Just inside the door of the monastery, the new practitioner wilts: "I come to you in desperation. I have been studying the Way on the Internet. I have suffered great loss and feel trapped by my life. The winter wind and snow whistling around me, is holding me hostage. I am at a loss for what to do with myself. I am desperate. Please help." The monk, bowing in deep respect, answered, "Get bundled back up again, go back outside and shovel the path. When you are done, come inside and make tea."

Commentary: We humans have a unique relationship with the world. We lack the instincts that most other animals have for survival. We are bound by cultural mores and individual psychologies which guide most of our thoughts and actions which, as often as not, trap us in our own head. For many of us, this includes ruminating on our worries and fears. It is written in the Fukanzazengi that we must "put aside the intellectual practice of investigating words and chasing phrases, and learn to take the backward step that turns the light and shines it inward." By sitting with some regularily, "body and mind of thermselves will drop away, and your original face will manifest." When the monk urges you to take action, he or she is imparting an important piece of wisdom: The real practice of Zen is not on the cushion but in all the other waking hours.  That is why the Fukanzazengi says, "Going forward is, after all,  an everyday affair." The monk is sharing the advice of the ancients to find solace in the ordinary, to get busy, and to not over-think.

February schedule: 
Wednesday the 6th is the potluck
Sunday the 10th is the Dharma talk
Wednesday the 13th is the study group
Tuesday the 19th is the Intro to Zen class

For more details about our full schedule and location information, please see our website at www.dmzencenter.org.