Bushfire, Eugene Von Guerard (1859)
Join us for a morning of collaborative inquiry with Susan Murphy Roshi, the leading Australian voice in Eco-Buddhism.
Susan will explore how Zen Buddhism meets and responds to the environmental disaster at our doorstep.
Places are limited and likely to fill quickly. To secure your place please register here.
Fight fire with fire!
The environmental holocaust of trees, habitats, creatures and even human beings that has raged in our country for months surely warrants our tremendous shock, grief and anger.
Can we meet the hot fire of this time of great uncertainty with the steady, cool, annealing fire of undivided attention called meditation?
'A fire runs through all things' is an old Zen saying. That fire is the blaze of steady, wide attention, offered without qualification. And it is the undivided, seamless, flowing nature of all that is, that we wake into and live to confirm.
Australia’s scarifying summer of fire has put to the torch the peculiarly human dream of being on the infinite take on a finite planet. A planet whose deepest expression has ever been a pouring forth not of infinite ’stuff’ but of infinite, miraculous life.
This climate tragedy can be accepted and taken up as our insurmountable opportunity to awaken more fully to the sober, generous terms of life on the Earth. In fact it appear to be the offer we can no longer refuse.
Zen has a genius for valuing and taking refuge in existential uncertainty as the very place to turn fear-ridden beliefs around and open a pathway to life-affirming response. Join us, to see what ways might open as we let this crisis wise us up together.
— Susan Murphy Roshi
Susan Murphy Roshi is a senior Australian Zen teacher and the leading Australian voice in Eco-Buddhism. In 1999 she established Zen Open Circle, a practice community with members across Australia and overseas. She has published many books on Zen and the environment, including ‘Upside Down Zen’, ‘Minding the Earth, Mending the World’, and ‘Red Thread Zen’. She produces occasional radio feature documentaries for the ABC, and in July 2019 gave the Opening Keynote Address for the International Sakyadhita conference in NSW. You can find a copy of her talk here.
Details
What: Special Event with Susan Murphy Roshi
When: 9th March, 9.30am - 1pm
Where: 133 Duke St, Castlemaine
Suggested Donation: $10 - $50 (to cover our hall costs and support the teaching)
Schedule
9.30 Arrive for cuppa and bite to eat
10.00 Start
11.30 Ten minute toilet / stretch break
11.40 Resume
1.00 Finish
Places are limited and likely to fill quickly. To secure your place please register here.