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Dharmathon 2019: Sign Up to Help Sustain the Work of East Bay Meditation Center!
We are thrilled to announce Dharmathon 2019 on Friday, October 18th 2019 from 6:30 – 10:00PM.
Please join us for an evening of delicious food, powerful performances and friendship at the beautiful Alice Collective in Downtown Oakland, California.
Sign Up to become a Dharmathoner / Learn More at: https://www.firstgiving.com/event/EBMC/2019-Dharma-thon
Want to apply? EBMC’s award-winning yearlong mindfulness for social activists training. Deadline 8/5/19.
Apply now for EBMC’s PiTA 7 yearlong program, mindfulness training for social activists & agents of change! Application deadline is Aug. 5, 2019. From Ruby Olisemeka, nature educator, graduate of Practice in Transformative Action 6:
The Practice in Transformative Action program (sixth cohort, 2018-2019), gave me the knowledge, skills and language to have mindfulness moments with my junior ranchers (4 – 5 years old) and longer meditation sessions with my nature explorers group (5 – 11 years old) as well as my middle school science classes (12 – 15 years old). At least 60 children every week got to connect to mindful awareness of breath.
The effects on my students were incredible. The most memorable effect was with a group that was really difficult to bring into a state of calm during our all groups’ morning circle. My co-instructors agreed to change our morning routine by letting me lead all 30 children in a mindfulness/breath awareness exercise. In a few weeks, the children no longer had to be wrangled into sitting and calming their verbal exuberance, so we could begin and have a successful morning circle. As soon as we said “to the stump circle” all our students gathered peacefully and were sitting in circle calmly waiting for me to start the day by saying “Meditation is a survival skill, the more you practice the better you are at it, let’s take a deep breath in and begin.”
For application, email PITA at eastbaymeditation dot org. More information, meeting dates (Sept 2019-July 2020), info about the teachers, click here.
May 18: Buddhists Declare Climate Emergency Actions
Sat, May 18, 2019, 2:00 – 5:30 PM Pacific time –
** Wesak Awakening: Buddhists Declaring Climate Emergency Together** No charge,
registration required because of limited space. Location: The Episcopal Church
of St. John the Evangelist, 1661 15th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
We invite you to take action for the world we love. Come together on Wesak (the
anniversary of Buddha’s awakening) to bear witness together to our climate
emergency. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wesak-awakening-buddhists-decl…
Guided by beloved teachers Thanissara and
Kittisaro, we’ll join in ceremony, collectively naming and acknowledging our
harrowing climate situation. We’ll also be supported by a diverse array of
speakers (including Anne Symens-Bucher on behalf of Joanna Macy), interactive
heart-based exercises, movement to help us ground, live music with The
Invisible Bee and others, and the opportunity to speak and listen to each
other’s intentions for responding, individually and collectively, in these
times.
We’ll end the event with a plant-based meal shared
in community, and leave with the strength and inspiration to continue this
vital conversation within our families, sanghas and beyond. We hope you’ll join
us for this afternoon of contemplation, sharing, connection, engagement and
truth!
Note: This event is free. Space is limited. Please register to assure your spot. https://www.eventbrite.com/e/wesak-awakening-buddhists-decl…
May 18, 2019: Awakening to Climate Emergency:
Join the Live Webinar! 9:00am Pacific time
In connection with the Call to Declare Climate Emergency Now and timed with the
annual observance of the Buddha’s Awakening to reality, we invite you to join
us with your local Sanghas and communities for a live webinar to Declare
Climate Emergency at all levels. We will come together to commit the process of
declaring a climate emergency together. We’ll be sharing resources, strategies and outcomes as we mobilize
together. Register here: https://oneearthsangha.org/progr…/dcen/webinar-registration/
The live event will begin at Saturday, May 18, 2019 9:00 am PDT and will be recorded. As soon as the recording is available, it will be posted here: https://oneearthsangha.org/progr…/dcen/webinar-registration/
The time is upon us to take to heart the Buddha’s radical awakening and to apply all our practice, skills, and what wisdom and compassion we have to the task at hand, which is protecting Mother Nature and her myriad beings while ensuring a liveable planet for our children, grandchildren and the generations to come.
Mother Nature is calling us to be truth messengers and change agents and to enact a radical, quantum shift of consciousness that mirrors our rapid planetary state shift. Through DCEN we honor this call by naming and embodying the reality that “business as usual” is no longer viable for a sustainable future. In particular, we call on the Dharma, mindfulness, yoga communities, alongside all involved in awakening, healing, and transformational work, whatever affiliation, to join us in this effort. If you don’t feel you fit in these categories, you too are absolutely welcome.
The call from Mother Nature, Grandmother Earth is now extremely urgent. We have almost no time left to act as protectors of life on Earth and to pull together to hold a ground of consciousness, resilience, and wellbeing. We need to move while we can, before we experience a collapse into free fall where conducive spaces to share and organise are replaced by the shock of societies becoming more chaotic and dismembered as our life support systems die.
Let us join together in our heartbreak so we can share and transmute our grief, pain and outrage into a clarity and focus that informs creative, joyful, non-violent action.
I hope to see you there.
— Thanissara, with the DCEN team.
Featured Guests
This live webinar will feature:
Kittisaro & Thanissara –
Sacred Mountain Sangha US / Dharmagiri Sacred Mountain Retreat S.Africa.
Kristin Barker – One Earth Sangha
Jozen Gibson – Brooklyn Zen Centre, Awake Youth Project, Insight Meditation
Society.
Noliwe Alexandra – East Bay Meditation Center
Mark Ovland – XR UK Logistics
Charity Kahn – San Francisco Insight
This event will be hosted by One Earth Sangha
And..
If you can’t make these, organize your own event, with your family, community and/ or sangha. Template and sign up here (via 1ES) https://oneearthsangha.org/programs/dcen/share-your-event/
Want to see the source document for a Dharma / spiritually orientated process for declaring, with resources.. go here
Seeking new EBMC board members, application deadline May 27, 2019
Seeking NEW BOARD MEMBERS to join #EBMC‘s Leadership Sangha to help find EBMC a permanent home! Deadline for applications is May 27, 2019. If you love East Bay Meditation Center and have specific experience in fundraising, capital campaigns, and real estate management and acquisition, for full info & to apply, click on this link, download as a Word document, or copy and paste into an email, fill in your information and email it as described in the application form, please. Please share this information with others who may be interested. Thank you.
Program Committee Accepting Applications
The EBMC Program Committee is accepting applications for new members. Apply here, and contact programs at eastbaymeditation dot org with any questions.
Save the Date! An Evening with Tara Brach on Monday, April 22nd 2019!
Save the Date, Sangha Friends!
We’re excited to announce our Spring Fundraiser on Monday, April 22nd with the wise and wonderful Tara Brach.
This event will be held at beautiful Herbst Theater in San Francisco (ASL interpretation provided & ADA accessible).
Tickets coming soon!
Read Candi Martinez-Carthen’s Gratitude Story
To wrap up a beautiful series of Gratitude Stories, EBMC’s own Event Director Candi Martinez-Carthen shares her experience with feeling genuinely seen in Sangha:
| In Fall of 2012, my dear friend Nayomi invited me to meditate with her on a Thursday evening in downtown Oakland. Having admired her meditation practice, I jumped at the opportunity, intrigued further by her describing a meditation group for People of Color (POC Sangha). I distinctly remember coming through EBMC’s doors for the first time –marveling at a sea of black and brown folks gathered together – taking in this beautiful center and the ease with which I immediately felt at home, both seen and welcomed. Inspired by this experience, I started attending both POC Sangha and Alphabet Sangha as frequently as I could. As a Sangha member, I feel wildly blessed to be connected to the inspiring individuals I have met through EBMC. Individuals who, under different circumstances, I may never have crossed paths with, are now chosen family to hold and feel held by, whose liberation is bound up with my own. Before coming to EBMC, I didn’t realize how important and healing this would be – nor how many wounds I was carrying around from the pain of my own estranged family members. Having space to create connection, community and spiritual friendships at EBMC has enriched my life in ways that I could not have expected. I am grateful for the quiet joy that comes from sharing a meditation practice with another person, the invitation for ease in my body that I experience during our movement classes, and for being part of a community that I feel genuinely seen and supported by. Nearly six years after being introduced to EBMC, I am also deeply honored to be serving as EBMC’s Event Director. In my role as Event Director, I help steward the space in which we gather. In this work, love is in the details, and that is where I dwell. I am touched by and always learning from the ways in which EBMC practices radical inclusivity. It’s truly revolutionary to me – there is so much thought and ACTION put into keeping our center as accessible as possible. From our practice of Gift Economics which encourages our community to support each other to ensure no one is turned away from lack of funds, to making sure our temple and teachings are accessible for people of different abilities and identities, I have learned what it means to be part of a community that is grounded in genuine (and radical!) inclusivity. These gifts of radical inclusivity, love and liberation that I and so many others have experienced at EBMC extend far beyond our four walls. They ripple out across our families, our communities and into the world. Your support of EBMC helps to ensure many others can experience these same gifts and more, for years to come. Deep bows, Candi Martinez-Carthen Sangha Friends, Today is the last chance to give towards our 2018 year-end goal! If you haven’t yet offered a gift of any amount to support EBMC, it’s not too late. Thanks to the generosity of many, we are SO close to reaching our goal! As we start off the new year, your generosity will sustain our center and support EBMC’s mission to continue building, as Candi says, genuine and radical inclusivity. Please join us by making a gift today, so together we can enter 2019 with the resources we need to make EBMC a thriving refuge for all. Thank you! We are deeply grateful for your generosity. |
