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NEW! Bodhisattva Buddhist Curriculum offered at EBMC Oct 4 – Dec 3, 2017

For the first time in its ten years, East Bay Meditation Center is offering the Bodhisattva precepts and vows through two class series open to all, ending with a one-day retreat and the Bodhisattva vows ceremony in early December. Click here more information and registration links

 

Here Are Ways You Can Help People During Hurricane Harvey

Here Are Ways You Can Help People During Hurricane Harvey

As our hearts break for Houston, the Gulf Coast, and other affected areas, here are ways to contribute.

by DAN SOLOMON

The TEXAS MONTHLY 

Andrew White helps a neighbor down a street after rescuing her from her home in the upscale River Oaks neighborhood after it was inundated with flooding from Hurricane Harvey.
SCOTT OLSON/GETTY IMAGE

If you’re in Houston, on the Gulf Coast, or in one of the places inland that’s experiencing massive flooding and other catastrophic impacts from Hurricane Harvey, you’re likely too busy to read this right now. But if you’re elsewhere in the state, you may have—like us—found yourself glued to the news coming out of affected areas. People are suffering. We don’t know what’s going to happen. We don’t know how long it’ll take before those places are safe again. We don’t know if they’ll ever return to normal. Because according to the National Weather Service, nobody alive has ever seen a storm like this in Texas.

But even if you are far from the devastation, there are ways to contribute. There are organizations that need support—now more than ever—that will ensure that people impacted by the storm have the resources they need to keep their lives functioning. Here’s a list of some of them, and what they’ll be doing to help:

To Help Kids

The Texas Diaper Bank, which is based out of San Antonio, is putting together relief kit for families with very small children who need access to clean diapers in the midst of flooding and evacuations. Diapers take up a lot of space in a delivery truck, which means that other relief organizations have to decide between bringing diapers or food to affected areas. The Texas Diaper Bank fills in that need.

The Driscoll Children’s Hospital in Corpus Christi weathered the storm well, never losing power. It’s accepting financial donations now, and if you live in the area and want to help, you can also donate blood. They serve a large area, and people from many affected parts of the coast are likely to need their services.

To Help Animals

We all saw the photo of the dog carrying the full bag of food around after the storm, right? Good boy, Otis. And there are a lot of pets who were uprooted by the storm. The SPCA of Texas is taking in hundreds of animals transferred from shelters on the coast who aren’t safe where they are right now. You can donate to the organization to help defray the costs—or you can open your home and foster a displaced animal until it can be reunited with its owner.

If you’re in Austin and want to work with a local org, Austin Pets Alive! is doing similar work, and has similar needs—cash, to keep operating, and volunteers to foster animals. They can also use certain pet supplies: large plastic or metal bins with lids to store food, leashes and collars, cat litter, large brooms, cat-specific beds, and liquid laundry soap. (The organization says they’re good on crates and pet food now, and don’t have much space to store them.)

To Help People With Medical Needs

Even as relief organizations work to help large numbers of people, it’s difficult sometimes for them to provide for people with special needs. Portlight, which has provided inclusive relief to people with disabilities for twenty years—including in Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy—is working to ensure that people who require medical equipment and assistive technology have what they need after they evacuate, and to make sure that those same folks are able to get to safety. They accept donations via PayPal.

Direct Relief USA offers prescription drugs and other medical supplies to those who need it in emergency situations, and works with clinics and primary care doctors to ensure that people are able to get what they need when they need it. They’re accepting financial contributions.

To Provide Food

Here’s a list of food banks in both affected areas and in places where those affected are likely to spend some time in the immediate aftermath of the storm (via the Houston Press):

Houston Food Bank
832-369-9390
houstonfoodbank.org

Galveston Food Bank
409-945-4232
galvestoncountyfoodbank.org

Food Bank of the Golden Crescent (Victoria)
361-578-0591
victoriafoodbank.org
Closed Friday

Corpus Christi Food Bank
361-887-6291
foodbankcc.com

Southeast Texas Food Bank (Beaumont)
409-839-8777
setxfoodbank.org

Food Bank of the Rio Grande Valley (Pharr)
956-682-8101
foodbankrgv.com

Brazos Valley Food Bank (Bryan)
979-779-3663
bvfb.org

Central Texas Food Bank (Austin)
512-282-2111
centraltexasfoodbank.org

San Antonio Food Bank
210-337-3663
safoodbank.org

To Help The Homeless

The Houston Coalition for the Homeless is facilitating shelter for homeless people in Houston, including offering up-to-date information about which shelters currently have space, who’s the best fit for each one, and how to get there safely. They’re accepting financial donations to continue their work.

To Help Those Displaced

If you’re not in one of the affected areas and you have a spare room, you can host someone by listing your home on Airbnb for free, with no service fees to anyone. Right now, most of the listings are in Austin, Dallas, and San Antonio. If you’re in any of those cities—or another part of the state that’s not experiencing flooding—you might consider listing your space so displaced people have more options.

In Dallas, Trusted World is operating three shelters for evacuees. They need donations, supplies (clean clothing, non-perishable food, toiletries, diapers, and baby formula), and volunteers to help sort out the things that people have dropped off.

Global Giving is trying to raise $2 million to help those affected by the storm. As of this writing, they’ve raised $43,000, but the campaign had just launched. The organization provides food, gas, clean water, hygiene products, and shelter in the short-term, and then funnels the remaining resources to local organizations to facilitate long-term recovery.

HEB doesn’t accept donations, but it’s worth being aware that the supermarket chain provides emergency response services, mobile kitchens, and disaster-response units to affected areas. (They also announced on Sunday that they’d be collecting donations at the register for the American Red Cross, The Salvation Army, and Feeding Texas.) That’s especially important as a number of stores in affected areas (including the entire Houston area) are closed. You can learn more about which stores are closed—and which ones have reopened—here.

(Thanks to Jia TolentinoAndrea Grimes, and the Houston Press for suggestions on where you can help.)

Help shape EBMC’s future! Join our Community Meeting on September 23rd!

Community Meeting: Building our collective vision for the future of EBMC

All EBMC Sangha members, past and present, are invited!

We need your input to shape EBMC’s future!

Saturday, September 23, 2017

9:30 am – 10:00 am light breakfast and social time

10:00 am – 12:00 pm noon Community Meeting

Open to All – RSVP HERE 

 

We, the EBMC Leadership Sangha, invite you to our community meeting on Saturday, September 23rd to inform and share in ideas for how EBMC’s strategic plan should guide our collective journey for the next ten years.

Facilitating our meeting will be our consultants, Jonathan Garcia and Laura Moran, who have been leading a strategic planning process that is inclusive, mission-driven and visionary. Over the last few months, they’ve engaged in various touch points with many in our community, conducting focus groups, individual interviews, online surveys and now, this community meeting.

During this gathering, we will learn more about the purpose and process for developing the strategic plan and engage in small and large group discussions about how EBMC can build on our current strengths and opportunities while addressing challenges that empower us to fulfill our mission over the short and long term.

We encourage all members of the EBMC community to attend. A more detailed agenda will be sent out as we approach the community gathering.

We look forward to seeing you then! Thank you!

The EBMC Leadership Sangha (board of directors),

Noliwe Alexander, Melissa Green (co-chairs), Amanda Ream, Carol Cano, Jinky de Rivera, Jenn Biehn, Kevin Durkin-Ortiz and Melissa Crosby

RSVP HERE

Statement from East Bay Meditation Center regarding White Supremacist Violence in Charlottesville and throughout the U.S.

Hatred never ends through hatred.
By non-hate alone does it end.
This is an ancient truth.
— from the teachings of the Buddha, The Dhammapada, trans. Gil Fronsdal

August 20, 2017

For over ten years EBMC has been co-creating a culture of strongly-rooted resistance, resilience and well-being that is financially accessible to all. This is our ongoing and steady and committed response to the violence and injustice and turmoil we witness in society. Our commitment, now as it has been from our beginning, is to cultivate the ground for deep systemic change, to seek to end multigenerational patterns of oppression, and to uphold a spiritual vision supported by on-the-ground strategies for a life in community that contains well-being, profound freedom, and joy for everyone.

At East Bay Meditation Center we have been taking refuge in liberatory, resilience- and community-strengthening mindfulness practices for over ten years. We have also been making refuge for people of color; members of the LGBTQIQ/same-gender loving community; people with disabilities and chronic illness; and folks from other underserved communities. This taking refuge and making refuge has always been and still is our entire purpose, our reason for being since we first opened our doors.

In the midst of the recent white supremacist, anti-Semitic violence in Charlottesville, Virginia and elsewhere, EBMC continues to do what we have always done. Our weekly practice groups and other programs continue, attended by an empowered, social justice activist spiritual community, and taught and led by an extraordinarily diverse and skilled group of teachers and facilitators who understand the role that mindfulness-based practices can play in grounding and growing resilience and in helping to heal trauma for entire communities. Our shared leadership model demonstrates our commitment to transparent, empowered spaces in which creativity and innovation can flourish. We are determined not merely to survive; we want everyone in our Sangha (spiritual community), including our children and our elders, to thrive.

At EBMC, our Black Lives Matter altar pays daily tribute to those who have lost their lives due to structural violence in the U.S., and the entire meditation center offers a space of healing for those who are grieving and in pain. Our response to the recent and grievous white supremacist, terrorist events in Charlottesville and beyond is that East Bay Meditation Center’s doors remain open on a gift economics basis; we continue to offer programs and practices of liberation, justice, and healing; and we persevere in providing leadership development based in Courageous Compassion, Wisdom, and Loving Kindness.

Want to increase diversity in the neuroscience of meditation?

Participate in the first community-based neuroscience study between EBMC and UCSF called the EMBODY study.  We are looking for diverse meditators who 1) are 25-65 years old, 2) have consistently practiced meditation for 5 years in their lifetime, and 3) are interested in brain activity during meditation measured by functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Participation would involve 1) phone interview and online surveys, 2) 3-hour visit to UCSF Mission Bay, including 2 hours in a MRI scanner, and 3) receiving a picture of your brain and $75. Travel costs are reimbursed. People of all genders, sexual orientations, races, ethnicities, and ability status are encouraged to participate. E-mail embodystudy@ucsf.edu or call 415-514-8445 for more information.

People should not participate if they have magnetic metal in their bodies, would not be comfortable in an MRI scanner, and are having difficulty paying attention to experiences (such as breath and thoughts). For an informational pamphlet on this study, click here.

Mindfulness training for activists & change agents at EBMC: Aug 6 is deadline for PiTA5 yearlong program applications!

Now in its fifth year, this award-winning yearlong program of secular mindfulness training for social justice activists and agents of social transformation, is accepting applications. Deadline: Aug 6, 2017. For more information, click here.

 

“The Story of Us” — What EBMC’s Community Survey (Spring 2017) Tells Us

At East Bay Meditation Center we’ve been told that, for a relatively small meditation center, we have in the ten plus years since we opened our doors created a large impact on other Buddhist and spiritual communities. Our diversity and social justice-centered mission, and our innovative strategies and policies that support our commitment to “radical inclusivity,” along with our location in downtown Oakland, California have contributed to the creation of a Sangha (spiritual community) that is deeply based in mindfulness practices from a variety of wisdom traditions, that operates by gift economics rather than charging fees for our programs, and that is fiercely committed to exploration of how beloved community manifests in day-to-day interactions and relationships of spiritual friendship, mentoring, and the development of shared leadership.
This spring we invited EBMC community members to give us the next chapter of our unfolding “Story of Us” through responding to an online survey. You can access the survey results by clicking here.
[Update as of Aug 18] Now that we’ve shared all of our yummy Baker’s Dozen infographics on social media, you can if you like download a pdf that contains all 13 infographics by clicking here.

Awakening Together, a forthcoming book by Larry Yang

For every center, organization, or individual wishing to create a welcoming and inclusive spiritual community, this book is a must-read.

“I don’t see how Awakening Together could be better. It is so wise, thoughtful, dedicated to our healthful growth, ease, and enlightenment through the Dharma, that I know I will be reading it for years to come. Larry Yang seems to have thought of everything we will need as we venture bravely forward— through racism, prejudice, ignorance—into the free spiritual beings we were meant to be. Together.”—Alice Walker

“What a gift Awakening Together gives to how we can build sanghas that represent the illuminating and joyous presence that true diversity brings.” —Gina Sharpe

“Larry Yang’s voice, heart, and insight in Awakening Together can be both trusted and radically illuminating. I highly recommend this elegant, highly personal, and hopefully profoundly influential book.” —Jon Kabat-Zinn

“For the first time—a Dharma book that is a roadmap showing collective pathways out of social suffering.”
—Mushim Ikeda

“A must read for anyone interested in understanding the integrities of belonging.”—Ruth King

“Inspiring, compelling and deeply wise, Awakening Together is essential reading as we seek to heal our own hearts, our communities and our world.”—Tara Brach

“Filled with love, clear and poignant.”—Zenju Earthlyn Manuel

Available October 2017. Pre-order now at wisdompubs.org/awakening-together

Application period now open for EBMC board of directors

The East Bay Meditation Center’s Leadership Sangha (LSangha), or board of directors, is now seeking new members. The application period is from June 1 to 5 pm on July 7, 2017.

LSangha members serve 3 year terms, and the average weekly time commitment for an LSangha member is 5 hours per week. LSangha members are primarily responsible for stewarding EBMC and setting strategic direction for the organization within the LSangha/staff Shared Leadership model. All LSangha members are guided by the principles of Shared Leadership* for the good of the whole to move the work of the organization forward.

If you or someone you know is interested, here’s what you need to do:

  1. Read what your role and responsibilities would be if you were to join the LSangha by clicking here. (This is a position description for EBMC board members.)
  2. Next, please take a look at the 2017 LSangha Giving and Fundraising Plan by clicking here.
  3. The third step is to download the LSangha application in Word by clicking here. Fill it out and email to melissac@eastbaymeditation.org. The application deadline is July 7, 2017, 5:00 pm.

*  Shared Leadership at EBMC is both a collaborative governance system based on mutual accountability and a culture of respect and inclusion rooted in Dharmic society values.  Our shared leadership approach stewards the mission and vision of the organization through role clarity, transparency, compassionate confrontation and timely attention to areas of tension.

 

 

 

What the Sangha Said: Community Meeting Report-Back

EBMC’s March 26, 2017 Community Meeting

Community Meeting Report Back

March 26, 2017

 

Sangha Input

East Bay Meditation Center hosted an open Community Meeting on 4/26/17. Eleven Sangha members were in attendance, including Teachers, Practice Group Coordinators, Staff, and Leadership Sangha.

 

Report Back Method

This report aims to provide a transparent summary of the questions, concerns and information raised at the meeting.

 

 

General EBMC Information

  • EBMC’s lease was renewed for 3 years. We are in year 1 of renewal. No rent increase
  • Feedback section on website has been requested
  • EBMC has a strategic development plan, but not an overall strategic plan. We are searching for a Strategic Planning consultant, aiming for the process to run from May through end of November, 2017
  • Eventbrite technical issue: registration for EBMC events is sometimes difficult on computers and phones
  • Over 300 people responded to EBMC’s Sangha Survey!
  • Keeping valuables secured helps people not to break a precept. What is the best way to language “Keep your valuables with you at EBMC” within a multicultural spiritual community?

 

Giving & Gift Economics

  • Encouragement for spiritual teachings of dana to be frame as generosity, rather than “give us money”
  • Increase transparency to the Sangha on the overhead costs for programs
  • Some people wonder: how much to give to Teachers v. EBMC at a class?
  • Education needed: Teachers & Sangha leaders could benefit from more details about staff: roles, FTE, how EBMC runs
  • Confusion persists: How to give dana to teachers other than cash and checks? EBMC currently cannot accept cards for teacher dana.
  • Sangha members who have more to give can particularly benefit from understanding Gift Economics
  • EBMC can offer more programs to discuss gift economics and money-related shame, anxiety, discomfort and other responses
  • Teachers need support to give skillful Gift Economics talks

 

EBMC in the Community

  • EBMC’s mission is even more audacious in current political climate
  • EBMC is not immune to being seen as outsiders in this particular neighborhood. In larger society, increased tensions due to gentrification and displacement create more distress. Request for Sangha leadership & members to think about ways that EBMC can be a good neighbor