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EBMC signs on to Defund the Police recommendations for Oakland City Council

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“Lives saved in Oakland means lives saved across the nation.”

May 20, 2021: East Bay Meditation Center #EBMCOakland has signed on to the Defund Police Coalition’s call to Refund, Restore, and Reimagine our communities in Oakland. The Defund Police Coalition has been working hard to cut the Oakland Police Department’s budget by 50%, and ensure that those funds are reinvested in much needed community resources, services, and programs that keep us safe and healthy.

As a result of grassroots pressure and tireless advocacy, a City of Oakland “Reimagining Public Safety Task Force” adopted powerful recommendations for how the city can be redirecting funds away from policing and into community health and safety. Please read these recommendations here: https://bit.ly/3oAkgZT They will be presented to the Oakland City Council, and will be discussed and voted on in the coming months. We will let City Council members know that these recommendations have massive, popular support from all corners of our city and movement!

If you’re part of an organization that wants to sign on to Refund, Restore, Reimagine – Support the Call to Defund OPD and Invest in Our Communities! – you can find the Googledoc here: https://bit.ly/3f7va6x

 

When Will East Bay Meditation Center Reopen Its Physical Space?

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As vaccines become more available and the State of California slowly begins to reopen businesses, some of you may be wondering whether East Bay Meditation Center will be reopening our physical space. We are monitoring the herd immunity rates for Alameda and surrounding counties and want to ensure that our communities have access to vaccines, and for those that cannot get vaccinated, we are mindfully creating safer spaces for in person events. 

As we have seen, conditions surrounding COVID-19 are ever changing and EBMC’s priority is to ensure that we continue to cultivate a place of refuge for all, with special care for our most vulnerable Sangha members. We are committed to radical inclusivity and accessibility, and will be keeping our physical space closed for the foreseeable future. 

We thank you for your continued support of our many online programs. As we face the unknown challenges of the time ahead of us, EBMC remains committed to the safety and well-being of the communities we serve. In the words of the great Buddhist teacher Shantideva: 

May the frightened cease to be afraid

And those bound be freed.

May the powerless find power

And may people think of benefiting one another.

Unpacking Whiteness: Exploring the Delusion of Race from a Buddhist Perspective | A Benefit for EBMC hosted by Soto Zen Buddhist Association

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Unpacking Whiteness: Exploring the Delusion of Race from a Buddhist Perspective | A Benefit for EBMC hosted by Soto Zen Buddhist Association

Unpacking Whiteness is a 4-session online course to benefit the East Bay Meditation Center, led and facilitated by Crystal Johnson.

More white people than ever before are waking up to the terrible impact of racial injustice, and seeking ways to skillfully keep our commitment to relieve suffering. This class, taught from a Buddhist perspective, is designed as a collaborative exploration of our conditioning as white people and a time to develop skills for interrupting racism and building diverse community.

This class is designed for white people who are learning about whiteness; it is open to anyone who would like to join.

This event will benefit the East Bay Meditation Center and fund the initiation of the SZBA’s BIPOC Support Fund, a fund to support Black, Indigenous and People of Color in Soto Zen lineages. We offer sliding scale registration and invite you to give as generously as you can. The course is open to everyone, regardless of donation level.

You may sign up and find more information here: www.szba.org/courses

Tomorrow Tues May 4 “May We Gather: National Buddhist Ceremony for Asian American Ancestors”

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May 4 2021 Buddhist Memorial for Asian American Ancestors ceremony

 

Tuesday May 4, 2021 at 4 PM PDT – 5:30 PM PDT
May We Gather: A National Buddhist Memorial Ceremony for Asian American Ancestors.
You are warmly invited to attend this free online healing ceremony led and organized by Asian American Buddhists in the face of anti-Asian American violence. Access the event website here: https://www.maywegather.org/
East Bay Meditation Center is proud to be among the many Buddhist organizations endorsing this national memorial ceremony.

ONLINE: Honoring Our Asian American Buddhist Ancestors

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An Online Event with Rev. Duncan Williams

Saturday, May 15th 2021 2:00PM – 4:00PM PST  (Time Zone Converter)

Closed Captioning Provided

The March 16th Atlanta shootings claimed the lives of eight people, six of them women of Asian descent, including 63-year-old Buddhist, Yong Ae Yue. Yue’s tragic death follows upon months of unrelenting racist taunts and violence against Asian Americans, including the senseless assault of 84-year-old Vicha Ratanapakdee in San Francisco. His daughter, who herself had been accosted twice in the past year and told to go back to Asia because “Asians caused the coronavirus,” described her father as a devout Thai Buddhist; his funeral was held at Wat Buddhanusorn in Fremont, California. Our temples have also come under attack. Six Vietnamese American temples in Orange County, California were vandalized in a single month; an outdoor Buddhist statue was spray-painted with the word “Jesus” at Huong Tich Temple. More recently, the Higashi Honganji Buddhist Temple in Los Angeles was damaged when windows were smashed, lanterns broken, and the building set on fire.

Rev. Duncan Williams will speak about the National Buddhist Memorial Ceremony for Asian American Ancestors scheduled on May 4, 2021 – Forty-nine days after the Atlanta shootings. Forty-nine days after death marks an important transition for the bereaved in many Buddhist traditions.

 

Registered participants will receive a link to join us via Zoom with their EventBrite confirmation. 

 

 

Spiritual Teacher & Leadership (STL) Training

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The Spiritual Teacher & Leadership (STL) training program launched in February 2021 with 30 participants and 4 core teachers.  The purpose of the training is to cultivate future teachers and leaders to step into leadership roles within EBMC and into surrounding communities and sibling organizations.

Read more about the participants HERE.

https://bit.ly/3afg8Zw

Vote for EBMC’s René Rivera for Community Grand Marshal SF Pride 2021!

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PLEASE SHARE. Voting closes Tuesday, April 13, 2021 at 6 pm Pacific time. From #EBMCOakland co-founder, beloved Dharma teacher Larry Yang: “Our wonderful EBMC teacher René Rivera has been lifted up as a nominee for Community Grand Marshal for SF PRIDE in 2021, and his name is now on the voting platform at: https://sfpride.org/grand-marshals
      “I encourage you to vote yourselves, and also to spread the word as widely as possible–social media–word of mouth–et al.! The work that René does is so important for all our communities and in the world. As we know one of the characteristics of Awareness, is that paying attention and acknowledgment of someone’s efforts is an expression of Love itself. That is the intention of this gesture–to show Love to one of our community members, and thus sharing Love from our communities back.
      “This is the description of René as a nominee on the SF PRIDE website:  René Rivera is a meditation teacher, restorative justice facilitator, and leader, working and learning in all the spaces in-between race, gender, and other perceived binaries, as a queer, mixed-race, trans man. René teaches heart-centered, trauma-informed meditation, at the East Bay Meditation Center and other meditation centers. He has led the first residential meditation retreats for transgender, nonbinary, and gender expansive people. René is a restorative justice facilitator for the Ahimsa Collective, working to heal sexual and gender-based violence. He has been a leader in bicycle advocacy as past director of the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition and Bike East Bay.”

René Rivera Vote for Community Grand Marshal SF Pride 2021

We Hold the Grief of our Asian and Asian American Sangha

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The East Bay Meditation Center (EBMC) expresses our collective grief and outrage at the ongoing violence targeting Asian and Asian Americans and in the wake of the most recent tragic attack in Atlanta. We stand in solidarity with Asian and Asian Americans in beloved community.

These violent acts of hatred are arising due to the current and historical oppression of Asian Americans in the U.S. They are the direct result of our nation’s deep roots in white supremacy, imperialism, and xenophobia. 

EBMC is committed to co-creating a culture of strongly-rooted resistance, resilience and well-being. This is our steady response to the violence and injustice we witness in society. We continue to cultivate the ground for deep systemic change, to end multigenerational patterns of oppression, and to uphold a spiritual vision for  freedom and joy for everyone. This is a time to take refuge in the three jewels of Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha, and support one another on the path of non-harming.

East Bay Meditation Center will continue to offer collective spaces for healing and taking refuge together in Sangha, especially in the coming weeks. We will share programming updates that will include space for our Asian and Asian American Sangha members and opportunities to build solidarity with our BIPOC/White allies. In the meantime, we continue to hold space at our People of Color Sangha practice group on Thursday evenings and our Asian American Deep Refuge group on Tuesday evenings. We are in the process of scheduling more programming and will share details soon. We encourage you to lean on EBMC and each other in Sangha during this time. 

The following is a link to compiled resources, including donation, volunteer, and action opportunities: https://anti-asianviolenceresources.carrd.co/

 

[Cover image used with permission from artist Pauline Cuevas. Artwork was commissioned by the California Endowment.]

EBMC Is Seeking Volunteer with Commercial Real Estate Experience

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February 28, 2021

Volunteer Position Description: EBMC Real Estate Subcommittee member

We are very happy to be at a point in our search for a sustainable home for EBMC that we need to add members to the EBMC Real Estate Subcommittee of the Space Force! The Space Force (officially the Advisory Committee to the Strategic Planning Committee) is the group in our sangha(spiritual community)  that has been working to move EBMC to a sustainable home. During this time of pandemic we have continued to meet and work toward this goal. As we move closer to the time of purchasing a building, we are seeking additional volunteer support.

We are looking for someone who:

  • Is able to physically visit potential buildings in downtown Oakland to assess for appropriateness
  • Has commercial real estate transaction experience: purchase, contracts, subcontracting
  • Can attend bi-weekly meetings of the Real Estate Subcommittee (every other Tuesday, 2:00-3:00 pm Pacific time), and, when possible, monthly meetings of the Space Force (Second Mondays, 7:00-8:30 pm Pacific time)
  • Ideally, would have expertise in ADA/accessibility, the Oakland real estate market and real estate project management

The estimated time commitment is four to six hours per month, including two Zoom meetings, which usually happen on a weekday afternoon.  The committee uses a modified consensus decision-making process, using gradients of agreement. (We’re happy to tell you more.)

By contributing your skills and expertise, you’ll be helping to create a new chapter in the history of American Buddhism and helping to shape the new home of one of the most diverse, social justice-centered sanghas in the world.

If you are interested, please complete this brief form and we will be in touch! If you know someone else who might be interested, please pass this on to them.

 

Group photo of EBMC Sangha. Photo by Candi Martinez Carthen.

With deep gratitude for your practice and your support of our sangha,

Marian Urquilla, Kaily Heitz and David Foecke

East Bay Meditation Center Real Estate Subcommittee

Volunteer Needed: Dharma in Motion Zoom Moderator

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EBMC is currently seeking a volunteer Dharma in Motion Zoom Moderator.

For more information on this volunteer position, please read the Volunteer Description.

Contact: shah at eastbaymeditation dot org if you are interested!