Dear Zen Friend
1) No Sesshin in August
September sesshin : from 09/08 to 09/12
2) on August 13th Sunday, Summer Lecture will take place at 11 am.
This year’s guest speaker is Mr. Pike Messenger. I personally met him and found him interesting. I asked him to share his wisdom with us. The following is his message.
Here is my background. I was raised on a subsistence farm in Salisbury Massachusetts, a coastal town. We raised vegetables, dairy cows, chickens, hay, and apples. I worked for my grandfather and uncles. We used horses as well as tractors.
After high school I studied botany, chemistry and agronomy at UMass in Amherst from 1952 to 1956. From 1956 to 1963 I served on two Navy ships in the Pacific. In 1961 I married Chitose Yamaguchi a seamstsress from Kyushu. We moved to Middleton and raised 3 children. I taught high school biology from 1963 to 1993. From 1995 to 2009 I was Middleton’s conservation agent. For the last 20 years I have been an active member of the Middleton Stream Team and the Ipswich River Watershed Association. These groups protect our waters and wetlands. In 2011 I published a book of 300 essays entitled The Water Closet.
My talk will be about major changes in the land from after the last continental glacier up to the present. The subject is way to large for a one hour talk so I will just hit important points in my time. The changes have been very dramatic and long very interesting to me. A couple of centuries ago your Warner Hill was probably without many trees. There were no plants or animals 12,000 or so years ago before the ice melted.
3) On Aug. 26th, Saturday, there will be one day zazen kai at Shantigar (Peaceful Home) at 63 Davenport Rd, Rowe.
The event starts at 9 am and ends at 5 pm.
I give a talk about ‘Buddhism in daily life’ in the morning and Mr. Jean-Claude van Itallie leads a meditation walk in the woods in the afternoon.
For signing up and more information, please contact Peter Columbus at email@shantigar.org. or call (413)339-4332.
No cost, donation is accepted.
For directions, please see http://www.Shantigar.org
Eishin Ikeda
Valley Zendo
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