Great Heart Circle, 3rd May

"Light the candle of  wisdom within, in your heart, and go swiftly with shining heart on to the shining world"  Nasir-i Khusraw

This evening we held our monthly Great Heart Circle in Leicester, with guided relaxation, discussion, silent Zen meditation and a sacred meal.  Our theme for discussion this time was 'discussion'! We talked about how and why we have a discussion in the middle most months, and talked about "sohbet" in the Turkish Sufi tradition and debate in Tibetan Buddhism and Greek philosophy.  Especially we considered the quote from Nasir-i Khusraw above: our discussion is intended to awaken our hearts and minds a little in preparation for entering the period of deep silence that we have following the break.

At the end, we gave two more poetry scrolls out as gifts to people who've been coming along for over a year, in recognition of the connection we've made together.  Marie and Gabi are pictured above!

Persian Drumming Workshop, Sat 28th April

This afternoon we were lucky to have a Persian drumming workshop with Arian Sadr, a professional percussionist from Iran who now lives in Manchester.  The venue was the new upstairs room in Yesim Patisserie on Narborough Road.  There were  12 students altogther, and several people from the Great Heart Society came along with family and friends, giving the afternoon a sense of community for everyone else I think too.

Arian first gave a demonstration on Tonbek, the Iranian goblet drum, then moved on to the Daf - the large tambourine-like drum.  He taught us the basic hand positions and movements and rhythms, and after a break we all played energetic rhythms while he improvised in amazing patterns over the top!  If anyone hasn't heard the daf played before, have a look on Youtube, it's a wonderful instrument!

Great Heart Circle, 5th April 2012

This evening at our Great Heart Circle we took a song by the English folk singer Martha Tilston as the theme for discussion.

Simple

I remember how simple simplicity used to be
Before I tried too hard and chased it away.
It would float in, flow through and out of me.
Complication, well I rue the day.

I'm going to get right, right to the heart of it.
I was bigger when I was nothing at all,
Just another pilgrim marching to the sunset,
And it didn't matter if I got there:
It's the journey of it all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yxjFvt8Vsz8

Persian Drumming Workshop, coming Sat 28th April 1-3.30pm

I'm delighted finally to be arranging a Persian drumming workshop with Arian Sadr. He's a professional percussionist from Tehran, and he played at one of our Rumi celebrations in Manchester a couple of years ago!

Arian's doing a full 2.5hr workshop in Yesim Patisserie (the Turkish coffee shop on Narborough Road) on Sat 28th April from 1pm-3.30pm. The cost will be £30 per person, and there are 10 places in total.

Arian will be teaching Daf (frame drum) and Tonbak (goblet drum), you can check out his great website: http://www.ariansadr.com/

For people who practice meditation I think it's well worth learning about Persian music and rhythms, they're based on deep listening and receptivity. And for those who love Rumi and Hafez, it links you more deeply into classical Persian culture from which those poets sprang!

Come, come, and lets make it a really good day! Email: musicatyesim@mail.com for details or booking!

Great Heart Circle, 1st March

This evening we held our Great Heart Circle in Leicester. Eight of us spent a friendly evening of relaxation, discussion, silent meditation and feasting on a wonderful shared meal.

We've now been meeting over two years in Leicester, so we took this evening to return to the essence of the approach we're exploring together, which we inherit from both Japanese Soto Zen and the Turkish Sufi tradition of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi. Our approach is to begin from a view that nothing is missing, that at heart "our life is complete", "who we are is perfect", that "God is One"- whatever philosophical wording fits for anyone is fine. We then practice and work through the challenges of our lives with a sense of celebration rather than of lack. Our path can be a joyful one, despite how tough it can get. We read a description of someone's meeting with Suleyman Dede, the late Mevlevi Shaikh of Konya, to illustrate this theme.

We were honoured this evening to have a guest from Turkey, from the Alevi-Bektashi tradition who share the same spirit as the Mevlevi. She spoke to us a little about their practice and about her own patron saint, the mystic poet-singer-rebel Pir Sultan Abdal. We took a line from Pir Sultan Abdal's poetry as our approach to silent meditation this evening - "to Love we shall return".

The next meeting will be the Metta Circle off Narborough Road on the third Thursday of the month, and then the Great Heart Circle on 5th April.

New Monthly 'Metta Circle' Begins...

This evening we held our first 'Metta Circle', a monthly training in the ancient Buddhist practice of developing universal love for all beings. On the third Thursday of each month we'll have a short teaching on "metta" (love/kindness), a period of metta meditation, and a 'council circle' on the theme of love. We'll also sing together an old Buddhist chant "Sabbe Satta Sukhi Hontu" which means "May All Beings Be Well And Happy".

Keeping in mind that we're not simply a Buddhist group, though we use "Buddhist" practices, we dedicated this new circle to the memory of the late Shaikh Muzaffer Ozak of the Helveti Jerrahi Sufi tradition from Istanbul. He's a great teacher in one of the lineages we're born from, and was himself a particularly wonderful example of creating a community of love and appreciation for one another. He was also a lover of the "Divine Feminine" (for want of better words), as was his student the late Lex Hixon who also inspires our Great Heart Society.

We appproached Metta practice as the song of the Divine Mother who loves all her children, the Divine Feminine in all of us which is there waiting to be discovered and expressed in our lives.

Second Annual Burns Night, and New Ceremony!

This evening in our monthly Great Heart Circle we celebrated the poetry and spirit of Robert Burns, reading and singing together some of his most famous works- A Red Red Rose, Westlin' Winds, A Man's A Man and the Gowden Locks of Anna. We talked about Burns' detailed appreciation of nature, how he knew the names and lives of so many creatures, and how in our modern lives we lose so much of that, by not seeing the world around us as richly as we could.

At the end of the Zen meditation session, we held a small new ceremony. Our group has no membership, anyone coming along is as much a part of it as anyone else. So to find a way to celebrate our connectedness, we'll be giving a small ceremonial gift to anyone who's been coming along regularly for a year or more. This doesn't make them more of a member, it's just a way of appreciating the connection they've made with us all. For this first ceremony, where there were seven people who've been coming along at least a year, we each received a handmade coloured Indian scroll with a line from a Zen poem written on it.

Next month will mark 2 years of us meeting in the Unitarian Chapel in Leicester, and on the third Thursday of this month we'll be starting a second circle, in someone's house, to work with the Buddhist meditation practice of developing universal Love, called "Metta" in the old language of Pali - the wish for all beings to be well, happy and that their heart's wish be fulfilled.

So let us pray that come it may,
As come it will for a' that,
That sense and worth o'er all the earth
May bear the gree and a' that.
For a' that and a' that,
It's coming yet for a' that,
That man to man, the world o'er
Shall brothers be, for a' that.

Robert Burns