Chester Rumi Reflection Group

 

We started a fortnightly Rumi Reflection Group in Chester last week, connected to the Great Heart Society and part of the Chester Zen Peacemaker Circle.  Each time we'll read a poem by Rumi together over coffee and explore what resonances it has for us.  We're using "Love's Ripening" by Kabir Helmisnki and Ahmed Rizwani as our main text to begin with.

Leicester - Great Heart Circle April 2013

Form And Emptiness , Emptiness And Form

This is the essence of The Heart Sutra of Buddhism,  something like - looking for the human body in all the parts of the body and never finding it.  

Deng Ming-Dao in 'The Lunar Tao", a day book of meditations in harmony with the seasons, reflects upon something similiar to this in "The Temple" there he writes :
The body is the temple for the spirit, and it makes sense to keep our temple clean and pure. In every culture , we have made holy places so that the divine can enter into our lives.  Think about a temple,though. If you go to a temple and look in one corner or the other, you won't see the spirit. If you take the building apart beam by beam and post by post, you won't dismantle the spirit. If you burn down the temple, you won't destroy the spirit. Those people who dissect the body looking for the spirit won't ever find it, but it's still here.

Chester Activties from 14th April

The Chester Great Heart Circle will now have two regular activities:

SUNDAYS, fortnightly, starting 14th April 2pm-3.30pm

"Metta Circle" - including a guided period of metta (love/kindness) meditation, a guided discussion on metta in daily life, and a small shared 'sacred meal' to end each time.

THURSDAYS, fortnightly, starting 18th April  4pm-5pm

"Rumi Reflection Group" - exploring the spiritual love poems of Jelaluddin Rumi, the great Persian mystic.  The emphasis will be on how Rumi's teaching can guide and inspire our own living.

The venue for both events is Sally's Secret Garden, 22 Bridge Street Row West, Chester.  There's  no charge for any activities, but donations of around £4 would be very helpful towards room hire for the Metta Circle.  The Rumi group will be drinking coffee and tea together, which allows us to stay there!

Leicester Great Heart Circle - March 2013

We began with readings from "365 Tao" by Master Deng Ming-Dao a day book of Taoist inspired reflections.  Then we read from the "Tao Of Pooh" about the Chinese Vinegar Tasters painting which shows Confucius, Buddha and the Taoist Master  Lao-Tse tasting vinegar (daily life).  For Confucius life tastes sour, present life is out of step with the past glory. For Buddha life is bitter, filled with attachments and desires that trap us and lead to suffering. For Lao-tse, life tastes sweet, if it understood and used wisely for what it is.  The evening finished with tea and sweetmeats and then an inspired Greg played a beautiful violin piece full of longing.

Leicester Great Heart Circle - February 2013

An intimate gathering on a cold dark evening at the Great Meeting Unitarian Chapel in Leicester.
Our theme for discussion was integrating our meditation practice with daily life. There is a nice list of activities in Lama Surya Das' book "Awakening The Buddha Within" that we went through, which includes for example :

-  Whenever you cross a threshold, got through a doorway, or enter a room, see it as entering a temple and do so reverently

- Walk barefoot in the grass or on a thick carpet and feel fully each sensation with your toes and soles

- Try chewing one single raisin for several minutes and experiencing everything you can about it

- Before speaking, notice what motivates your words

New Weekly Metta Meditation Session in Chester

 

The new weekly Chester Metta Circle sessions began this afternoon in the historic 17th Century Dutch Houses in Chester.  This follows on from a couple of months of evening meditation sessions in the same venue, Sally's Secret Garden crafts and gift shop.  It was a lovely beginning, eight people  came along and after some guided metta we discussed the old Buddhist story of Kisa Gotami.  We'll have a theme for discussion each time connected in some way with love, not only "spiritual" love, but all the complex, sometimes messy, often beautiful  expressions of love and friendship and connection in our daily life.  The sessions will be weekly at 3.30pm-4.45(ish) on 22 Bridge Street Row North.  Suggested donation of around £4 very welcome, but not essential, to cover costs.

On a personal note - I thought long and hard about whether to focus the weekly Chester group on metta meditation or stay with longer silent zen-style practice.  The day after I decided to go with metta, I found this lovely statue in a charity shop in Chester... it's Kwan Yin, the female Buddha of Love from China.  I took it as a poetic affirmation that I've made the right choice, and I brought it along to be a small symbol of what we're doing together.

May we all be well and happy and appreciate one another,

Chris Starbuck

New Times for Chester Circle

 

 Dear Friends,

Thanks for coming along and being part of the beginning of this new group in Chester.  I've very much appreciated all of your company, listening and learning from you.  My own role is to steward the group into existence and bring ideas and practices which keep it going... after a year or two, the circle will take on a life of it's own, bigger than my own ideas for it!

I have to change the time of the main circle for a while, because I'm probably going to be working on weekday evenings, and also because I want to change it a little so that instead of drinking tea together in the middle, we share a small "sacred meal" together at the end each time.  This gives us a chance to talk and get to know each other more, and enjoy each other's company.

The new time for the Circle will be WEEKLY, from 3pm till 4.30ish every Thursday, in Sally's Secret Garden.  Sally has a busy day in a fortnight - so we'll have a week's break and start the new weekly meetings on Thursday 7th February.  I'll email you all the weekend before to remind you.

I thought I'd also quickly say something about the purpose of getting together like this.  My own reason for creating this circle is to share my own meditation practice with people, and especially to explore with other people the idea that love and relationship really matter - relationship with all the different kinds of people in our life, and also with the world of nature, our own inner worlds, the physical world, even the cups we drink out of and the bed we sleep in!  The practices I'm offering in the circle are drawn from Buddhist meditation and also a little bit from Sufism, the Islamic mystical tradition.  They're all practices which can help us discover more meaningful relationships in our daily life, and to experience those relationships as a place to give and receive love.  Try to always think of what we're doing with this intention- and then we're on the right track... :-)

Please feel completely free to use anything we do together at home, change it so it fits in with your own understanding, and share it with anyone else if you'd like to.  Whatever we train in together becomes completely yours to help you.  I hope in some small way, coming to this circle will help you appreciate your unique life, and everything in it!

Take care and love to you all,

Chris

ps for those who can't make the earlier time on Thursdays- I'd be very happy to meet up with people one-to-one and do some meditation together - I have a meditation room in my home in Blacon, less than 15 mins by bus from the city centre.  I'll also try to arrange some weekend group events throughout the year.  Feel free anytime to ask me questions about anything, or suggest things you'd like to see included too.