Breaking the tea cup

We are really happy that Rev. Heng Sure will be introducing ONE MIND and joining the Q&A at the upcoming premiere this Sunday, Dec. 18th. He is the director of the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, which is in the lineage of the late Master Xu Yun (Empty Cloud) who revived Zhenru Chan Monastery in the mid-20th century. Rev. Heng Sure is a groovy monk (he’s also a banjo player and nature photographer) and we think everyone will enjoy hearing his reflections on the film.

Watch Rev. Heng Sure tell a story about Master Xu Yun and why breaking a tea cup isn’t always a bad thing! 

ONE MIND - U.S. Premiere

Bringing ONE MIND to life has been a rich and challenging adventure! You’ve all been very patient, and we look forward to sharing the film with you. Therefore, we are very excited to announce the U.S. premiere of ONE MIND!

The Buddhist Film Foundation will present ONE MIND at the Smith Rafael Film Center in San Rafael, California (about 30 minutes drive from Berkeley or San Francisco) on December 18th, 2016 at 6:30 PM.

Agnes and I are in the U.S. right now, so we will both attend the screening. A very special guest, Rev. Heng Sure of the Berkeley Buddhist Monastery, will present the film. And Rev. Heng Sure will join me for what we hope will be a lively Q&A discussion after the film. 

We look forward to having as many of you as possible join us for this premiere screening!  

Tickets on sale here: http://rafaelfilm.cafilm.org/one-mind/

Ecosattvas!

A friend of mine led me to this article from the San Francisco Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm blog

They have a group there called Ecosattvas, which is such a brilliant new term. I really like this. Ever since I discovered the high mountain basin farms of the Chan Monasteries in Southern China, I have been enamored by the sure purity of their consumption cycles. ALMS is a short portrait of that. It shows a community that lives in a sensical, respectful and intimate relationship with their landscape.

When I was a student in Bodh Gaya, I remember watching cows eating up the waste from the little restaurants near the Vihar where I lived with my classmates. The plates were made of a kind of tree leaf. I wish I knew what kind of tree. The bottles and plastic bags had been collected away already, re-used in a million clever ways. Those cows would gobble down all the “waste” from the restaurant and then out back in the grazing area near the river folks gathered up the cow patties in baskets to dry in neat little bricks which in turn were burned in homes and restaurants to cook on.  For the 20-year-old from Ohio, seeing the shear efficiency and purity of this cycle struck me deeply. And it is part of my world ever since.