SPECIAL EVENTS

O-Higan Ceremony. 

March 20th, and September 23rd

O-Higan celebrates the spring and autumn equinoxes- a time when day and night are in balance. In Zen we take this opportunity of this special moment to look at the balance or lack of balance in our own lives. If we find ourselves out of balance then we invoke the Six Paramitas and rededicate ourselves to mastering the Six Virtues that will certainly take us to the shore of Enlightenment.

Hana Matsuri Ceremony. April 8th
Zen Buddhist celebration of the Buddha's birth 2,500 years ago (563 BCE). It affords a significant opportunity to express our gratitude for the birth of Buddha and to renew our commitment to follow the path of Zen.

Obon Ceremony. July 13 thru 16.
Obon is the occasion on which we pause to remember our departed family and friends, reflectin on their merits and our debts to them. On this occasion we cheris their memory and offer fresh fruit and rice cakes in their honor. Let us join together for this Obon Ceremony to express our charity and reverence to them.

Bodhidharma Day. October 10th.
Honors Zen Buddhist philosopher Bodhidharma (470-543), who believed one could attain Buddhahood by realizing one's own Buddha nature.

Rohatsu. December 8th
Rohatsu is a Japanese word for “December 8th”. Rohatsu is a Zen holiday celebrated as the anniversary of the historical Buddha’s attainment of enlightenment. It is said that on December 8th, Siddhartha Gotama, after several days of intense meditation sitting under the Bodhi tree, caught a glimpse of the morning star (the planet we know as Venus) and attained enlightenment.

As the number of Zen practitioners in America and in the West in general continues to grow, we start to become more exposed to previously foreign concepts like “rohatsu.”

In fact, there’s a growing body of journalism documenting the rise of Buddhism in the West — both as a religion, but more importantly, as a practical philosophy for daily living. The December 2005 issue of National Geographic, for instance, features a lengthy article and multimedia slideshow on the phenomenon. Ironically, while ambassadors for Buddhism like H.H. the Dalai Lama go around telling people not to become Buddhist, many are doing it anyway. People are quickly realizing that the Eastern practice of meditation is one of the best ways to balance out the oftentimes stressful and and overwhelming Western lifestyle.

For rohatsu, most Zen centers spend the first eight days of December in sesshin, an extended period of intense practice and meditation.