The Bodhisattva Precepts Class

Sundays 12:30-2:00 p.m.  Beginning February 25 (no class on March 4)

The ethical teachings are one of the three legs of traditional Buddhist practice, the other two being wisdom and meditation.

During this class participants will begin to explore the heart of the ethical teachings through the 16 Bodhisattva Precepts.  We will be using Robert Aitken’s “The Mind of Clover” as our study guide.

If you are thinking of taking the precepts (Jukai) this is opportunity to deepen your understanding of this important aspect of Zen practice before the ceremony.

Free for Members.  Non-member suggested donation is $60 for this 6-week class. To register click HERE

 

 

The Center will be closed from December 23rd until December 27th.  We will reopen with the Thursday evening sitting on the 28th.  There will be no regular Sunday program on the 31st in light of our New Year’s Eve celebration.  The New Year’s Dinner will begin at 7 p.m. Please RSVP so that we can coordinate the potluck dinner.

Starting on January 14th, Refuge Recovery of Pittsboro will begin weekly meetings at the NCZC on Sundays at 5:30 p.m.

Refuge Recovery is a Buddhist-oriented path toward recovery from addiction based in mindfulness, forgiveness, and compassion. When practiced with generosity and kindness, these heal the suffering addictions have caused in our own lives, and in the lives of others.

The Zen Center will be closed on Thursday November 23rd for Thanksgiving but will reopen on Sunday November 26th for the regular Sunday morning program.

Starting on November 21st the Tuesday night sitting will include a book discussion period.  We will take up Why Buddhism is True by Robert Wright.

New York Times Bestseller
From one of America’s greatest minds, a journey through psychology, philosophy, and lots of meditation to show how Buddhism holds the key to moral clarity and enduring happiness.

Robert Wright famously explained in The Moral Animal how evolution shaped the human brain. The mind is designed to often delude us, he argued, about ourselves and about the world. And it is designed to make happiness hard to sustain.

But if we know our minds are rigged for anxiety, depression, anger, and greed, what do we do? Wright locates the answer in Buddhism, which figured out thousands of years ago what scientists are only discovering now. Buddhism holds that human suffering is a result of not seeing the world clearly—and proposes that seeing the world more clearly, through meditation, will make us better, happier people.

In Why Buddhism is True, Wright leads readers on a journey through psychology, philosophy, and a great many silent retreats to show how and why meditation can serve as the foundation for a spiritual life in a secular age. At once excitingly ambitious and wittily accessible, this is the first book to combine evolutionary psychology with cutting-edge neuroscience to defend the radical claims at the heart of Buddhist philosophy. With bracing honesty and fierce wisdom, it will persuade you not just that Buddhism is true—which is to say, a way out of our delusion—but that it can ultimately save us from ourselves, as individuals and as a species.

Lori Fear, a local yoga instructor, has graciously offered to lead us in 30 minutes of yoga before the beginning of our regular Thursday sitting.  Yoga will be from 7 pm to 7:30 pm.  The regular sitting will begin at 7:30.  Lori completed her teacher training program and became a Yoga Alliance Certified RYT-200 instructor in May of 2012. Lori embraces the Eight-Limb Pathway, which views the yoga practice as one that includes, but is not limited to, the yogic postures.