Sangha Jewel Zen Center

11/19/2025

Congratulations to Kisen, Issan, and Bukkai for taking Jukai!

06/26/2024

Sangha Jewel Open House & Book Sale
Saturday, June 29, 10 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
Address: 2935 N.W. Circle Blvd. Corvallis, OR 97333
Please come! Your family, friends, neighbors and co-workers are all welcome. This is a community event. Sip lemonade, chat with others, wander the garden, browse the book sale or library, learn more about the Zen Center, and strengthen your connections with the Sangha. Drop by at a time that is good for you.

02/17/2024

Encouraging Words
How do we know when we’ve made a mistake? Is a mistake something we did in the past, or a consequence we expect to meet us in the future? What if there is nothing within us - nothing at all - endowed with the ability to prevent our making mistakes in the future? Then the next one is around the corner, get ready for it!

We must be intimate with forgiveness. If we are woven with fallibility, then so too are we woven with humility. Don’t stand apart from this grace. Our mistakes are beacons of light. They are means through which we discover what we don’t yet know- especially if we acknowledge them. If this is the case, can they actually be said to be mistakes at all? Perhaps we should change our language to, “Oops, forgive me, I just made an overt learning opportunity”!

But what if the consequences are dire? Let’s be real, some mistakes result in people losing their lives…We should not underestimate the potential impact of our actions. And yet, the more we are able to live in love, kindness, respect, intimacy, attention, care…the more our mistakes will be reduced to mere moments of turbulence within these strong currents of benevolence.

This is the import of spiritual practice - ensuring that our life is fundamentally aligned. If our life is fundamentally aligned, we can forgive our digressions - and those of others. This takes regular practice. This week many of us are engaged in the practice of Sesshin - a meditative intensive investigating the positive qualities of the heart. May this practice bring benefit to many lives. May more beings find peace within themselves. May our mistakes guide us toward evermore humility, love, and clarity. May you have a nice day.

Soten

10/18/2023

Encouraging Words
When the Buddha taught that with awakening comes the cessation of grief and lamentation for the world, he was commenting on the world of India 3,000 years ago, marked by disease, old age and warfare. There was warfare, power struggles and hostilities then that led to killing and further suffering for all those subject to the powers that be. We’re still doing it. At the moment some very troubling events are unfolding that involve not only the major combatants, but also the long-held tradition of this country putting arms into the war machine of many foreign powers. The hostilities are ancient, deeply held and hard to interrupt. These are the ways of war. The general idea of “progress” is measured by how much more deadly our weapons can be. So how does Zen practice bring an end to grief and lamentation for the world? If you are at all tuning in, it’s hard to imagine having nothing but grief for the world. So it is. It’s congruent. Our practice, though, can enable us to embody a balancing state of mind and heart. We practice reaching deeply into the essential heart, where all combatants are one. We could almost say that it’s our responsibility to abide in awareness of this one heart that we share with all beings, warm and open. Seeing beyond our own fears and reactivity, and beyond automatically clinging to opinions about who’s right and who’s wrong, who’s good and who’s evil, we embody the capacity of all humans to hold all sentient beings in our hearts. We keep this alive…even in the midst of the darkest ignorance, greed and hostility.

09/25/2023

Encouraging Words
If we don’t persist steadily over time in a daily practice, we lose our life - the wholeness, the vitality and ripening that zazen brings to the daily world. If you sit zazen, you know this for yourself. Each day we start anew streaming along in the present moment. Being in the present moment is all we have. Past and future are concepts. Even memories unfold in this present moment. The only moment we experience directly for ourselves is right here now. We do this for ourselves because we are the only one who can. When a strong person moves their arm, they cannot depend on someone else’s strength. So it is with the energy of our own awareness. The potency depends on using it regularly. Not just sitting there like a bump on a log, daydreaming, but alert in our whole body and our senses on the seat of zazen, be it cushion, bench, or chair. When we cultivate with the entirety of the life of the self, we are naturally bringing ourselves wholly into every moment, whether on the seat of zazen or into the day’s activities.

02/28/2023

Does anybody know how I can get Facebook to return me to being "me"? It thinks I'm "Sangha Jewel Zen Center", which is a page I once created that still exists with different people managing it. I somehow clicked on something and now I can't get my profile back.

01/02/2023

Words from the Teacher
The turning of the year . . . in human days it’s a new year. In Buddha time, it’s just this moment.
The season of light and dark is not restricted to the winter holiday time. We can appreciate gifts, given and received, in each moment. The gift season is perpetual and has many faces. Multitudes of conditions ask us for what is needed. We just need to pay attention and give generously from the trove of the Three Treasures. Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha help us to wake up to this open field of intense beauty that is our life, beyond time, beyond suffering, beyond all our habitual traps.
The moments, the days, the weeks, the seasons of our lives pass swiftly by. Let’s remember not to fritter them away. We are perpetually bidden to give our all, to invest our oomph entirely in the flow of NOW, caring for each breath, each activity, each companion as our very life. In awakening to this we are led to cherish all of it and serve all of it, with patience, grace and generosity.

09/21/2022

Ten of our members received five precepts and two of our members received sixteen precepts during the recent Jukai Ceremony. Congratulations and thank you for your practice!

08/25/2022

Have you missed any Sunday Services over the summer? You can catch up anytime, we put all our dharma talks on our YouTube channel:

Share your videos with friends, family, and the world

07/14/2022

Sangha Jewel Open House & Book Sale
Saturday, July 30, 10 a.m.-1:00 p.m.
Book boxes are now available in the library for donations of books from any spiritual tradition. Drop books off any time you are at Sangha Jewel, including before and after services!