AZC Newsletter December 2021
From Amala-sensei
What a delight to be open again. We began sitting together again in person with a one day sit (photo below). Coming soon we have a number of events: Buddha’s Enlightenment will be marked on Tuesday evening, 14 December, and then New Year’s Eve celebrations on 31 December (both will be simplified). For sesshin, 7-14 January, numbers will be limited so everyone can have a single room, and the zendo will be in the Bella Rakha Hall not the Chapel, so participants can be more spread out and the room better ventilated.
Climate Change Statement for COP26 from religious leaders
Over lockdown I was part of a multi-faith advisory group, nutting out, over Zoom, a statement from Aotearoa religious leaders to New Zealand’s COP26 delegation. The Statement, coordinated by the Religious Diversity Centre, was presented to Minister James Shaw in a ceremony before he departed for Glasgow. The NZ Buddhist Council also issued a statement from a Buddhadharma-centred point of view, see here for the NZBC statement and Minister Shaw’s response. The outcome of COP was disappointing, but a strong reminder that we cannot leave it up to politicians to make the changes necessary to limit emissions to below 1.5 degrees of overheating. The work goes on. A Newsroom article by Rod Oram, who was a member of the multi-faith advisory group, sums up the COP26 outcome.
Pandemic lessons: “Freedom to” and “freedom from”
It is two years since the emergence of SARS CoV-2 into the human world. We are now seeing, under the pressure of multiple and far reaching public-health measures, tensions increasing in Aotearoa to do with differing opinions about vaccination, mandates, and other measures. Given how much our Zen community values inclusion, the decision to require vaccination passes for sittings and sesshin, and therefore exclude unvaccinated Sangha members, was not lightly taken, but it was clear that following the science and our vows to not cause harm had to lead.
After I encouraged people to get vaccinated back in September I received messages from three concerned members with many links to websites and YouTube clips. With digging, some of the links could, disturbingly, be traced back to alt-right sources in the USA. I doubt that the people who passed them on would want to be associated with far right, white-supremacist ideologies.
The alt-right messaging emphasises individual freedoms and taking personal responsibility for one’s own health. Which sounds reasonable, until you look into it. One article I read proposed that instead of vaccination governments promote healthy food and exercise as a remedy for Covid, an idea that ignores the immediacy of the threat and the complex causes of poor diet. An emphasis on individual rights obscures the need for a collective response to the virus, and the need to protect those who are more likely to get sick and die from Covid, including Māori and Pasifika. As someone wrote to me, “Vaccination is not a personal choice, it is a social choice.” We get vaccinated to protect everyone, not just ourselves, and to help to lighten the load on the health system as a whole for the sake of all who may need to use it. We can rightly rejoice in our high levels of vaccination thus far, and the ongoing efforts to reach out to those who are still unprotected, especially by not well-funded iwi and Pasifika health providers.
There is still a lot of misinformation circulating and recirculating. It takes time and effort, but there are reliable and independent fact-checking websites available, such as www.factcheck.org, which examine many of the common memes that are flying around. I found doing some checking was well worth the effort involved, even though it was daunting at first. And, if you are talking to someone you strongly disagree with, can you listen, and make an effort hear what motivates them? Certainly judging won’t help, writing people off because of their views won’t help. There is a lot that we don’t know about each other.
In Buddhism the emphasis is on “freedom from” the three poisons rather than “freedom to” do what we want. As followers of the Way we work to free ourselves and others from the negative effects of our self-partiality; the wreckage of our greed, hatred and delusions. And we do our best to cultivate their opposites, generosity, love and wisdom.
In some ways the collective threat of Covid-19 is like a dress-rehearsal for the bigger and more complex climate crisis that looms all around us, another issue that demands listening to the science and taking concerted, collective action to change how we live. We are certainly going to continue to need heaps of generosity, love and wisdom as the human species faces huge upheavals. So the koan is, how do we work together and care for each other while at the same time responding adequately to powerful forces of denial and delusion in play that need to be challenged? I was challenged forcefully by one of my students over quoting an article which implied that everyone's views, informed by their own “experts”, are equal in the vaccination debate. Would I be as tolerant of a climate crisis denier as of a Covid denier, she asked? She has a point. Views have consequences, as we saw in the pandemic disasters last year in the USA, Britain and Brazil. Here because of government policy last year we were mostly protected from the ravages of the virus. In the USA 140,000 children (from April 2020 to June 2021) lost a caregiver to Covid, and those children are disproportionately from Black and Latinx families.
Both the pandemic and the climate crisis offer us multiple opportunities to realise our great vow to liberate sentient beings. Toni Morrison said, “The function of freedom is to free someone else.” Sometimes we fall down in this effort, because we are misguided or narrow-minded, gripped by fear or anger. We need to regularly examine our own hearts and try to do better.
May all beings be safe. May all beings be at ease. May all beings be free from sickness. May all beings be free of suffering and the causes of suffering.
Sensei
Centre news
Sesshins in pandemic times
In June Sensei led a 5-day online sesshin for about 50 participants, mostly in the USA and Canada (and two in New Zealand). Sensei says, “It’s a weird experience teaching sesshin from a different time zone, but it somehow works for the participants, sitting in their homes across the globe.” (The Rochester Zen Center has for now returned to offering in-person sesshins at Chapin Mill, but with a remote option as well.) Then in October we were forced to offer our 2-day urban sesshin remotely, due to ongoing lockdown restrictions in Auckland. It went very well, with several long-distance participants as well as locals. Our winter 7-day slipped in just ahead of the August outbreak and we're confident that our summer sesshin will go ahead in “Red”, with modifications.
Dharma study: Buddhism by Numbers
As most of us do not grow up in a Buddhist culture, absorbing the teachings, Dharma study is an important aspect of practice at the AZC. Without some understanding of the basic teachings we may bring attitudes and expectations to our zazen that are unhelpful. So each year, usually in the winter buildup to Jukai, we offer Dharma or sutra study. This year Richard von Sturmer led his popular “Buddhism by Numbers” course, structured around the very common practice in Buddhism of organising teaching points in numbered lists.
From the Trustees
Interim Financial Accounts for the 6 Months to 30 September 2021
The Trustees are pleased to present the draft interim financial accounts for the 6-month period from 1 April 2021 to the 30 September 2021. Despite the impact of Covid the Centre’s finances have held up reasonably well – thanks to the ongoing generosity of our members in supporting the Sangha by way of dana and the careful management of expenses by the office staff. The trustees had budgeted for a loss of $4,100 and, after allowing for a computer upgrade and painting the front of the building, we are slightly below the budgeted amount.
Points of interest to note over the last 6 months are:
Revenue
Revenue ($63,407) is down against budget but ahead of actuals last year – however it is difficult to make comparisons because of the differing impacts of the lockdowns in each period.
Costs
Same period costs ($69,167) are up against last year but below budget by a few hundred dollars.
Surplus/Deficit (Before depreciation and adjustments)
The Centre’s financials show an operating loss of $7,724 for the six month period, a reversal from the same period last year’s surplus of $12,632.
Balance sheet
Cash on hand and at bank as at 30/9/2020 was $129,496, and as at 30/9/2021 $130,212.
In summary, half way through the financial year the Trustees are satisfied that, after extraordinary expenses, the Centre finances match budget in what has been a difficult year to date. Their expectation is that, after extraordinary costs, the Centre will at least break even for the full financial year.
Peter Christensen, Treasurer
Centre Manager Role
No applicants for the Centre Manager position have come forward since the position was readvertised, so we are launching “Plan B”, which involves Richard coming in one day a week to help out. Richard will take on the core of Robin’s duties, and Dharmagear will be scaled back so that Erena can pick up some of Robin’s work too.
Sangha News
Arrival
Maheesha is expecting her second child. She says: “The happy event came soon after my first child, Rohan, requested a baby brother, only to be told it wasn't going to happen at mummy's age.” The new arrival is due on 26 January.
Departure
Robin and Kate will be leaving Auckland in mid-February so please come along on Sunday 13 February to farewell them. The morning will begin at 8:30am with sitting, then a shared morning tea from 10:30am with partners and children welcome to join. At about 11:30am we'll move into the zendo for an hour of Hindustani music with Balamohan Shingade and Manjit Singh. Feel free to come to all or part of this special morning and bring a plate to share if you can.
