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Thursday 16 August 2012

Shaman Medicine Lecture/Ten Pine Trees (haibun)

   
Snow Lion Lecture Series 2012
Wednesday, August 29th, 2012

"Shaman Medicine and the Language of Spirit"
with: Theodore Tsaousidis

At the Snow Lion 708A Pape Ave.

Time: 7:30PM to 9:00PM*
Cost: Dana / donation (according to your means)




As a child Theodore’s relationship with the spirit world was natural and effortless. As an adult he understood that while most did not feel this same connection they did suffer an innate longing to reconnect to spirit and healing.  Many of us experience a disconnect to our mundane world as well.   Our conditioning, our wounds and our brokenness separate us from both worlds.   The longing for healing exists across all apparent boundaries.

The language of spirit is the infinite communication that permeates all worlds.

Learn to listen with your eyes, see with your ears, perceive without boundaries  -  one interdependent reality.

Information will also be available for the 3-Day Mindfulness Shamanic Retreat Sept 14-16th


*Please arrive early as the doors will be closing at 7:30pm (no admittance after doors close)


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Snow Lion: The Meditation Shop
708A Pape Ave.
Toronto, ON M4K 3S7
416 461-1611


Copyright (C) 2008 Snow Lion: The Meditation Shop All rights reserved

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TEN PINE TREES

I'm so pleased with the success of the inaugural Al Purdy Literary
Festival, especially the the involvement of so many poets who were
willing to bare their souls  at the reading on the Marmora dam. The
highlight for me, though, was our picnic with Al Purdy at his
gravesite in Ameliasburgh. 

I've been involved with Buddhism for over forty years, especially
with haiku and haibun poetry, but you never know how seriously
you are taken by more experienced practitioners. I took two of our
visitors to the Purdy Festival to meet Thay, the Buddhist monk who
oversees the Zen Forest Buddhist retreat in Actinolite north of
Tweed.

I showed Thay some photos of my neo-Buddhist retreat, ZenRiver
Gardens, with some trepidation. Thay is an extremely venerated
Buddhist monk, the descendant of generations of Zen masters, and
I was concerned he might consider my efforts silly. Thay smiled
while looking at the photos, commented that ZenRiver needed more
trees, and offered to give ten pines from the Zen Forest to the
ZenRiver!

     ten pine trees
march through the night
Zen Forest to ZenRiver  

Last weekend I visited Toronto to care for an old friend recovering
from a breast cancer operation. On Saturday I visited the Snow Lion
Buddhist Shop by the Pape subway station. The steward of Snow
Lion is Theodore, and again I was concerned that the neo-Buddhist/
shaman conversation I had previously shared with him might have
seemed silly. Theodore hugged me when I arrived, showed me their
new Zen garden, and told me that  holding a picnic with the dead is
very much in the Buddhist tradition. He then gave me an incredibly
valuable bronze Buddha statue for ZenRiver Gardens.

So the dharma road is wide open and ZenRiver Gardens has
apparently been accepted as a valid retreat among fellow Buddhist
practitioners. The positive follow-ups to PurdyFest have manifested
themselves in so many unexpected ways, for so many people, we'll
definitely have to do it again next year.

more rare than the cougar
snow lion comes to water
         at ZenRiver   



from ZenRiver: Poems & Haibun
Chris Faiers/cricket
Hidden Brook Press, 2008
ISBN 978-1-897475-25-6
(limited number of copies still available by request from me)

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