Circle Dharmaholder Ceremony on the Streets of Chester!

 

Barbara and Roland Wegmueller came over from Switzerland to lead a Zen Peacemakers Circle Dharmaholder Ceremony on the afternoon of Oct 26th.  Barbara and Roland are Zen teachers in the lineage of Bernie Glassman, and the main coordinators for the Zen Peacemaker Circles in Europe.

The role of Circle Dharmaholder is to hold the vision of Zen practice and share it wiith circles of peers training together. Steve Hart and Chris Zang Starbuck were presented with lovely handmade Dharmaholder scarves at the end of a short ceremony of making vows.

The afternoon began with lunch in the Roman Amphitheatre, where we sometimes meet to begin our circles.  Then we went to the ruins of the old Norman cathedral, where Roland led some zazen beneath the open sky.  After the ceremony we walked down by the River Dee and made a pilgrimage to the Roman shrine of Minerva, Goddess of wisdom still carved into a rock.  Barbara led us in the Buddhist Prajnaparamita wisdom chant Gate Gate Paragate Parasmgate Bodhi Svaha.

Ari Pliskin sharing his experience in Chester on 26th Oct

 

Ari Pliskin visited us on Saturday from the USA.  He runs a project called the Stone Soup Cafe in Greenfield, Massachussets, which he calls a "pay what you can cafe".  It grew out of the ideas of Zen Master Bernie Glassman, with encouragement from the actor Jeff Bridges, as an alternative to soup kitchens.  Ari explained that Zen Peacemakers Street Retreats taught them that soup kitchens may be staffed by very loving people, but there is still a huge division between "us" and "them", the "helper" and the "helped".  Ari's project includes everyone in all aspects - a homeless person might be serving a wealthy professional, or vice versa, and it makes no difference.

Ari explained for us some of the spiritual roots of how he set up the cafe - the link to the Zen Peacemakers' "Three Tenets": Not Knowing, Bearing Witness, and Loving Action, and how he uses the model of the Five Buddha Families in coordinating the business side of it.

Ari is a lovely, gentle man, and it was a plaesure to have him here to speak to us.