*Shoryu Bradley, Abbot of Gyobutsuji Zen Monastery will be coming to Austin Zen Center Saturday August 5th, 2017 from 1pm – 5pm!
Shoryu Bradley is the student of the famous Dogen scholar Shōhaku Okumura. Gyobutsuji Zen Monastery is aimed at mirroring the famous Antaiji of Zen practice in Japan here in the U.S.
If you are in the Southern United States I highly recommend you make the trip. It is rare to find a teacher who lives an off-the-grid lifestyle in a remote monastery and the practice is one devoted to a life centered and live around Zazen.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Nurturing Our Faith: The Deep Teachings of Everyday Experience
An AZC Workshop with Shoryu Bradley
Faith is the basis of the Path
– Avatamsaka Sutra
For some of us the word “faith” may carry some negative associations with blind belief, credulity, or even religious indoctrination. In Buddhism, however, faith in the healing power of practice can be seen as a seed we can nurture with our personal experience:
Faith is the seed, practice the rain,
And wisdom is my yoke and plough.
Modesty's the pole, mind the strap,
Mindfulness my ploughshare and goad.
– Kasibharadvaja Sutta
In this workshop participants will explore how viewing common, everyday experience in the light of Buddhist teachings can deepen one's faith in practice. It will be an afternoon of group activities, individual exercises, and group reflections. Attendance is open to all levels of practice experience. Please feel free to join even if you attended the “To Study the Self” workshop offered by Shoryu in 2013; the format will be similar but the exercises will be different.
Shoryu will also be giving the Dharma Talk at AZC at 10:15, by donation only.
Shoryu Bradley was ordained in the Soto Zen Buddhist tradition in 2002 by Seirin Barbara Kohn at Austin Zen Center. In 2004 he began his studies at Sanshinji in Bloomington, Indiana, with Shohaku Okumura Roshi and received Dharma Transmission from him in 2010. He also trained at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center and with the Japanese Soto Zen organization, Sotoshu Shumucho.
