We wish you joy for the holidays and blessings for the New Year.  We hope you will join us for our Christmas and New Years events (link to calendar) at this festive time of year.  Please click here for our 2016 Holiday Card.

On November 16, Rev. Master Jisho was celebrant for the Memorial for Christine Marilyn Reeves, Lay Minister Susan Place’s mother, who died in October.

On November 16th, the Chico Serene Reflection Meditation Group welcomed Rev. Master Scholastica to the group’s regular Wednesday evening meeting.  For the monthly visit with a monk, the group hosts a potluck, followed by meditation, a Dharma talk and discussion. The topic was The Six Worlds, using The Wheel of Life, a graphic depiction of the six realms of existence (devas and hells,  humans and animals, asuras or power seekers and pretas or hungry ghosts) to explore these basic mental states and attitudes of mind in which we can find ourselves in the course of a single day. The following morning, group members met for meditation, Morning Service and an informal breakfast. Newcomers are welcome and meditation instruction is offered. For more information, please visit http://www.skycreekdharmacenter.org/meditation-groups-3/serene-reflection-meditation/ or contact the Shasta Abbey Guestmaster.

Thirty-one people attended the Introductory Retreat over the weekend of November 18-20. Introductory Retreats begin to provide some answers to the questions that bring us to Buddhist practice. These retreats offer guests new to Shasta Abbey an introduction to the Serene Reflection (Soto Zen) practice in a monastic setting. They provide down-to-earth suggestions for taking this practice into one’s daily life outside the monastery gates. Within the monastic schedule, and in silence as much as possible, Introductory Retreats offer meditation instruction, short periods of seated meditation, Dharma talks and informal discussions with time for questions. For information about 2017 Introductory Retreats, please click here.

We are deeply grateful for the opportunity to put most of our monastic duties aside to sit for the 7 days of the traditional Rohatsu Retreat, in celebration of the enlightenment of the Buddha.  On December 8 we held the Festival of the Buddha’s Enlightenment as the monastery was blanketed with nearly 2 inches of snow.