The Zen Sitting Group of Pittsburgh (ZSGP) meets at Yoga Matrika on alternate Sunday mornings and two Tuesday evenings a month. Please see the schedule and more information about ZSGP below.
What is ZSGP? What is Zen practice? Who can participate?
The Zen Sitting Group of Pittsburgh (ZSGP) is a member of the Society of Mountains and Rivers (SMR), a network of Zen Buddhist sitting groups and affiliates of the Mountains and Rivers Order (MRO). The MRO’s spiritual founder and director is John Daido Loori Roshi, abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York. WWW.MRO.ORG
Zen practice can help us to wake up to who we are and to live out of that understanding. The questions that we take up during the course of our practice are the questions of our human existence: What is life? What is death? How can we truly be alive and live and die in a way that is real and fulfilling?
The door of ZSGP is open to anyone wanting to enter deeply into these questions. Newcomers and experienced practitioners are welcome. Beginning instruction in zazen (sitting meditation) will be offered at each sitting for those attending ZSGP for the first time. If you are attending the ZSGP for the first time, please call head to arrange beginning instruction on your visit.
Suggested Donation is $5. No one is turned away for lack of ability to donate. All donations are used to cover the cost of the use of the sitting space.
Sitting Schedule
We meet on alternating Sundays starting from 9:30 AM-11:30AM at Yoga Matrika located at 6520 Wilkins Avenue in Squirrel Hill (closest intersection is Beechwood and Wilkins and the space is next to WHEEL DELIVER) for zazen and a liturgy service. On the second Sunday of each month there will also be a senior’s talk by the group leader, Hogen Green. These talks on the Dharma will focus primarily on the relationship of Zen practice to daily life.
At then end of each sitting together, we take the Four Bodhisattva Vows:
Sentient beings are numberless, I vow to save them
Desires are inexhaustable, I vow to put an end to them.
The Dharmas are boundless, I vow to master them,
The buddha way is unattainable, I vow to attain it.
We chant these vows 3 times.
This is not a casual chant we do. Taking a vow, these vows, sitting after sitting is transformative. Can be transformative if we begin to make a connection between how we live in response to the challenge of our life, and what these vows are poinying at. Transformation is the point of Zen practice. But transforming what, from what to what? And how does this happen? How does our life actually change in a way that helps our self and others?
Over the next several months, I’ll be giving a series of monthly talks on the path of the Bodhisattva. We will look at that path from the perspective of Vow, from that of the Prajna Paramita Sutra- the Heart Sutra as well as from the perspectives of what the great teachers of our tradition have offered. I invite you to make a special effort to attend both the scheduled talks and the sittings so that the words of the talks and the experience of investigating the Bodhisattva path can be given life: your life. I would encourage you to deeply question what is said in these talks and if it is helpful, to bring these questions up for exploration.
Here is our remaining 2010 schedule:
JULY 2010
Tuesdays: July 6 and 20
Sundays: July 11
AUGUST 2010
Tuesdays: August 3, 17th, 31
Sundays: Aug 8th & 29th
SEPTEMBER 2010
Tuesdays: September 14 & 28th
Sundays: Sept 5 & 19th
OCTOBER 2010
Tuesdays: 12, 26
Sundays: 3, 17,
NOVEMBER 2010
Tuesdays:November 9th & 23rd
Sundays:November 14th & 28th
DECEMBER 2010
Tuesdays: December 7th and 21st
Sunday: December 12th
The group’s leader, Ron Hogen Green, MRO, is a senior lay student of John Daido Loori Roshi, abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery. Hogen studied Zen with Roshi Philip Kapleau between 1978 and 1991, then became a student of Daido Roshi in the Mountains and Rivers Order that same year. Hogen was in full-time residential training at Zen Mountain Monastery from 1995 until 2007, serving as a senior monastic. He lives in Pittsburgh with his wife Cindy Eiho Green.
Contact the Zen Sitting Group of Pittsbugh:
Ron Hogen Green
Hogen@dharma.net
Tel. (412) 421-5176
Resources
Training in the MRO: http://www.mro.org/zmm/training/
Lay and monastic training in one of the West’s most established Zen Buddhist lineages
Meditation Instruction: http://www.mro.org/zmm/teachings/meditation.php
Clear, simple instructions in zazen (sitting meditation), the core of all Zen Buddhist practice
Retreats and Programs At Zen Mountain Monastery: http://www.mro.org/zmm/retreats/
Register online for weekend introductory retreats, week-long intensives and more
Monastery Store: http://www.dharma.net/monstore/
The Monastery Store is the online catalog of Dharma Communications, offering meditation supplies in the form of sitting cushions, books, audio and audio-visual teachings and altar supplies. The Monastery Store mission is to support home practice.
Mountain Record: The Zen Practitioners’ Journal is a quarterly published by Dharma Communications http://www.mro.org/mr/mountainrecord.html
For the last twenty-seven years, Mountain Record has offered powerful teachings of realized Buddhism from masters East and West, past and present, as well as essays, poetry, media reviews and art.
WZEN Web Radio: http://www.wzen.org/
WZEN is an original webcast produced at Zen Mountain Monastery, including discourses by Abbot John Daido Loori, Roshi, and talks by the teachers of the MRO, as well as a diversity of other programming relating to a life of spiritual practice.
Dharma Communications: http://www.dharma.net/
The educational outreach arm of the MRO, DC presents Zen teachings in a range of media
Begging Bowl
The Pittsburgh Zen Sitting Group has need for the following items which are available from The Monastery Store: http://www.Dharma.net/monstore
Zen Mountain Monastery Daily Liturgy Manuals, paperback- up to 10 copies
Zabutons
Zafu’s
Standard Sitting Bench
Large Mokugyo
Monetary donations which would go towards the purchase of these items would be gratefully accepted as well.
Contributions made at each each sitting go entirely towards renting the space we use at Matrika Yoga Center.
