Category Archives: Programs

Weekend Retreat: Kathie Fischer

Kathie Fischer returns to Bozeman with this weekend retreat on the Therigatha– Teachings of the First Buddhist Women. Hosted by the Bozeman Zen Group, the retreat will take place May 3-5. This retreat will take place in person and via Zoom.

During the weekend, Kathie Fischer will help us discover the lives and teachings of early Elder Buddhist nuns through their stories, poems, and histories. These poignant tales of courage, tragedy and commitment can inspire us in our lives even 2500 years later.

With a mixture of zazen, stories, poems and dialogue we will enjoy the weekend with Kathie, our good friend and teacher.

Kathie will also be the guest speaker at the Bozeman Insight Group on Thursday, May 2. Everyone is invited to this evening to get to know Kathie better in an informal discussion and Q&A.

About Kathie Fischer

Sokaku Ryotan Kathie Fischer began practicing Zen in 1971 with Sojun Mel Weitsman at the Berkeley Zen Center. She was ordained a Zen priest at San Francisco Zen Center in 1980 by Zentatsu Richard Baker, and continued residential practice at Zen Center for 15 more years. Kathie also studied and practiced with Maurine Stuart MyoOn Roshi.

She received Dharma transmission from Sojun Weitsman in 2011 while in the midst of her 28-year career as a school teacher in Mill Valley. Since retiring from teaching science to adolescents she has turned her attention to studying and teaching Dharma.

Class Series: Intro to Meditation

ClassesMichael Palmer

The class series: Intro to Meditation, will be led by Karen DeCotis over the course of three Wednesdays beginning April 24.

In the Buddhist tradition there are several meditation styles that can aid us in developing the qualities of peacefulness and wisdom. This series will teach meditation styles from the Insight, Zen and Tibetan traditions. Meditation can help to calm the mind, open the heart, and awaken wisdom. It is a means to study ourselves by contacting our inner life. When we know ourselves well, we are better able to relate to others in the world with integrity and confidence. Join us for any or all of this series. Register here.

Class Series: Intro to Meditation begins April 24

About Karen

Karen DeCotis is a Zen student and teacher who received priest ordination in the Soto Lineage in 2016 and Dharma transmission in 2019. She has taught the Bozeman Zen Group for almost 20 years and practiced at the Berkeley Zen Center and San Francisco Zen Center beginning in 1986. Devoted to service and engaged learning, Karen brings knowledge of and experience with the Buddhist traditions along with a clear-eyed view of human life, suffering and transformation. She is known for her humor and warmth, bringing her intelligence, wit and humility to every teaching opportunity.

All contributions will be split evenly between the Dharma Center and the teacher. Thank you for your support, which sustains the center and enables us to offer the teachings as freely as possible.

Half-day Koan Salon

Half-Day Retreat, ZenMichael Palmer

This half-day Koan Salon on Saturday, April 20 with Michael Smith and Karen DeCotis is a restful, inclusive way to practice with koans. Koan is a Japanese term that refers to a legal public case. In Zen, koans are designed to give us pause, to enter deeply our own case. We will spend the morning sitting several short periods of zazen, each with a phrase, a story, a poem. There will be walking meditation, and time after each “koan” to consider together. All are welcome. No previous experience with koans is necessary. Sliding scale of $25-$50; scholarships available. Space is limited. Please register in advance for the half-da Koan Salon by clicking here.

About the Bozeman Zen Group

The Bozeman Zen Group provides half-day practice retreats regularly on Zoom and in-person to offer a time to stabilize and deepen our zazen practice, hear the teaching and engage with Zen forms. If you are new to retreat practice, and wish to learn more about how to participate, contact us at bznzen@gmail.com.

We are open to all who are interested in Zen and those curious about basic Buddhist practice.

We are currently affiliated with Branching Streams, an organization of sanghas in the Soto Zen lineage of Suzuki Roshi and the San Francisco Zen Center. Several of our members work with Zen teachers of other lineages. We are one of the resident sanghas at the Bozeman Dharma Center. All are welcome!

Event: Tibetan Bowls with Brian Sparks

SoundGateMichael Palmer

Enjoy Tibetan Bowls with Brian Sparks for our second SoundGate meditation of the month on Friday, April 19 at 7 PM.

Brian received his spiritual teaching from several masters in the Nyingma tradition of Tibetan Buddhism. His teachers blessed his bowl work by giving him the specific “Prayer of Aspiration” and granted him many Buddhist empowerments. He has toured with notable Tibetan musicians, actors, and at the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas in Arlee.

He offers his practice of playing Tibetan bowls in service of healing, compassion and awakening.

No registration necessary. Donations gratefully accepted. Any funds collected will be split evenly between the BDC and the guest artist.

Learn more about upcoming SoundGate offerings here.

If you play an instrument or are practiced in singing/chanting as a form of meditation and might like to offer a program, please let us know. We welcome collaborators. Please email programs@BozemanDharmaCenter.org to be in touch. Thank you.

More on using sound as an object for Insight Meditation:

Sounds are a wonderful object to practice the key elements of a meditation practice. We can be aware of how they arise, change, flow and pass; aware of whether they are pleasant, neutral or unpleasant; and watch whether the mind creates commentary or judgements about them. In this way, we hone the skills of practice which can be brought to any and all sense gates in turn.

Ultimately we begin to notice that sounds, like all passing experience, have the “Three Characteristics” of all phenomena: they are Impermanent, Impersonal and Incapable of providing lasting satisfaction. This leads to the development of Insight and a wise relationship to our experience.

We often take our thoughts and internal sensations personally – they seem to be by us, or about us, and the mind often reacts with wondering what to do about them. Sounds are far less likely to be taken personally, though we may have a judgement that “this shouldn’t be happening” or strategize how to fix some of them. Many people find it relatively easy to cultivate a dispassionate equanimity with sound, which can then carry over to the other senses. Thoughts, for example can be experienced as simply internal sounds. These SoundGate meditations, while (mostly) lovely and soothing, can also be used to develop your range of meditation experience.

Class: Writing Meditation

Classes, Non-denominationalMichael Palmer

We’re excited to have Dr. Marilia Librandi host a writing meditation workshop for our Mindful Creativity series on April 14. Marilia excels at creating a space to create freely, to experiment with forms and content, to discover our spontaneous mind, to let our inner critic speak but not to stop us, to express ourselves effortlessly and to surprise ourselves with the energy of our listening words.

It’s a workshop inspired by the encounter between Allen Ginsberg and Trungpa Rinpoche, carried on by Natalie Goldberg’s writing practice, Zenju Earthlyn Manuel’s spiritual writings and Brazilian Clarice Lispector’s “writing by ear.”

Marília Librandi has a Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from the University of São Paulo, Brazil. She taught Brazilian Literature and Culture at Stanford University and at Princeton University. She is the author of Writing by Ear (Univ.of Toronto Press, 2018) and co-editor of Transpoetic Exchange (Bucknell Press, 2020). Learn more on her website: https://mywritinglab.org/

Here’s what past participants have said about Marilia’s workshops:

“Marilla’s writing lab spurs my daily creativity in ways I never expected. I’m delighted to have more clarity about my intentions, with fresh ideas on how to live and work. Most of all, the rich exchange of sharing spontaneous writing is a treasure. Kind listening and warm encouragement ‘ go a long way to make writing both joyful and rewarding.” -Margaret Kachadurian

“I really appreciate how Marilia makes the Writing Lab a group experience where it feels safe to write from a place of freedom and vulnerability. She offers inspiring prompts for our writing and maintains a structure that supports good conversation and writing time. I thoroughly enjoy my time at the Writing Lab!” -Travis Burdick

Registration fees will be split between the BDC and the facilitator. No need to bring extra dana.

Class: Dependent Origination

Classes, InsightMichael Palmer

This Dependent Origination class, designed for meditators with some experience, will be offered over five weeks in the weekly Bozeman Insight Community‘s Thursday meetings on a drop-in basis beginning April 4. We welcome anyone who’d like to explore the nuances of these intricate teachings of the Buddha’s.

There’s an essential paradox at the heart of Buddhist practice: We must get exquisitely intimate with the moment-to-moment mind-body experience of the (small, relative) self in order to transcend it. The boat to ‘the far shore’ is built of our messy, frustrating stuff of life on this shore. The way beyond our reactivity, our back pain, our nagging inner commentary is to equanimously and compassionately embrace it. This is Alan Watts’ “backwards law” and the meaning of Dogen’s Genjo Koan.

This class will begin with the teachings on the Five Aggregates and build up to an understanding of the chain of Dependent Origination – the Buddha’s map for what’s going on in human experience, how we get caught and why we suffer. We will explore the practices that intimately “study the self” and how those lead to “forgetting the self.” The chain becomes a liberative cycle of expanding wisdom and freedom.

Each week there will be a suggested home practice to deepen our experiential knowledge of the concepts. The series is designed to be sequential but anyone is welcome to attend sporadically or singly as their schedule and interests allow.

Class Schedule

April 4: The Five Aggregates and the Importance of Vedana (feeling tone)
April 11: Perception, Mis-perception, Mental Formations and the mind’s reactivity
April 18: Further links in the chain: how we get hooked and how we can unhook
April 25: The Chain of Dependent Origination and how it illustrates the Four Noble Truths
May 2: The Liberative chain spiraling toward wisdom, insight, compassion and freedom

Drop in to one, some or all five sessions of the series. No prior registration is necessary.

Zoom connection will be available as per usual on our Thursday evenings.

This course is offered on a dana basis, meaning it is our gift to you, freely offered. We gratefully accept support and gratitude to pay the bills and keep the sangha going. (For those that want it: the suggestion donation would be $5-15 per session)

Retreat: Finding Refuge with Pamela Weiss

Weekend RetreatMichael Palmer

Pamela Weiss returns to Bozeman for a weekend retreat on Finding Refuge.

The word refuge comes from the Latin, re-fuge, which means to fly back, to return, to come home. So much of our suffering comes from “lookin’ for love in all the wrong places…” We imagine we will find love, safety, refuge out there somewhere. But Buddhist practice teaches us that true refuge is always and already right here. Right where we are, just as we are.

This is not an invitation to apathy or passivity. It is a call to do the difficult, deeply satisfying work of transforming our tangles (reactive habits and patterns) into clear, compassionate action. This is what it means to be a Bodhisattva, a person dedicated to alleviating suffering—ours, others’, the worlds’—and to walk the Bodhisattva Path. It is exactly what our wide, aching world needs now.

Over the course of this weekend, we will focus on the theme of Finding True Refuge, and explore how to untangle our personal and collective tangles within our beautiful, aching world.

Schedule

Thursday, March 21, 7-8:30 PM: Pamela Weiss will join Bozeman Insight Community to discuss the Genjo Koan (No registration necessary)
Friday, March 22, 7-9 PM: Teachings on Refuge (There is an option for registering only for Friday night)
Saturday, March 23: 9 AM – 4 PM: The Three Jewels
Sunday, March 24: 9 AM – Noon: Closing Thoughts and Full Moon ceremony

Class: Dependent Origination

Classes, InsightMichael Palmer

Designed for meditators with some experience, this class, taught by Suzanne Colón, will begin with the teachings on the Five Aggregates and build up to an understanding of the chain of Dependent Origination – the Buddha’s map for what’s going on in human experience, how we get caught and why we suffer. The series is designed to be sequential but anyone is welcome to attend sporadically or singly as their schedule and interests allow. No registration necessary.

March 14: The Five Aggregates and the Importance of Vedana (feeling tone)
March 21: With guest Pamela Weiss: the Genjo Koan exploring paradox and different ways to view this whole enterprise (Zen vs Insight perspectives)
March 28: Perception and Mental Formations/Reactivity
April 4: The Chain of Dependent Origination, how we get hooked and how we can unhook
April 11: The Liberative chain spiraling toward wisdom, insight, compassion and freedom

Event: Kirtan-Style Chanting

SoundGateMichael Palmer

Our second SoundGate offering for the month features Kathleen Karlsen! Kathleen is a mantra practitioner, kirtan leader, composer, and artist focused on the transformative power of the arts. CD). She has three levels of training from the Kirtan Leadership Institute and has led regular kirtans, mantra events, and workshops for the last six years.

Chants will be provided for those who would like to chant in unison — this is an evening where your voice is welcome! No registration necessary. Donations welcome; any funds collected will be split evenly with the guest artist.

More about Kathleen can be found on her website.