This week our service will be centered on a message from the Zen Center given by Lauren Malnikow. She has been a student of zen for 19 years, working with Shinge Roshi (Sherry Chayat) at the Zen Center of Syracuse. In 2002, she took the step of “Jukai” in a formal ceremony during which she received the dharma name “Jika”- which translates to “compassion blooming.”  Last April, she was authorized as a Dharma Teacher in this tradition.  She is the membership chairman for the center, and serves on the development committee and the board of trustees.  She teaches in our Community Meditation Programs, offerings throughout our community. She will speak on Zen Meditation, what it is and what it does for our lives.

[By Shinge Roshi]  “What is Zen? It’s both something we are—our true nature expressing itself moment by moment—and something we do—a disciplined practice through which we can realize the joy of being. It is not a belief system to which one converts. There is no dogma or doctrine. Zen is the direct experience of what we might call ultimate reality, or the absolute, yet it is not separate from the ordinary, the relative. This direct experience is our birthright.”