What we do
Daily and Weekly Practice EcoSattvas DownEast Zazen Instruction Sitting Hall Procedures All-Day Sitting (Zazenkai) Retreats (Sesshin) Dogen Studies Precepts Classes and Jukai |
Welcome to Zen DownEast
Our resident teacher is Diane Shoshin Fitzgerald, Sensei, a Soto Zen priest. She is a member of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association. Our Practice Leader is Mary Awaremu Downing. Our schedule includes daily and weekly sittings, Dogen and precepts classes, day-long and multi-day retreats and ongoing activities in support of our EcoSattva vow to care for the earth and all beings.
|
The place we now call Maine is home to the sovereign people of the Wabanaki Confederacy: the Penobscot, Passamaquoddy, Maliseet, and Mi'kmaq peoples, caretakers of this land. We exist on their unceded and unsurrendered homelands. We acknowledge and honor these communities native to the Dawnland; the ancestral fishing, hunting, and agricultural grounds they inhabited for thousands of years; and recognize that even when we meet virtually, we are doing so in places built on Indigenous homelands and resources. We also acknowledge the uncomfortable truths of settler colonialism, among them that the peoples indigenous to this place we call home were often forcibly removed. Harm from the physical and cultural genocide of Native people here continues and is felt by members of the Wabanaki Confederacy. We commit ourselves to opening our hearts to this suffering, our eyes to this injustice and our hands to helping to heal this wound.
|
Location
Downeast Maine |