In December Hojin Sensei attended the Annual Interfaith Breakfast of the Brooklyn Borough President and offered a poem there. Shugen Roshi attends the Woodstock Interfaith Council’s monthly meetings upstate.
In Buffalo, NY in mid-Janurary, Zuisei led a weekend sesshin for the MRO affiliate group, Buffalo Zen, and gave a Sunday talk.
Traveling halfway around the earth to visit our sangha in New Zealand for four weeks in January and February, Hogen Sensei offered teachings in Christchurch at the Opawa Zendo, then led a weekend residential retreat and a week-long sesshin in the mountains outside of Christchurch. Hogen Sensei also offered teachings in Wellington and Auckland hosted by local sangha members living there.
On on February 3, 2018 coordinators of Buddhist Action: Morals, Vision, Justice took up the question: How does a group whose members come from various Buddhist traditions organize to respond to the pressing moral issues of our day? Over 225 Buddhist practitioners—including Shugen Roshi and twenty MRO students—gathered at Union Theological Seminary in New York City for a day to explore ways to take a more public stance on the pressing issues of our day, and transform right action based on the precepts into social action. For more on this new coalition see mountainrecord.org/category/sangha-news/.