SANGHA
One day, Maezumi Roshi said: Dharma is stronger than blood.
SANGHA is the community of practitioners, those who attend sesshin, who share the silence, the effort and the uncertainty.
In a wider sense, we all are sangha, although it remains true that the ties that bind us in the practice of seeing ourselves as we really are become more meaningful than even blood relationships.
JUKAI
Jukai is a profound ceremony. When we take the lay precepts, we formalize our relationship with our teacher and with the sangha, the community of practitioners.
One of the most significant parts of the ceremony is receiving a Dharma name, which is how everyone in the sangha knows us from now on.
Hosso Sensei works to incorporate a mirror into each one of the name's syllables, so that it might help us to have a clearer vision of our life as practice.
By taking Jukai, the student promises to maintain the precepts: the Three Treasures, the Three Pure Precepts and the Ten Grave Precepts. Along with a Dharma name, he or she recieves a Rakusu and the Zen lineage chart, or Kechimyaku.
