

The Dharma Bum Temple thanks you!
The Dharma Bum Life Program is founded on principles known as the Six Perfections. These six principles (generosity, morality, patience, diligence, concentration, wisdom) when carried out in life provide the foundation for peace and happiness in every moment. This program will help you develop proper daily motivation, great compassion and impartial loving-kindness.
For 6 weeks "Zafu" was listed on the donation wall...Words can not explain how touched we were when presented with what will be Twelve Zafus made by the Dharma Bums in the program...Each Zafu has one of the Six Perfections written...The Zafus are beautiful, but nothing is more special than knowing they were made by hand by our group and the material was donated, Dharma Bum Style...
The practice of Generosity, Morality, Patience, Diligence, Concentration and Wisdom were all used in the creation of the Zafus...All Dharma Bums in the future will proudly and humbly sit at the Dharma Bum Temple in deep contemplation over the word they see in front of them...May the blessing of this gift be shared with all beings, in all directions...Amitofo!
Graduating Class - Summer 2009
Becky Bazzill
Beth Kelley
Chris Travers
Dale Gunns
Francesca Witte
Fred Ollinger
Julia Roncoroni
Justin Fogle
Yadira Rosario
Namo Omitofo
After some resistance toward bowing and having the church feel-like I tend to avoid; in the middle of all that bowing, tears ran down my face and I felt an intense sense of appreciation, just pure bliss, and white light. The chanting is still in my head...its like having that song that keeps playing in your head, over and over again. I'm still sore, my legs mainly...it's good pain though. I want to thank you both for putting this together. This was a very humbling experience for me!
My thoughts from last night?
After almost crying and almost shitting my pants (the power of fear), I realized you weren't really telling me (I don't want to speak for the others in the group) anything I didn't know already.... you were only telling me things I didn't want to deal with!
Two months ago, I was fortunate enough to get a glimpse of reality... to see how things could be if I committed to a lifetime of diligent practice. I was offered the food I have longed for for 27 years. This shook my world. For two months, I've been doing some community service, trying to learn how to meditate... Now the program is about to end: what am I going to do with all that I learned these weeks?
I can't go back to the old Julia 'cause the way I see the world has changed. It's time for me to stop goofing around, to stop commiting whenever I'm not too sad/ too busy for it. This is also why I questioned my thoughts/ decisions these past days: how do I make everything fit? What parts do I want to keep of the old Julia that "fell apart"?
I thank you for your words.... for your reality check. Your words had a strong impact on me last night... You made Buddhism real. You showed me that you can "live" Buddhism. No bullshit.
Finally I solved the puzzle that's kept me intrigued these past weeks: what do I want? I want to help others as much as the DBLP (especially Maggie and you) has helped me.
Thanks again (I really, really, really, really mean it),
Dharma Bum Julia
Letting go – Makeda’s Style
Makeda was kind enough to come to the temple to talk to us about her life, spiritual journey and the
Before her visit, I had seen Makeda on TV a couple of times and on the
I felt short with my assumption. On the one hand, I was right about her happy and upbeat demeanor and about her ability to keep us amused for over and hour and a half with her life stories and experiences. However, she was also able to teach me (and I think that the rest of the Dharma Bums as well) about using our suffering to let go of it.
That night we learned that this bubbly lady had had a pretty rough childhood. We heard about the times she felt discriminated and how she had to fight harder than most of us to achieve her dreams. We learned that most of her friends had decided to move out of
That night I started to realize that letting go is not actually a passive thing to do. For a long time, before that night, I had been trying to “let go” by having an “I don’t care if bad things happen to me” attitude because if I stopped caring it would stop affecting me and thus I would stop suffering. My technique worked to an extent, I did stop caring, but the suffering did not stop....I could not understand why, it was so unfair (oh no poor me!).
Makeda’s story taught me that effective letting go is an active empowering action. In order to stop my suffering I must be accountable for it, which means coming up with an effective plan to end it. Makeda does not feel like a victim of her difficult childhood, or her irresponsible parents. She does not use her past to feel sorry for herself and to blame everything bad on the fact that she had it tough. But she doesn’t pretend that she doesn’t care or that it never happened either. She embraces and learns from the pain and uses it to emerge strong and to accomplish her dreams. I am pretty sure that the
So now everything that I have learned in the Dharma Bums Life program comes together. I am lucky enough to have been given the tools to come up with my plan to end my suffering. Yes meditation is difficult and yes finding the will to practice the six perfections can be time consuming, but I am not a victim here, I will not fuel my suffering or bad Karma by complaining even more. I will take this tools and I will use them because it is up to me and that is pretty freaking cool.
Dharma Bum Francesca
Permaculture presentation by Julia Dashe from the San Diego Roots Sustainable Food Project (sandiegoroots.org)
“The first thing anyone should be taught about gardening when they are just beginning, is the process of composting,” Julia Dashe told our group one sunny afternoon while standing outside of the three compost bins at the
This important lesson in the growth cycle of the garden can be applied to all of life – the transition from death to life, from destruction to creation, is just as important as the transition from life to death. Without some form of destruction and letting go of the old, there would be no room for growth and development for the new. Because every living being and the systems they are a part of go through numerous cycles of life and death in some way or another, ideally there should be no waste produced by the system. One creature’s poop is another’s house, and one dead animal can feed a whole family. This idea is the foundation to the permaculture movement, a 40-year old theory that began in agricultural design and is now flourishing as a completely sustainable approach to food, community and culture.
The Dharma Bums had the privilege to hear Julia speak about permaculture and sustainable gardening practices. She spoke of the vital need to carry on the once-traditional practices of locally grown food, while also incorporating new eco-friendly ‘green’ techniques so we can use our resources more wisely. For example, the current system allows huge industrial farms to economically plant row after row of the same species of corn, leading to the stripping of nutrients from the soil each year. However, permaculture suggests that we ecologically plant a mixed variety of plant species that can cohabitate with one another, allowing a sustainable and mutually dependent ecosystem to develop. Thus, the products of one piece in the system literally supply the needs of the neighboring elements, while doing little damage to the environment.
My experiences volunteering at the Terra Nova Garden at Morse High School and the City College Urban Farm in downtown
~ Dharma Bum Becky
On the other hand, when one stays still and silent, many complicated and intricate thoughts and feelings can bubble up. These feelings are very individual and idiosyncratic. Thus, there are as many accounts of this retreat as there were participants. This is one account.
In the time just before the retreat began, the early arrivers expressed apprehension at having to sit so much. This was the first half day retreat for the most of us.
Then we were informed that the retreat was silent, and it had all ready begun! From then on I felt as if I were in a kind of bubble or cocoon of silence. As per usual for the
During the retreat, I was surprised to find that during the breaks, I actually craved going up to meditate. During the actual meditation, I was not really as concentrated as I wanted to be. I spent a lot of it lost in thought. I also smiled a lot and was in a calm and happy mood. I saw each meditation period as another chance to really get it right that is to stay more faithfully with my breath and not to get lost.
This is a purely subjective experience, and it was based on conditions coming together on one particular day. On a different day, I could imagine the opposite: relief during the break times and an eagerness to fill my mind with more reading and my body with food.
As it was, I did enjoy the breaks. I found that I was noticing my surroundings a great deal more than I had before. I never realized that there were so many details on a simple banana from the spotting of its skin to the irregular lines on the inside. Also, I never realized that there were statues of little men above the kitchen cabinet.
After the meal, we went lawn bowling. I found this activity to be quite strange after meditation. I wasn’t more focused on the game like I thought I would be. However, I did feel like I needed to do less and to be less. It was enough to feel the soft grass beneath my feet and to watch people roll the ball.
The best part of lawn bowling, though, was watching Jeff enjoy himself. Aside from meditation, I had never seen him so ecstatic about an activity.
After this retreat, I would very much like to do another retreat with the exact same schedule especially Maggie’s cooking and lawn bowling at the end!
Dharma Bum Fred
After all the silence, Jeff announced we were going lawn bowling. I laughed - lawn bowling . . . seriously? How cool is that? We went to the LBClub in
Dharma Bum Beth