Windhorse Zen Community
Empathy, Compassion, and Connection: A Speaker Series
The Windhorse Non-profit Education Branch’s goal is to create a more secular format for our programs, as a means of sharing resources and support to a wider audience, especially in these charged and divisive times.
As a quick overview, the three divisions of this branch are: Wellness, Sustainability, and Diversity. Our first program happened in the fall and winter of 2022: Awakening From Whiteness. This course brought individuals from Vermont, Florida, Tennessee, Georgia, and North Carolina together to examine the personal, historical, and institutional forms of racism that we all are subject to: consciously and unconsciously.
With the success of this endeavor, we are pleased to offer our next event: Empathy, Compassion, and Connection: A Speaker Series. This program will not only combine the spiritual and psychological ways that we can strengthen the skills of empathy and compassion, but also offer a host of speakers with unique backgrounds to create lasting community connections. Further, secular forms of meditation that strengthen our capacity to be compassionate with one another will be shared.
For more information, please click the “Learn More” button below.
In the Heart of Winter
At this time of year, the world seems almost to hold its breath. The sun still pauses to rest in the cold quiet – the Solstice is playing itself out. On these long, frosty nights in the mountains of North Carolina, stars scatter across the sky, spraying brilliant patterns of light. You have to brave the frozen darkness of these nights to walk out and drink in all that beauty – what Rumi called “a turning night of stars.”
When we, like the sun, pause our busyness and stop to do zazen in this season, we tune our bodies and minds to the rich stillness and silence – the natural samadhi power — of Winter. And when we mark the invisible border between the Old Year and the New, taking time to reflect with open hearts on those patterns we wish to let go of, and those we’d like to invite into our lives, we are also harmonizing with the deeply contemplative spirit of this time. We are opening ourselves to the possibility of renewal and rebirth – for ourselves and the world.
About Windhorse
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Getting Started
Great is the matter of birth and death
Life slips quickly by
Time waits for no one
Wake up! Wake up!
Don’t waste a moment!
– Zen Master Bassui