Autumn Notes

International Day of Peace

The International Day of Peace, September 21, was commemorated with a special ceremony in the Buddha Hall. Sensei selected three letters from soldiers and sailors in World War II and Vietnam to be read as part of the ceremony. One of them was from Corporal Harry Towne to his mother. Corporal Towne was wounded four days after the American flag was raised on Iwo Jima’s Mount Surabachi. He was one of 28,000 US casualties of the battle, March 19, 1945. He wrote to re-assure this mother that he would soon "be in almost as good shape as before now that they have these new artificial limbs. Yes, Mother, I have lost my right leg, but it isn’t worrying me a bit. I shall receive a pension for the rest of my life and with the new artificial limb, you can hardly tell anything is wrong."

After the letters were read Sthaman led the Sangha in the following prayer:

I will keep in mind
the horrors of war.

I will not be fooled
by talk of glory.

I will see the victims.
I will see the suffering.
I will see the way.
I will see myself walk the way.

May all creatures find peace.

The International Day of Peace was created by United Nations resolution in 1981. Our Center is one of 1900 organizations in 190 countries that has signed the "Peace Pledge" agreeing to help raise awareness of this day and its goals. Our ceremony on September 21 was one of the 2500 events that day that took place across 179 countries in honor of this pledge. More information can be found here.

The letters were selected from a collection entitled "Letters of the Century", edited by Lisa Grunwald and Stephen J. Adler. Copies are available in the ZC library.

More Pierogies, Please

Cynthia Stone recently proposed the idea of a Sangha recipe book, and has volunteered to assemble it. Recipes can be given or e-mailed to Cynthia or to Kasia at the Center.

Summer Reading, Some Are Not

There's a very cool secret button that lives at the bottom of our blog. It's called a Site Meter. If you'd clicked on it September 25, you'd have seen something pretty amazing. The July issue of the blog has had 491 visits since it was posted, averaging six visits a day and a total of about 1,076 page views. (The Bulletin Board has also been doing well, and thanks are in order to Jeff Berger for first locating this tool and incorporating it into the BB.)

We're impressed. We think this means that we are gradually being weaned off of paper and onto the web, allowing us to — for instance — "publish" Kasia's luscious photos of our garden in full and glorious color as well as share those photos with the Sangha. It allows us to expand our reach and enrich our content graphically in ways only the most costly full color magazines can even dream of. There is a PDF version available for printing text (no graphics) of this issue, for those who still crave paper or have difficulty reading things on a screen, but for the most part, we think the blog has increased readership and interest. And that beats a poke in the eye with a sharp stick any day. We are, as always, interested in hearing your opinions, comments or gripes.

Sit well,
J&J