12-Hour Chant for Peace

Quite a heart-opening day today. Great Vow Zen Monastery has hosted a 24-Hour Chant for Peace for the past seven years. It usually takes place in the summer, around the anniversaries of the bombing of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. So our city center, the Heart of Wisdom Zen Temple decided to bring the chanting to Portland to start the new year right, from 8 in the morning to 8 at night.

We are looking for our own building, and as an intermediate step to that end, we are renting space two Saturdays a month from a lovely Episcopalian Church, St. David of Wales. So this was one of our Saturday activities.

Each hour-long chant would start in the Fellowship Hall on the hour, then at quarter 'till, the chanters would process to the Sanctuary and circumambulate, giving the next chanting group time to set up and get ready. Then the chanters would be led back into the Fellowship Hall for more and different chanting. People could stay for some or all, drop in, leave early, whatever.

Please forgive the rough editing - I had yet to attend Mac school or even watch the instructional videos before I tried to make this little iMovie. I am also not sure why it is getting cut off at the edge. It looks fine in the Preview.

This is just a smattering of the groups who participated. We estimate about 200 people participated all day, some stayed for the whole thing, others came and went.

There was a chill-out zone in another room with a vat of chili and LOTS of snacks and drinks to keep the chanters going. This area became known as the "12-Hour Chat for Peace" (best line of the day, Andrew).

Chanting for 12 hours or even just a few minutes throughout the day is one heart-opening activity. It brought us in touch with folks who would not probably have gone to a Zen Monastery 90 minutes away. We really enjoyed the space, and are beginning to get comfortable with having some kind of offering like this a couple times a month.

I guess I am just awestruck by it all.