Register for Event
Use this form to make, change or cancel a registration for an event at Austin Zen Center. Read our Registration policy for fee and payment policies. Please note that if an event requires payment, your registration will be complete only when payment is received. Thank you!
About the Environmental Workshop at the Austin Zen Center
"Not waiting for our national and state politicos to catch up with us, we are banding together, taking action in our own communities." —Joanna Macy
About Joanna Macy
Eco-philosopher Joanna Macy PhD, is a scholar of Buddhism, general systems theory, and deep ecology. A respected voice in the movements for peace, justice, and ecology, she interweaves her scholarship with five decades of activism. As the root teacher of the Work That Reconnects, she has created a ground-breaking theoretical framework for personal and social change, as well as a powerful workshop methodology for its application. Her wide-ranging work addresses psychological and spiritual issues of the nuclear age, the cultivation of ecological awareness, and the fruitful resonance between Buddhist thought and contemporary science.
Many thousands of people around the world have participated in Joanna's workshops and trainings. Her group methods, known as the Work That Reconnects, have been adopted and adapted yet more widely in classrooms, churches, and grassroots organizing. Her work helps people transform despair and apathy, in the face of overwhelming social and ecological crises, into constructive, collaborative action. It brings a new way of seeing the world, as our larger living body, freeing us from the assumptions and attitudes that now threaten the continuity of life on Earth.
About Eric Towler
I am certainly not Joanna, but will do my best to represent her work in spirit. :) I have been practicing Zen for around five years and first became interested in Joanna's work during a Sesshin under the guidance of Peg Syverson and Flint Sparks in 2009. The Dharma talks and exercises we explored instantly resonated with just about everything that brought me to practice. I am currently living in Round Rock and work at the Round Rock Public Library.
Let Eric know if there are additional questions.
Dharma Talks
Susan Moon, May 19, 2012, Zen Koans About Women
Next Step
Next-Step is for people who have attended a meditation instruction and who are interested in bringing what they have learned to the zendo. This is an hour and a half class where we will go over the forms and ceremonies in Soto Zen and will touch on things like how to move around in the zendo, bowing, chanting and service.
JustThis
Dogen said, “Do not follow the ideas of others, but learn to listen to the voice within yourself.”
Members of JustThis’s response group reacted to Dogen’s instruction by listening inside and giving us art and thought. Inspire your own voice within by following this link to their creations in JustThis: The Voice Within: http://justthis.austinzencenter.org/, the blog journal of the Austin Zen Center.
