Sacramento Dharma Center

You are invited to the only Sacramento screening of the remarkable independent film States of Grace, sponsored by Sacramento Dharma Center, Tuesday October 14^th, 7:30 pm at the Century Downtown Plaza Theater. Grace Dammann and Mark Lippman, one of the filmmakers, are both scheduled to be present for an after-show Q & A.

This 75-minute film describes the challenging recovery of Dr. Grace Dammann, a resident of Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, following a devastating head-on collision on the Golden Gate Bridge. It is a deeply personal film that depicts the inner and outer struggle that results when a life is suddenly and radically changed. That this life is a woman living and practicing in a Buddhist residential community gives the film an added dimension: how does someone in a wheelchair enact her Bodhisattva vow to save all beings?

You can see this illuminating film and support the Sacramento Dharma Center! Ticket sale proceeds go to the filmmakers and to the theater. When you purchase your tickets (online only) you will have the option to add an extra gift that will go to SDC. You will be helping to create a permanent full time home for meditation-based Buddhism – extending the accessibility of Buddhist principles and practices to the larger Sacramento Community.

The ticket price is $11 and they are only available by advance purchase online at the link below beginning September 10^th.

https://www.tugg.com/events/40380

We want all of our friends to know that on Monday August 24th Susan Orr, Julia Mullen, Linda Dekker (the executive committee) and Joette Sebastiani (building committee chair) had a lively and engaging meeting with our new real estate consultant and broker, Kari Bryski, with whom we now have an exclusive buyer representation agreement.

Kari has extensive experience in commercial real estate and an in depth knowledge of our area of interest. We were impressed by her energy and creative thinking. Kari knows and understands the Dharma Center needs and is eager to find us a home!

You are invited to contact us if you see a property, for sale or lease, that you feel would work for us, please email Joette at joettess@sbcglobal.net and Kari at Kari@sonic.net.

We are so grateful for the support and encouragement that we receive from all of you, together we will realize our dream of a home and sanctuary for our Sustaining Sanghas!

The Sacramento Dharma Center Board held its first quarterly meeting with representatives of the Boards of our three founding – and Sustaining Sanghas – Valley Streams Zen Sangha, Sacramento Insight Meditation and Sacramento Buddhist Meditation Group. The intention to have more opportunities for informal conversations about what we are doing, and what questions and reflections the individual Sanghas have, was gratefully received! And inspired a warm and fruitful discussion with everyone expressing their sense of the journey we are on together.

It was clear that our coming together in the creation of a dharma center will be potentiated by meetings of this kind. The Board
has felt that our carefully crafted mission statement –The Sacramento Dharma Center’s mission is to create and sustain a sanctuary for meditation and Buddha’s teachings, welcoming everyone who seeks to end suffering and live in harmony – was enough to communicate what we are putting our energies toward. In the conversation at the quarterly meeting it became clear that that there has been some confusion about the way this would manifest beyond ‘having a building’, and what the implications are for the individual Sanghas’ programs and participation.

At our upcoming Board meeting we will consider this need for clarification of the internal structure we are creating while we search for a physical structure to be our shared sanctuary, a home for each Sangha to continue practicing and offering programs within their own tradition. We’ve been evolving and with the caring input from meetings like this we will continue to evolve as a worthwhile home for the Dharma.

Also, check www.sacdharma.org/can-you-help-us-reach-our-goal. We are happy to report that, though we didn’t reach our end of June goal of 100 Sustaining Circle members, we now have 70 members. And through their generosity we did meet the pledged monthly income level we hoped for, which is $2,500! A great success! This is such encouraging momentum to help us reach our goal of 120 Circle members by the end of 2015, with pledged monthly income of approximately $3,600. We invite you to join in! You can do so here: by starting monthly donations, or pledging to donate when we find our home!

We continue to be grateful for your enthusiastic response to our Sustaining Circle appeal. We now have 80 Sustaining Circle monthly donors pledge to donate $2,812 a month. This is encouraging momentum to help us reach our goal of 120 Sustaining Circle members, with pledged monthly income of approximately $3,600. We invite you to join in!

(click on photo to enlarge)

There are two ways to join in and support the dream:

You can begin donating monthly, automatically right here on our website, or you can mail us a check each month. Better yet, have your bank mail the check, they do it for free! This helps us finance our search for a building, as well as increase our Capital fund and demonstrate our credit worthiness!

Or you can pledge to donate monthly when we locate our home! In this way you help us plan for the future; we will know what we can afford and that we will have stable funding for ongoing expenses. Every monthly donation from you reduces the amount the Dharma Center will need to charge the Sustaining Sanghas.

Begin your monthly pledge here now!

If you would rather donate by check, or pledge to begin donating at a future date: please print, complete, and mail the  Sustaining Circle pledge card found here  (mailing address on the card).

Most of you are probably familiar with the realities of looking for a home to buy or lease, it can take a while and many apparent opportunities fall through for any number of reasons beyond your control. And you keep looking. So it is for us. It looks like, despite our best efforts at making a convincing case for ourselves, our attempt to purchase the Lion’s Club Foundation’s property on 24^th St. isn’t going to come to fruition. It is now in escrow with another party. Our intention to find a full time home for the Dharma is unwavering. Undaunted we continue to search, and we will pursue multiple avenues to reach our goal.

Thanks to the generosity of a Sangha volunteer on our building committee, we have a list of properties around the area which already have an assembly permit, a factor that would facilitate any negotiations with a property’s owner. We have started looking at these properties to see which ones might be suitable for pursuing. As with everything that we do as an organization, we are looking at this as an opportunity to practice the Buddha’s teaching, being mindful of our tendencies to grasp or be attached to the results we wish for. And we are mindful of the patience this process asks of you, and have enormous gratitude for that.

Meanwhile! We are also continuing to pursue growing our Sustaining Circle of monthly donors. We are only 34 people short of our end-of-June goal of having 100 people already donating, or pledging to donate, monthly, at any amount, to establish our credit worthiness to potential sellers, lenders, or landlords. There is more information and there are pledge cards at https://sacdharma.org/contribute. If you want to talk with someone please call SDC Board Member Linda Dekker at 501-9446. She’s more than happy to help!

We hope you’ll consider this way of joining us in the creation of a full time home for your practice, your sangha’s programs, and our Sacramento community’s access to the wisdom and compassion of the Dharma.

(click on photo to enlarge)