A sangha of, by, and for the Zennies

🙏⚡️Support our annual fundraiser! ⚡️🙏

Hello, sangha!

Sara here. I thought I’d spare Dave the task of writing to you on this most compassionate of constructed social media holidays, “Giving Tuesday.”

If you’ve been sitting with us for a while (or just reading this dispatch), you probably know that Angel City Zen Center is small-donor supported. What does that mean? It means we all come together to make this thing happen. There have been no institutional grants, no family foundation supporters, no year-end gifts from mysterious deep-pocketed zazen enthusiasts (though if you know one, by all means make an intro). There is just you, and me, and everyone we sit with pooling resources to keep the lights on, the bells ringing, the podcast broadcasting, and the Zoom subscription active.

We do this for the pure love of the game, er, the zazen and teachings, of course. Dave has mentioned it in recent talks, but we’re working on new ways to welcome fellow Zennies (or prospective Zennies) to the fold. Here’s what we’ve aligned upon as our key offering:

“Learn from profound, ancient, bizarre teachings. Make awesome friends.”

It’s a winning combination, no? We’re excited to keep going and doing an even better job of it in the coming years.

And (you knew this was coming) in order to do that, we need your support. If you have the means and haven’t already, please donate to our Annual Fundraiser, which is happening now!

We’ve got t-shirts, we’ve got calendars, we’ve got silkscreened icons of bodhisattvas and celestial beings to protect your domicile (!), we’ve got a boatload of merit that rings out through all of spacetime! (OK maybe that last bit is debatable.) Seriously though, there’s something for everyone.

Plus, Angel City Zen Center is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization, which means your donations are tax-deductible! If your employer offers a matching gift program, your contribution could go even further, so be sure to check to see if this option is available.

And if you can’t afford to donate this year, that’s OK. The most important thing you do is show up to practice with us. So please keep doing that, as it truly means everything.

If you’ve made it this far, THANK YOU for reading, for sitting, for listening, for volunteering your time, and for all the ways you help keep this thing going. The phrase “we’re all in this together” seems to get thrown around pretty easily these days, but hey, maybe that’s because it’s true.