What are we?

We are a weekly sitting group. Our practice is in the development of mindfulness (living in the 'now') and insight through vipassana meditation (see its own section on this site). The teachings we focus on have come primarily from what is termed the Theravadan Buddhist tradition (the teaching of the elders, the earliest known teachings of the Buddha). We also use metta practice for development of compassion, and really look at anything that can teach the dharma and help with the path of inner realization. We have had guest teachers in several different Buddhist traditions.

While most of the teachings we look at come from the Buddhist tradition, we are a nonsectarian, nondenominational group. Our members include Christians, Jews, agnostics. We have members that have been around for many years, some of them calling themselves 'Buddhist,' and some not. Part of our teachings stress respect for all faiths and traditions, and this has always been an important part of what we are about.

Meetings, Location and Times

Our meetings begin promptly at 6pm each Sunday with a 40-45 minute silent sit, followed by a 15-20 minute tea break/social time period, with the last hour devoted to a 'dharma talk' by our teacher or a guest teacher, or a discussion led by one of our own members. Once every three months is special in that we have a 'potluck/planning' meeting scheduled. Our meetings always end by 8pm. Movie nights may go over some.

We meet on the lower level (undercroft) of St. Paul's Church at 1st and J St. If you're coming from either North or South of Benicia, take the Benicia 2nd Street (downtown) Exit from 780, and go South (downhill) on 2nd Street, as if you're going into town. Take a right on Military, go one block to 1st Street (Benicia's 'main drag'), and go down (South) 1st Street for 2 blocks, to J Street, where you will see St. Paul's Church. From East J St, take the downhill path on the left of the Parish Hall (the east end), and then down some steps to the entry door of the lower level or undercroft of the church itself. We encourage people who come to try to arrive shortly before 6pm, as the sitting begins right at 6:00, but if you're late, you're still welcome — please enter quietly, come into the sitting room and join us in the sit.

Our Website - if you're new to our group...

Please look over our website to gain a quick overview of what Benicia Sangha is about. The history of our group can be found on this page (see below under 'Some History'). Our primary practice is Vipassana (Insight) meditation, and we have a page devoted to this topic alone, called Vipassana. For those new to meditation you should know that we are fortunate in having excellent basic instructions on Vipassana meditation via Dennis Warren's booklet "Going Home" - check it out on that page. Our Calendar tries to list upcoming retreats, events, and guest teachings. Both events which involve our group directly and events which may be of interest to members of our group ('outside events') are included. Our members are encouraged to submit info about upcoming events they would like to see mentioned in the Calendar. The Teachers page gives short bio's of our teachers and all the guest teachers that we've had in the past. The Articles, Handouts page has handy links to sequenced teachings that are in our Past Meetings section, as well as handouts that were distributed at past meets and articles that have been mentioned in past talks or news. Sangha Readings is a place where members can share with other members readings that have been a help to them in their 'journey on the path,' and Dharma Movies is where members can share movies that have been important to them in expressing the dharma in some way. You can review past website News pages in our News Archive (our website is 'officially' updated each Wednesday), and you can read synopses of past Sunday meets in the Past Meetings section. Looking this material over will answer a lot of questions you may have about our group!

There is a Member Pages section, where Sangha members who have websites of their own, or are hosting their own website on our bsangha space, have links to their sites. And there is a member-maintained Sangha Bulletins page where members can post messages for others to read. Please check out these features and feel free to use them.

The website News page is also used for any announcements members want to make to other members (just use Contact Us to send your announcement to the webmaster). The News page is sent out each Wednesday as a newsletter to all members who are currently on our email list. Please put yourself on this list by going to our Sign Up page. Also, we want all members to always please feel welcome to make any suggestions for additions or improvements to the website at any time (use Contact Us for submissions).

Newsletters

Every Wednesday we send out a newsletter that shows the same thing that the recently-updated News page of our website shows. So everyone on our list (~135 as of this writing, 6/30/2008) gets a reminder about who's coming up this next Sunday, what we did last Sunday - the whole News page, including the titles (as links) to any new bulletins. It comes out on Wednesday to give us some time after our last meeting and yet early enough to give everyone a "heads up" about next Sunday. You can put yourself on our "send list" by going to our "Sign Up" page or by putting your name and email on our "signup" sheet that we have on the lectern in our meeting space. If you do the former, we don't have to worry about typos or hard-to-read hand-writing.

Tech Note

Some History

Our group began meeting here in Benicia in February of 1994. Patrick Thornton had been employed at the Vallejo Hospice program at that time, and had taught a 6-week Beginning Insight Meditation Class there. At the request of some of the nurses and social workers who had attended that class, Patrick started our Benicia group, finding the location at St. Paul's Episcopal Church in early 1994. Spirit Rock provided Patrick with a mailing list culled by zip code for the Benicia area on condition he use it only once, building his own list from those who responded. 57 people showed up for the first sitting in February of 1994. From that, 25-30 returned, and eventually DharmaGate Insight Meditation Community (DGIMC), which is what our group was called at that time, had a core group of 12-18 members.

It was really a wonderful time, and so many people found footing in Buddhist teaching and practice. Patrick was very good about keeping us informed of other practice opportunities (like Spirit Rock) and various retreats.

After approximately three years Patrick was asked to take a position with a large hospital/healthcare complex in Omaha, Nebraska. This provided us our first experience of maintaining the Sangha without a teacher or leader. It was not without problems but again it was a very rich time for those of us who took this on and made it work. For the first time we had to provide for ourselves and others in keeping our practice alive and continuing to study Buddhism. We were no longer just consumers on Sunday nights and this led to much growth and closeness.

However, within a few months, for a variety of reasons (including Omaha culture shock, sickness of family members, and missing the Bay Area spiritual community he had helped cultivate), Patrick worked out an arrangement whereby he was able to commute bi-weekly from Omaha to San Francisco during the 30 weeks a year he was committed to Omaha, until he completed his two-year stint there (he had decided he would not take up permanent residency in Omaha). Thus we had our teacher back, once every other week in these periods, with guest teachers filling many of the gaps. After his two-year stint, Patrick was back with us full time.

In 2002 Patrick started a new family, and by the start of 2003, he realized that his new responsibilities with his family in Santa Rosa left him too little time to make the weekly Sunday trek into Benicia, and he was forced to give up leading our group for good. Since then we have been recruiting a number of guest teachers, as well as the very valuable practice of having members of our own group offer teachings on aspects of dharma and practice. (A saying from the east is "To know something well, one must teach it.") We are currently 'testing the waters' in the way of looking for a permanent teacher, but are in no great rush, trusting that what will be best for us will flower naturally.

Update: March, 2004

We now have an 'official' teacher: Donald Rothberg, who has guest-taught on several occasions in the past (where a good rapport between our sangha and Donald became evident). Donald gave his first talk as our official teacher on March 21, 2004. On average he will be able to be with us at least twice a month this first year. We will still be recruiting guest teachers to fill in the blanks, except for first Sundays of each month, which are our potlucks.

Update: August, 2005

Donald has decided to cut back to about once a month his meetings with us because of the difficulty of the commute on Sunday nights and his responsibilities with other commitments. He will be having Richard Shankman, a close friend of his fill in for some of the times he will not be able to be with us. We are using our full roster of past guest teachers to fill in all other openings.

Update: March, 2006

Richard Shankman has agreed to come a minimum of twice each month, and has agreed to also be available for people one-on-one who are having problems with their practice. This makes Richard our "official teacher" now; his friend Donald is still a teacher for us, but has cut back to devote more time to his new author commitments.

Update: March, 2008

We are back to being "teacherless" depending solely on our guest teachers for teachings. But that is working out pretty well. We have added teachers to our roster since the last update and our group is sill going as strong as ever, if not stronger.

Update: March, 2009

Heather Sundberg has been coming at least once a month and is considered our 'main teacher' now, even though we still often run things on our own and continue to cycle through our roster of guest teachers.