Rev. Carol O'Dowd explains how the five senses are used in ceremonies at the Longmont Buddhist Temple. The temple, at Highway 287 and Pike Road, is a Jodo Shinshu Buddhist temple that holds services every first and third Sunday of the month. Nissa LaPoint photo

To the members at the Longmont Buddhist Temple, that’s part of the “eightfold path” to enlightenment.

“What we want to do is practice that generosity and mindfulness by opening our doors,” said Rev. Carol O’Dowd. “We’re trying to do things that will benefit the community.

That’s the thought behind the temple’s Japanese tea ceremony on Saturday, which is open to the public.

The temple, established in 1968, has long been hidden from the community. Now members need to practice openness to others and show kindness, O’Dowd said.

Although the temple has had events in the past, most have been for members only. Instead, by reaching out to the community, the 50-some members will be able to exercise their generosity and open mindedness while spreading the word that the temple is still active, she said.

The tea ceremony, which will be conducted by Michael Ricci, a certified Chado (the way of tea) instructor, is an elaborate practice that helps remind faithful Buddhists of the need to remember their connections.

“There’s a tradition of bowing and humbling yourself,” said Susan Fisher, 62, of Arvada, a newer member of the temple. “It’s to remind you that you are there to learn. I think the tea ceremony will deepen my understanding of that (Buddhist) way of thinking.”

O’Dowd believes many Americans would benefit from the Buddhist spiritual path, which teaches principles including freedom from prejudice, being mindful of one’s thoughts, speaking kindly, meditation and more.

“We’re speeding up and so busy we’ve forgotten our connection to the earth,” said O’Dowd, a practicing Buddhist for 20 years.

These principles are reflected on every first and third Sunday at the temple. A Jodo Shinshu Buddhist ceremony is held, after a 30-minute meditation that is based on the traditions of Japan _ Buddhism, like Western faiths, has many different approaches, schools and traditions. Members will participate in a series of practices meant to awaken the five senses and show gratitude for life.

“We’re bowing in gratitude for life and in doing so have to let go of our ego,” O’Dowd said as she bowed in front of the altar imported from Japan.

That’s what drew Jane Kanemoto to the temple when it first opened its doors.

“To me a life of gratitude is what makes you happy,” said Kanemoto, whose family helped start the temple decades ago.

She has practiced Buddhism since she was a little girl, and she hopes that the tea ceremony will bring her further understanding of Japanese traditions and the need for gratitude.

Newer members, like Fisher, were drawn to the temple simply because of its welcoming nature.

“I was looking for a family and I found it,” Fisher said.

Others describe the temple as a “come as you are” place.

“It’s a very inclusive temple,” said member C.J. Jackson of Loveland. “People are very friendly and from all walks of life and backgrounds.”

For more information, visit www.longmontbuddhism.org.

Email: nissa@longmontledger.com

Their idea? Make 20 quilts and host a sale.

“The lady who got this going told us that the pastor at the time said, ‘Nobody will pay money to buy a quilt,’” recalls Dee Kounovsky of Longmont. “She said, ‘You want to bet?’”

Judy Luppens-Huntley of Mead uses a machine to sew strips of fabric together in a pattern for a quilt that will be available at next years' sale. Julie Fowler photo.

Karen Stalgren of Frederick says when she joined the quilters, “They said the number one rule was we don’t talk about politics and we don’t talk about each other.”

The focus for this group, who call themselves a “sisterhood,” is more on plying their craft, learning new techniques, and making high-quality quilts that appeal to a wide range of tastes. Some women come because they’re looking for a way to use their already honed skills. For others, it’s about learning a new craft.

Take Kounovsky. She joined after retiring 12 years ago.

“I quilted a little before,” she says with a chuckle. “But I didn’t do much of it right.”

Today she makes unique paper-piece quilts. In fact, she’s stitched 46 for this year’s sale alone.

All of the fabric these ladies use is donated by quilt shops and folks in the community looking to clear space. Most women work on their own pieces, but every now and then someone organizes a group project. Mainly the mission is to have fun and help those in need.

“We all have this same goal,” says Candy Beck, a 10-year member of the group from Longmont. “This is the fun way we donate our time and give back to the community.”

A woman from Longmont and a man from Lafayette say they have had a clear and convincing experience of an energy outside commonly understood physical boundaries.

Jennifer Adams of Longmont gained a profound belief in the afterlife after falling down a flight of stairs and suffering a brain injury.

For Jennifer Adams, of Longmont, it was the strong sense of other people’s feelings and an experience in which she saw a dead playmate from her childhood; both occurred after a traumatic brain injury. For Chuck Gaylord, of Lafayette, it was a few seconds of the feeling of being bathed in a brilliant golden light. Although neither Gaylord nor Adams was dead or near dead — Adams, did, however, have a very serious injury — their experiences still fall into the category of “near death experiences.”

Gaylord describes sums up his experience 15 years ago this way:

“I think we’ve got it upside down. We’re not physical beings having some kind of numinous or spiritual experience. We’re spiritual beings having a physical experience (in everyday life.)”

Such experiences may include strong and all-encompassing light, a feeling of being out of the body, encounters with people long dead, and a profound sense of well-being. Skeptics say such experiences occur in the brain as a malfunction. They see them as hallucinations that have a physical explanation such as the lack of oxygen. Yet, a Gallup Poll in 1982 found that an estimated 8 million Americans have had an near death experience.

Adams’ life took an unexpected turn on a day in December five years ago. As a manager at Pharmaca in Boulder, she fell downstairs, breaking two bones in her back and hitting her head.

“I sat up for a second, had a seizure and lost consciousness,” Adams says.

A long effort toward recovery ensued, but she has been left with permanent disabilities, a damaged left frontal lobe and brainstem. The fall stretched the ligaments that hold up her head, making it difficult for her to prevent her brainstem from being jostled, which can lead to drenching sweats, dizziness and vomiting. She is in constant pain, but can function in the morning. As the morning grows later, she begins to have problems with her eyes crossing and is unable to drive. After rest, she begins to feel better in the afternoon.

But along with the pain and difficulty in functioning, Adams says she has gained a strong spiritual awareness, and a profound feeling of the energy around her.

She describes herself as an “empath,” explaining that she became so acutely aware of others’ feelings in the aftermath of her accident that she found it painful to stand in a line or enter a crowded place.

“It made it hard to be out and about,” she says. “I felt bombarded. My heart seemed like it might explode.”

She tried Reiki, a therapy in which a healer channels energy to heal the patient’s spirit. The feeling of energy was so strong that it led her to feel certainty about the existence of a force outside of human experience.
She had a mystical experience in which she saw a childhood playmate who had been hit by a car and killed, as well as a deceased grandfather she had never met.

Adams was not much interested in spiritual things before her accident. She appreciates what she has gained. Yet she has also lost much.

“I’m not grateful (that the accident happened). Every day is so hard.”

But, she says: “I know there is a beautiful place after this. It’s what gets me through my days, every single day.”

Gaylord, who had spent about 30 years working with computers, was at a workshop on human potential when he had an experience that has shaped the last 15 years.

He and another woman were doing an exercise in which one person asked “What do you want?” The idea was to say whatever came into your mind, perhaps multiple times. It was an exercise Gaylord had done on other occasions, and his answer usually was honed down to wanting to love and be loved, he says.
On this occasion, however, the exercise turned out differently.

“What fell out of my mouth was “(to be) doing exactly what we’re doing now,” Gaylord says.

He adds that it’s difficult to describe the experience, which he thinks lasted only seconds.

“The room evaporated. (It was like) when you have big mirrors set up that face each other, there’s a repeating reflection of yourself disappearing forever.”

He saw red circular doors or portholes infinitely in all directions, and the light.

“This golden light infused me with joy and peace,” he says. “The light got brighter and became white, incredibly intense. This is the white light that people talk about. I don’t think I existed at this point anymore. There was no body, no mind, no time. There was no space. (I was) in a state of everything that is and was and will be and could be. … All of a sudden, there was a me. It was delightful. I had a thought, ‘Oh, a me.’ There was no duality.”

Then Gaylord heard a voice, although he says the word “heard” is inadequate to describe the experience. It said, “All is well with the world.”

Then the experience was over.

“I was back in my body, back in the room, and the woman was asking me, ‘What do you want?’”

He says he was stunned by experience. He tried to talk about it, but isn’t sure he made any sense at all.

“Also I was tussling with ‘All is well with the world,’” he says. “Certainly a lot of things in the world were not well. At the time, there was the genocide in Rwanda. At the same time, I was just as high as a kite. I had an incredible amount of joy.”

He started volunteering at hospitals, and a chaplain approached him to become a volunteer chaplain. Gaylord went back to school and got a master’s in transpersonal psychology at Naropa.

He volunteered at hospice, working with the dying, and now has moved over the grief counseling. After someone called hospice, asking if there was a near death experiences support group, Gaylord decided to start one. It was active until last year.

He says the first two or three years after the experience were chaotic. And for many years after that, the feeling of it was with him every day. Now, it has receded somewhat, but is still incredibly vivid when he recalls it.

He says he has read research that it takes about 15 years to integrate such an experience into your life. Gaylord has read about theories that such experiences may be the product of a misfiring brain, and he doesn’t necessarily discount them. However, the intense emotion of the experience sets it apart, he says.

“My attitude around that is that our lens for understanding things is just much, much too small for what’s really going on out there,” he says. “If it is in the brain, we are certainly nowhere near to explaining it.”