A crisp and curling brown oak leaf and a delicate white rose petal symbolized the year just passed and the year to come at the Buddhist Temple of Toledo’s new year letting go and welcoming ceremony.
About 60 congregants filled the temple Sunday morning to take part in the ceremony, which began with a group reading of the daily liturgy that included a recitation of the five remembrances.
“I am of the nature to grow old,” the reading began. “There is no way to escape growing old.”
The group reading continued with reminders of the inevitability of ill health, death, and separation from loved ones.
It concluded with “My deeds are my closest companions. I am the beneficiary of my deeds. My deeds are the ground on which I stand.”
The congregation gave thanks for their teachers and requested wise and compassionate guidance.
“I dedicate my merit for the sake of all beings,” the congregation recited.
The liturgy concluded with wishes that all sentient beings could be free from clinging and hatred, could enjoy happiness, be free from suffering, and “have the joy that has never known suffering.”
The attendees were then asked to pick up the leaf that had been placed by their seat, to hold it in their hands, and to fill it with the anger, greed, and ignorance they had experienced in the year gone by. They were then instructed to press the leaf to their “third eye” at the center of their foreheads, and to look at those vices without disgust or disdain. The leaves were subsequently collected in a basket to be burned outside in back of the temple.
The leaf is about letting go, explained the temple’s abbot, Rinsen Roshi, while the rose petal is about setting intentions.
“People don’t come here to set goals, but to realize their lives and their intentions,” he said.
At the conclusion of the ceremony, the rose petals were gathered in a bowl and will be sprinkled on the altar and left there for a few weeks.
Brad (So’on) Long is very familiar with the liturgy and its attendant ceremonies. A retired health-care IT professional, he said he first came to Buddhism after the 2016 election, distressed and frustrated over the news of the day.
“There was so much bad news,” he said of that time.
He’d always been somewhat interested in Buddhism. When he heard that there was a meditation class at the temple, he decided to give what he terms “mindfulness activism” a try and began meditating regularly.
“I still feel the frustration,” he admitted, “but not in a doom-and-gloom way. I don’t let it control my life. I’m more equipped now to meet the future in an equanimous way. We only have one life. I’m trying to keep my mind on ending suffering.”
As he continued his practice, he was asked by his teacher if he wanted to become a Zen priest — and thus he became a postulant, which he describes as taking a year to decide if he really wants to do that. He currently leads the temple’s introduction to meditation sessions.
When not performing his duties as the abbot, or administrator, of the temple, Rinsen Roshi teaches guitar and jazz improvisation at the University of Toledo. A Toledo native, he graduated from St. Francis de Sales High School in 1987 and then decamped for Boston to study music at the Berklee College of Music. He formally became a Buddhist in 1987.
“I always had a contemplative side,” he said. “Zen is something you practice, like music. It’s a series of practices you engage with.”
He eventually became the founding abbot of the temple, which is located at the east end of Emmajean Road, close to the University Parks Trail.
His easygoing manner and insight came to the attention of Keaton Nankivil and Fatimeh Pahlavan, who live in Chicago and now often make the four-hour drive to attend services in Toledo with their 1-year-old child.
“We really resonate with the people here,” Ms. Pahlavan said.
The couple first discovered the temple during the coronavirus pandemic, when they began attending virtual services via Zoom.
“There’s a whole orbit of people who are virtual members of the temple from all over the country,” Mr. Nankivil said.
First Published January 5, 2025, 11:45 p.m.
