NEWS
MARK YOUR CALENDARS – BIG DAY OF GIVING
From midnight to 11:59 p.m. on May 2!
SIM is participating in the Big Day of Giving on May 2. If you plan on giving this day, consider donating to SIM. We have a generous donor who has pledged to match all donations up to $1000. This giving campaign is a continuation of SIM’s efforts to make the Legacy Teacher Project sustainable and to carry SIM’s mission well into the future. We hope you will think of SIM on the Big Day of Giving!
What is Big Day of Giving?
Big Day of Giving is a once-annual 24-hour giving challenge to help local nonprofits raise funds to make a difference in the Sacramento region. It’s the culmination of an entire year’s worth of community-building and collaboration led by the Sacramento Region Community Foundation, with support from community partners like Western Health Advantage, and made possible by people like you!
How can I help?
GIVE: You can donate to SIM by visiting www.bigdayofgiving.org on Thursday, May 2, and making a gift with a credit or debit card.
- Donations as little as $10 make a big difference
- Your gifts can help us win some of the prizes that are up for grabs!
- Help us reach our $1000 match from an anonymous donor; every donation will be doubled until the match has been completely met!
The Qualities That Reshape Daily Life & Lead to Buddhahood
The Paramis: A Special Three-Month Series of Talks
The Paramis or “Perfections” are considered essential qualities of mind and heart that reshape our daily lives and lead to Buddhahood and awakening. The constitute a comprehensive path of practice which parallels and supports each of the practices of the Historical Buddha’s Eight-Fold Path.
The Paramis are: Ethics/Virtue, Generosity, Patience, Energy, Restraint/Renunciation, Resolve, Equanimity, Loving Kindness, Truthfulness and Wisdom.
SIM’s teachers will be presenting a 10-week series of coordinated talks exploring the Paramis and their application in practice and daily life. We invite you to this special opportunity to deepen your practice in community with others on Thursday evenings from March 14 through May 16, 2024.
Click here to see the upcoming Thursday line-up:
Each link shown below will direct you to the audio dharma recording for that date.
March 14 Ethics/Virtue Vance Pryor
March 21 Generosity Dennis Warren
April 04 Energy Vance Pryor (not recorded)
April 11 Renunciation J D Doyle
April 18 Resolve Dennis Warren
April 25 Equanimity Rich Howard
May 02 Loving Kindness Seth Castleman
May 09 Truthfulness Walt Opie
May 16 Wisdom Dennis Warren
This message was originally posted on Jan 29, 2024.
If you want to attend any of our Thursday night talks remotely via Zoom (April 4 through June 27, 2024), use this button at the time of the meeting to join in.
Optionally, you may download and import this iCalendar (.ics) file (click here) to your calendar system.
If you don’t have a computer/smartphone/internet access, you can still join a meeting by regular phone. Simply find your local number to dial (https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kdGpHsWWCY) and enter the Meeting ID of 870 2524 1285 with a Passcode of 328267.
Note: When Zoom is an option for any event at SIM, you can always locate the Join Meeting link by checking our calendar (click here) for the specific day and time of the event of interest. If a meeting link ever fails, try this alternate link https://www.zoom.us/join and manually enter the posted meeting ID and passcode.
The Dharma Zephyr Insight Meditation Community is announcing a 3-night residential retreat featuring SIM’s Legacy Teacher Project teacher Vance Pryor. This residential retreat runs Sunday, 4/7/24 through Wednesday, 4/14/24 and registration is still open. For retreat details, visit https://dharmazephyr.org/event/lake-tahoe-residential-retreat-with-vance-pryor/.
The Climate Sangha is sponsored by the Sacramento Dharma Center (SDC) and is a peer-led community using Buddhist practice to face the future with on-going climate change. It provides a place to discuss hopes and fears openly and address ways to take skillful action. The group meets the third Wednesday of each month from 6:00 PM to 7:30 PM in the SDC library and also on Zoom. Meeting and Zoom link details are posted on the SDC calendar, click here to view.
Add your name to the Climate Sangha mailing list to be notified on how to join their Zoom meetings – please complete the interest form below or contact Diana Cassady for more information.
Keeping up with things:
- A calendar of possible local events can be found at https://350sacramento.org
- www.citizensclimatelobby.org is another website worth checking
- www.environmentalhealthnews.org has an extensive weekend update
- www.biologicaldiversity.org
- and there’s a favorite daily e-news: www.grist.org
Dear Friends,
The SIM Board would like to express our deep gratitude to all our sangha members. Each of you contribute to making our sangha special either through your financial and/or volunteer support or by participating in our programs. The success of SIM is based on a strong community rooted in the Dhamma.
In an effort to keep the sangha informed of the SIM Board’s activities, we are initiating a practice of writing regular communications. We feel that it is important for you to know what the Board is doing to support the SIM mission of providing vipassana/insight meditation support to the Sacramento community. Our hope is that increased communication from the SIM Board will clarify issues facing SIM, generate excitement in its potential, and inspire involvement in our precious sangha.
Looking back on 2023, we would like to share with you our accomplishments for the past year. The Legacy Teacher Project was initiated, and teachers Diana Clark, Walt Opie, and Vance Pryor are teaching regularly at SIM. Our Legacy teachers have also signed up to lead the 2025 SIM residential retreat! We launched our new website which involved over a year of planning, resulting in an appealing and user-friendly interface. In November, SIM held a successful residential retreat with Greg Scharf at the Mercy Center, during which sangha members recharged their practice. To provide much needed administrative support to the Board and Faculty, we developed and filled the Operations Manager position, and we are pleased to have David Guerrieri in this role. And we had our most successful year-end fundraising ever, with $24,000 raised!
This year we have already had a good deal happen, especially with changes to the Board. I officially took over as president in January from Jon Siiteri who served as president for the last two years. Jon remains on the board as a Member-at-Large until next spring. Alice Carney, who has been on the board for five years and served as Secretary, stepped off the Board in early February. We so appreciate Alice’s work on the Board, particularly her efforts to manage the website project, which was a huge undertaking! Karen Tercho, who has been on the board for two years, will now be the Board’s Secretary.
In February we welcomed Carmen Pereira and Margaret Buss to the Board.
Carmen comes to the Board with bookkeeping skills and an enthusiastic attitude. She will be taking on the Treasurer position when Greg Gollihur steps down in April.
After serving as Volunteer Coordinator for seven years, Margaret Buss joined the Board. She comes with a wealth of knowledge about SIM and the SDC, and her wisdom will help guide us. Much gratitude to Jon, Alice, Karen, Greg, Carmen, and Margaret for their service to the SIM community.
In mid-January, the board and faculty held a daylong retreat to take extended time to practice and work together. From this meeting came several ideas for practice events, including a Volunteer Appreciation event in March and commuter mini-retreat in August. And plans to update our weekly newsletter, now called SIM News, are in the works.
One of the decisions that came out of the meeting is an increase in daylong and course fees. We will now have a base rate of $25 per daylong, and $50 per course with additional levels that sustain SIM. Although we would love to be able to provide the Dhamma freely, we face the economic reality of our need for more professional services and a potential operating deficit for 2024. However, we remain committed to inviting everyone to access the teachings and will not turn anyone away for lack of funds.
As we look forward into 2024, I ask for your continued support and participation. We have opportunities for sangha involvement in one of the SIM Board committees or working groups: Finance, Community Outreach, and Residential Retreat Planning. Participation in a committee is an excellent chance to acquire a greater understanding of the day-to-day operation of SIM and provides an opportunity to get to know fellow sangha members on a deeper level. If a committee is not your thing, the set-up team for Thursday evenings and Saturday daylongs needs volunteers. I encourage you all to consider participating!
I look forward to practicing with each of you on this Dhamma Path. And, if you see a Board member on Thursday night, please say hello. We would love to get to know you better and would appreciate hearing about your experience at SIM.
May you be happy and healthy, and live in ease.
With metta,
Amy Kovak
SIM Board President
Have you seen the latest Newsletter from the Sacramento Dharma Center? If not, click here to access the newsletter and optionally sign up to receive future issues. The February newsletter includes the topics:
- “The Value of Witnessing”: An Inter-Sangha Pilgrimage to the South
- Racial and Social Justice as Dharma Practice
SIM is grateful for all our donors and we’ve already emailed tax letters to those who’ve donated $250 or more in 2023. If you have not received the tax letter (dated Jan 21 or Jan 22, 2024) and you think you should have, please check your email Inbox, as well as your Spam or Junk folders. If you still don’t find it, please contact GregG@sactoinsight.org.
Dear Friends,
Deep gratitude to all those who donated to our yearend fundraising effort. We raised $24,020! This is a fantastic start to covering our budget shortfall. But we still anticipate having a budget/revenue shortfall in 2024 due in large part to our new – and absolutely essential – Operations Manager position which adds $22,000 to our annual expenses.
As we start this new year, we are beginning a campaign for the month of January to get 10 new monthly donors and 10 current donors to increase their monthly contributions. Can you be one? Can you encourage someone you know to be one?
Recurring donations provide reliability and consistency to the organization. This allows us to plan responsibly and make future commitments.
Our current monthly contributions range from $10 to $200 per month. However, this is not enough to cover our anticipated 2024 expenditures.
What does your donation support?
- SIM’s core assets: Thursday night sit and dharma talks, Saturday Daylong Retreats, Courses, and the annual retreat;
- Our Legacy Teachers and ultimately continues supporting the Dharma in Sacramento;
- The new Operations Manager position, which expands our communications & online capacities, facilitates our administrative and registration processes, and provides important operations assistance to the Board and Faculty.
- AV/hybrid events- this allows people who cannot come in person to attend to hear the Dhamma and maintain their connection to the sangha.
If you are not currently donating monthly, please consider signing up. If you are currently donating monthly, please consider increasing your donation.
It’s easy to sign up online by going to the Donation page. Put in the amount and choose “Make this donation every month”.
If you want to increase your online donation, email website@sactoinsight.org with the changes you want to make and Sabitre will update your contribution.
And just to have some fun and give a little incentive for folks to sign up, if you become a monthly donor, or change your donation rate, during the month of January, we will be holding a drawing for two lucky winners to go out for a meal with Senior Teacher Rich Howard and another with SIM Founding Teacher Dennis Warren.
With gratitude,
Amy Kovak, on behalf of the SIM Board of Directors and Faculty