World’s first online Jukai completed

First of all, welcome to those of you who are visiting from the post mentioning Dharmacore on the Tricycle Editor’s Blog. I’m glad to have you here.

So it was a long process leading up to our online Jukai, but for those of us who participated, it was very rewarding. The ceremony was held on 1/17/09 at 9am CST, and people from all over and country (and the world!) participated. It lasted about an hour, and we followed the traditional Soto Zen precept ceremony.

You can see exactly how we did it. First, Jundo created a very helpful PDF Jukai guide for everyone to print out and follow along with during the ceremony. Then we were each assigned a spot in a video conference meeting room using MeBeam. MeBeam didn’t actually work that well for me; I kept getting kicked off every five minutes or so, but it seemed to work well for several of the other attendees. Jundo broadcasted himself and his end of the ceremony using Ustream.

The ceremony involved a lot of chanting and bowing, as well as reciting the Heart Sutra, a very important text in Zen Buddhism. We “received” our hand-sewn rakusus from Jundo, complete with the lovely calligraphy panel sewn in the back. The calligraphy includes our new Buddhist names chosen for each of us by Jundo, the date of the ceremony, and several stamps representing Jundo and our lineage. He also included a beautiful lineage paper that shows our new name flowing down from all the past Buddhas and ancestors.

Here are some photos:

The first photo shows the lineage paper and the name calligraphy (I had these framed), and the other two photos are of me and the altar setup I used during the ceremony.

If you would like to watch the recorded ceremony, you can see the whole thing here: Jundo’s online Jukai recording.

My Buddhist name is Shinkai, which means “ocean of fidelity.” Taking the precepts (and this name) meant a lot to me. I’ve been exploring Buddhism for over 3 years now, and the timing was exactly right for me to make this commitment. I thank Jundo and all my fellow online sangha members who participated in our trailblazing online Jukai.