![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-content\/uploads\/2014\/10\/Doshu-Chapel-Pic.jpg\")
<\/a>\u201cIt was a Zen book. I picked it off the shelf and kind of cozied up in this big leather chair, and, whoa! I was just kind of smitten by Zen practice as a result,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Rogers practiced Zen meditation casually with various groups for years, but until he was diagnosed with leukemia a decade ago he didn\u2019t fully dedicate himself to it. Rogers and his wife left their two teenage kids at home, and he was checked into a hospital in Vancouver for several months.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was quite a major illness, and a major family shake-up,\u201d says Rogers. \u201cIt wasn\u2019t a very promising prognosis, initially, but it was a really good experience in terms of focusing on what I thought was really important in life.\u201d<\/p>\n
Those priorities, he realized, were family and deepening his practice. When his friends asked him what he would do when he got out of the hospital, he had another realization.<\/p>\n
\u201cI thought, \u2018Oh my goodness, you mean, that\u2019s true, I might actually get out of here.\u2019 I really thought that I\u2019d leave in a wooden box or something, because it really was quite a dire circumstance,\u201d he says. \u201cWhen I reflect on it, I realized that really there were only two things that had any primal importance to me. The first was family, and the second was getting into my practice more.\u201d<\/p>\n
When Rogers recovered, he contacted the Zenwest Buddhist Society in Sooke and immediately became a student of teacher Eshu Osho. Now, as reverend and leader of the Zendo team, he invites anyone to deepen their experience of life through meditation at the University of Victoria Interfaith Chapel\u2019s open house on Tuesday nights.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen we come to practice we\u2019re looking to add something into our lives, so that we\u2019ll be better,\u201d explains Rogers. \u201cI came in that way, and a lot of people did, and do.\u201d<\/p>\n
Meditation\u2019s goal is to unburden people from the roots of their suffering and to simplify life into a more harmonious state, he says.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat practice is about is letting go of unnecessary baggage, rather than adding more thoughts and concepts and ideas, and all that in. We don\u2019t need more of that stuff. We\u2019ve got all we need. We could use a lot less, actually,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n
Cairo Sanders, a first-year student in Camosun\u2019s General Arts Program, has attended two Tuesday night meditation practices. The focus that meditation teaches has already shown up in everyday life for Sanders.<\/p>\n
\u201cI notice the immediate effects,\u201d Sanders says. \u201cIn my life I apply the meditation.\u201d<\/p>\n
It seems to work, though Rogers is uncertain of exactly how.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re all intrinsically whole, complete, and lacking nothing,\u201d he says. \u201cIt\u2019s just that we don\u2019t realize it.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Doshu Rogers has been a technician, a researcher, an entrepreneur, a construction worker, and a tree planter. But now the Camosun alumnus is exploring a whole new lifestyle in his retirement. Rogers, a graduate of Camosun\u2019s Electronics Technology Program in 1976, is now spreading the teachings and merits of meditation practice to the public as […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9798,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15,134],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9797","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-campus","category-october-29-2014"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9797","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9797"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9797\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9799,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9797\/revisions\/9799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9798"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9797"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9797"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.nexusnewspaper.com\/newsite\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9797"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}