Updated Jan 10, 2026
This post addresses questions concerning the utilization of this website.
What is this site?
It's the "intranet" or internal bulletin board of Bird Haven Zendo, an online sangha that meets in Zoom rooms.
So, there isn't a temple/zendo?
The universe is the temple. Enter the Zoom room as you would a physical zendo, with hands together (gassho).
What's the short version of all this?
Most of what you may need to know is in the "home row" or menu across the top of the page, beneath the banner.
The "About" page tells about the resident priests, Kenshin, Yudo and Shonin.
"Zoom Zendo " takes you to a page containing a prominent link to the Zoom room and a paragraph on Zendo etiquette.
"Calendar" points to a Google calendar with the Sangha schedule. Soto Zen Sangha of Florence and many Treeleaf Zendo events are also included. Click on an event to find a link to the Zoom Zendo page and to further information about the event. If you have Google Calendar you can add this calendar to yours by clicking the Google logotype at lower right on our calendar page.
"Chant Book" leads to a downloadable and printable PDF copy of the Sangha's most current chant book.
"Videos" shows mostly posts of limited-access Youtube videos of Dharma talks and discussions, in reverse chronological order. Currently, videos from Soto Zen Sangha of Florence are also included.
"Blog" takes you to shonin's blog (now a separate website, https://manzokuan.blogspot.com/p/about.html)
What are "posts?"
They are what you see down the middle of the web page (on a computer, or in browser mode on a portable device). These are sangha schedule announcements and videos of dharma talks, mostly, with the most recent at the top.
Our posts and Youtube videos are available to anyone who has the links, but are not otherwise publicly accessible. At present, comments are turned on.
Scroll to the bottom to see the extra stuff:
"Index" contains links that group posts by keywords. These are chosen (sometimes erroneously 😅) by the web administrator to help you find posts associated with that keyword. For example, "Frequently Asked Questions" will find you this post you are reading now.
"Archive" contains a listing of all posts on this site by month. If you want to see all the posts from December 2021, this menu item will fetch them for you.
What's that field at upper left with the magnifying glass icon? (browser mode)
That is a search engine field, and it will find and pull up all posts containing the word, words, or phrase entered. It runs on Google Search.
The "B" logo to its left links to blogger.com, the Google software we're using. There are 600 million blogs in the world, of which Blogger users number half a million. The "more" drop-down menu to its left suggests sharing the site on social media (but please don't for now).