Three people will win a free ticket to a one-day sangha-sponsored retreat.

Now that the remodeling is over, three spaces in the west end of Sacramento Dharma Center desperately need names—the small meeting room, the medium meeting room, and the large area behind the new movable wall. What should we call them? We’re turning to you for suggestions.

Can you come up with three names that go together? For example, Shasta Room, Lassen Room, and Whitney Room. Or Jupiter Room, Saturn Room, and Neptune Room.

Three one-day retreat tickets will be awarded, one from each of our sustaining sanghas. Prizes will be awarded to the winner and two runners up.

Please submit your room names in an email to

[email protected] by 5 p.m. Friday, December 7, 2018. Include your name in the email. Maximum of three themed entries per person (nine total names).

The Board reserves the right to cancel the contest for any reason, including insufficient number and quality of entries. In case of identical winning entries, one winner will be selected at random to receive the prize.

They say that change comes from within, that it happens slowly, and requires hard work and patience--much like the process of remodeling a home or a building. In fact, Sacramento Dharma Center just went through a four-month renovation of the west side of its interior. The work opens up a new spaces for classes, programs, and retreats and rids the interior of the last vestiges of its former identity as a credit union.

Gone is the row of the old bank teller counters that would confuse wayward customers looking for the existing credit union next door. The cash drawers and countertops were hauled away, leaving only old electrical wires poking through the floor, lines that used to power adding machines and computers.

The process of interior change can also bring to view what’s long been hidden from awareness. In the case of our flooring, when the ceramic tiles were removed to make way for bamboo planks, a hidden layer of original tiles was uncovered. The only way to remove this layer that was bonded to the foundation slab was through an industrial grinding operation that raised choking clouds of dust and produced a deafening racket.

Another surprise was the scale of work needed to install a moveable partition wall. To support the weight of the wall panels, a steel girder more likely to be found on a high-rise had to be shored up above. Lastly, the cubicles that you once would go into to arrange a loan were torn down and two small back offices were opened up to form a larger meeting room.

But now that the chaos of construction is over, the neighborhood is blessed with a tranquil new center with gleaming bamboo floors and color-coordinated walls.

The animal began appearing on the grounds of SDC in the spring of 2017—black, except for white paws and a white v-shaped patch on its chest. It lacked a collar or any sign of domesticity. Instead, it displayed a wildness marked by extreme vigilance and prowess at hunting small prey.

She was dubbed Dharma Cat and plans were made in July 2017 to trap, neuter, and release her back to SDC. By leaving her in place, the overall feral cat population might be kept down.

Such a skittish animal required a slow luring in. First, a bowl of cat food was regularly left inside a deactivated box trap. The food bowl would always be found empty, but no one was sure if was DC (Dharma Cat) who was doing the eating.

In fact, once, after the trap had been baited and activated, an angry raccoon was found in the cage the next morning, not DC. Finally, on the night of April 14, 2018, DC’s hunger got the better of her caution. One white-footed step too many, and the door sprang shut.

The next morning, SDC volunteer April Ford took her to the Sacramento SPCA for spaying and cropping of an ear tip (as a sign that a feral cat is already neutered). It was then that they discovered that “she” was actually a “he.” Up till that time, no one had been able to get close enough to tell. Not only that, in the clinic they discovered that DC was a polydactyl, having extra toes that went out to the side.

For a time after his release, Dharma Cat was often seen around SDC; but for the past several months, his whereabouts have been a mystery. With trapping efforts over and his regular feeding dried up, perhaps DC has moved on to where the living is easier.

Or perhaps the neighborhood got too dangerous for him. By the light of the moon on a recent evening, a coyote was spotted in the otherwise deserted back yard of SDC, his ears up and nose down, making a sweep for any small animals not quick enough to get away, even wary ones with nine lives and extra toes.