Moon Rabbit Cafe

Our Story

We would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to the Moon Rabbit Café, a pay-what-you-can community dinner where all our neighbors eat together with dignity. Our guests pay what they can for meals or volunteer their time. We are an outreach of the Reno Buddhist Center and opened our doors for occasional dinners on January 31st, 2015. We are an activity of Reno Buddhist Center and raise money to support more Moon Rabbit Dinners and programs at the center.

We are an all volunteer group and do our best to create a restaurant like experience, but sometimes fall short. Think of us as a super-amped-up-bake-sale at the neighborhood church. Our highest goal is to serve our community in deep compassion.

In addition to providing delicious and thoughtfully prepared food, Moon Rabbit Café is poised to cultivate a new social paradigm by allowing full participation—that is, all of Reno coming together to enjoy an awesome dinner in the company of both friends and strangers. All are welcome at Moon Rabbit Café, where everybody brings something to the table. Pay what you can - $10 helps someone else eat, $5.00 covers just you, and really whatever you have is ok. If you don't have any money - no worries - please volunteer to help and we'll share the crew dinner with you.

With the public’s attention increasingly focused on issues such as locally sourced food, sustainability, and the chronic problem of food insecurity, we are determined to be “crazy successful” as both a restaurant and, most importantly, as a force for positive change. We invite you to join us as we begin this exciting endeavor!

We are appealing to the community to help us by donating needed items or contributing money. We need kitchen items (used or new), ranging from blenders and a mandolin to prepared dishes from local restaurants. Your generosity ensures our success and will not go unnoticed in positive press as an active partner in keeping the Truckee Meadows nourished in both body and spirit. All donations are tax deductible.

The Moon Rabbit is managed by a committee of volunteers and is not specifically a "Buddhist group". We are grateful to RBC for their strong support and encouragement. This is a community wide effort and non-denominational in the extreme. Roughly 1/2 of the MRC team are not affiliated with the Buddhist center. We rely on RBC for organizational and financial backing in the project.

We thank you in advance for your support! Feel free to contact us with any questions or ideas.

With Gratitude,

Moon Rabbit Café team members
[email protected]

The mission of the MRC is...

The Moon Rabbit Cafe is a community-based restaurant that will provide a setting where all may eat with dignity regardless of means. To this end, we prepare high quality meals for all that come in peace, and dine as a community with no set price per meal. Pay-What-You-Can.

Where did the name come from? The Story of the Rabbit in the Moon....

Moon Rabbit Cafe was inspired by a well known Jataka Tale called “The Rabbit in the Moon”. Jataka Tales are stories of the Buddha's previous lives. Many are animal fables, very similar to Aesop’s fables. As the Buddha was not yet a Buddha, in the stories he often is called "Bodhisattva." A Bodhisattva is anyone who, motivated by great compassion, strives to attain Buddhahood for the benefit of all sentient beings.

This story of the selfless rabbit appears in the Pali Canon. The craters of the Moon seem, in some cultures, to form an image of a face -- the Man in the Moon -- but in Asia it is more common to imagine the image of a rabbit. This is the story of why there is a rabbit in the moon and why we chose this image and story’s meaning to represent our community cafe.

Long ago, the Bodhisattva was reborn as a rabbit. He lived in a leafy forest among soft, tender grass and delicate ferns, surrounded by climbing vines and sweet wild orchids. The forest was rich with fruits and bordered by a river of pure water as blue as lapis lazuli.

This forest was a favorite of wandering ascetics, people who withdraw from the world to focus on their spiritual journeys. These ascetics lived on food they begged from others. The people of that time considered the giving of alms to the holy wanderers be a sacred duty.

The bodhisattva hare had three friends -- a monkey, a jackal, and an otter -- who looked to the wise rabbit as their leader. He taught them the importance of keeping moral laws, observing holy days, and giving alms. Whenever a holy day approached, the rabbit admonished his friends that if someone asked them for food, they were to give freely and generously from the food they had gathered for themselves.

Sakra, lord of devas, was watching the four friends from his great palace of marble and light on the peak of Mount Meru, and on one holy day he decided to test their virtue.

That day, the four friends separated to find food. The otter found seven red fish on a riverbank; the jackal found a lizard and a vessel of curdled milk someone had abandoned; the monkey gathered mangoes from the trees.

Shakra took the form of a Brahman, or priest, and he went to the otter and said, friend, I am hungry. I need food before I can perform my priestly duties. Can you help me? And the otter offered the Brahman the seven fish he had gathered for his own meal.

Then the Brahman went to the jackal, and said, friend, I am hungry. I need food before I can perform my priestly duties. Can you help me? And the jackal offered the Brahman the lizard and curdled milk he had planned to have for his own meal.

Then the Brahman went to the monkey, and said friend, I am hungry. I need food before I can perform my priestly duties. Can you help me? And the monkey offered the Brahman the juicy mangoes he had looked forward to eating himself.

Then the Brahman went to the rabbit and asked for food, but the rabbit had no food but the lush grass growing in the forest. So the Bodhisattva told the Brahman to build a fire, and when the fire was burning, he said, I have nothing to give you to eat but myself! Then, the rabbit threw himself into the fire.

Shakra, still disguised as a Brahman, was astonished and deeply moved. He caused the fire to be cold, so the rabbit was not burned, and then revealed his true form to the selfless little rabbit. Dear rabbit, he said, your virtue will be remembered through the ages. And then Shakra painted the wise rabbit's likeness on the pale face of the Moon, for all to see.Shakra returned to his home on Mount Meru, and the four friends lived long and happily in their beautiful forest. And to this day, those who look up at the Moon can see the image of the selfless rabbit.