Exploring my Personal Lineage

(Wandering Monk, A. Kulakov- my favorite piece, the first "real art" I ever bought.)

This morning as I sat typing out an email-of-introduction to the next zen center I'll attend for my floating zen experiment, I had a bit of a realization concerning practice, lineage and ...maturity. For it was 19 years ago-- nineteen??!?-- that I first sat down on a pillow snatched from my couch to give zazen a try. Instructed only by Alan Watts' Way of Zen and my own intuition, I entered a doorway that opened me.

"They say there is a doorway from heart to heart, but what is the use of a door when there are no walls?" -Rumi

It's taken these years of practice to realize that all those years of practice don't mean anything; there's no advancement, no elevating epitomes, no ways-beyond. For you're always in the stream; the difference is in realizing it, or not. It's all a play of the mind, otherwise, because whatever understandings shine through, enlightenment is happening all the time.

So I was reading the Spring Hill Zen website and orienting to their philosophy, which seems to focus very specifically on the practice of sangha. And that got me to thinking about my practice of sangha: where I've sat, how I've sat, and how I've related to those sitting with me. I wondered for a moment about the senior students of this new zen center-- those who had been there many years, and how this orientation to practice has affected their way of thinking or being. And that led me to think about my own personal lineage, and how my own interaction with sangha has shaped my practice and life.

I've wandered around a lot, lived in many different states and practiced with a number of different sanghas. I always get a little sentimental when I think of those imaginary 'senior students' of any given center, wondering what it must be like to stay in one place, and practice with one sangha all the time. It's a sensibility that other military brats or gypsies in general will never know, but always wonder at; moving to another town and meeting a new friend who has always lived in the same house on the same street in the same town for the whole of their lives, it feels extraordinary and a little surreal.

But there too I think of the first sangha I ever joined, as in made myself an active and intentional part of, and I am ever grateful that I left: because for all its instability, paradoxically this bouncing-around has given me a maturity I don't know I would have gained otherwise.

I entered my first sangha with wide eyes, a shy demeanor and awfully high expectations. I think that like many, when I first set out on this path I assumed such places to be a kind of shangri-la, some oasis of good intentions and disciplined, loving, selfless interactions. In other words, perfect. Enlightened, even. And decidedly not human.

I've been reading a lot lately on other blogs about the branding of zen, the expectations of sangha and even the non-existence of "real" zen in the West. Again and again I encounter that same seed of first hope that I carried so closely to my heart, this expectation of what Zen Is, like some bubble I did not want chance to pop; and again and again, I'm reminded of the sangha that split itself in two from its clash of philosophical orientations... Or the sangha that shunned me, for not sharing its beliefs... Or the teacher I left, when I discovered how human he was.

My own path is filled with so many splits and wild encounters, and I'm willing to guess that yours is not so dissimilar. But the gift I came to appreciate today was the maturing mind birthed by all those splits and fissures: to look at last at a web-site, and think not of the shangri-la that will somehow save me, but simply of the group of people I'll chance to meet and grow with, bit-by-bit.

What is real sangha, but all that we relate to? Even if we exclude, we're still relating... And there's the trick of it!

Floating Zen: Open Circle Zen Group

Hello again, this time from... Boston! Yes, as you may have read from my earlier posts and my new banner, my little family & I have relocated to the city-by-the-bay ;) to enjoy chowdah, cream pie, and (evidently) lots of snow.

As my side-menu says, if you're in the Hollywood, MD area and interested in continuing (or discovering) your zen practice, feel free to contact me. I am grateful for all who came by to practice with me at Joy Lane all those Saturday-mornings-ago.

So now it is my turn to discover my Zen in Boston area. How do you find a sangha when you move to a new area? I thought this would be a good place to chronicle my search, hopefully providing some helpful tools and anecdotes along the way.

With a little research via the internet, I was amazed at the sheer diversity of practice centers in Boston. Two sites that I found incredibly helpful were DharmaNet and the Harvard University Pluralism Project, as they list many centers, helpful links and a bit of information about each. The Pluralism Project was an especially wonderful find, as it offered a unique look at the history of Buddhism in Boston. After locating information about each of the practice centers, Sweeping Zen made for a nice cross-reference as I looked more deeply into the teachers who head each center.

The first center I decided to visit was Open Circle Zen Group. Judging from their website, I guessed that they would be very down-to-earth, straightforward and unpretentious-- and I guessed right. The group meets on Sunday mornings in an office in the basement of the Social Security office by Davis Square. Therein they use the sitting space of the Friends of the Western Buddhist Order. It's a small, tidy space, and colorful-- not at all the drab basement I'd worried about.

I decided to walk; a luscious option, given my proximity to the square. Yet it was a bit of a risk, and I arrived just in time for the 9 o'clock bell, with just 3 minutes to spare-- and found myself quite alone! For an instant I sweated out my concern: was this the group that locked their doors promptly at 9 a.m.? Yet twelve minutes later, I lost all concern, for there was a smiling face walking quickly toward me. "We're sometimes late," she laughed apologetically. My kind of sangha, was my first impression.

We sat for 3 sessions of zazen: two at about 20 minutes, and one for at least 40. (Or, maybe it just felt that way...) These sandwiched two quick-paced kinhin sessions. At the end we chanted a version of the Heart Sutra that was quite new to me, along with the Four Great Vows and the Three Treasures. This final piece was in Japanese, and we bowed for each. It was lovely-- and reminded me well of the benefit of practicing with a seasoned group! I was very happy with the good energy toward practice I felt in this place: focused, direct and unpretentious. The sangha was warm, friendly and generous.

Open Circle Zen Group welcomes practitioners from all backgrounds. There is no teacher; they tell me that most of the sangha who practice there have teachers elsewhere (...a good match for me!). They sit Soto-style (facing the wall), and as well I felt there were elements from other schools mixed in to the service and overall practice. Three of the founding members whom I met that day were students in the lineage of Yasutani Roshi (you may recognize him as Philip Kapleau Roshi's teacher, and Harada Roshi's successor). This lineage practices a mixture of Soto and Rinzai Zen, and has a very interesting history-- by all means, peruse the link!

All-in-all, I felt comfortable in this group, most notably because I felt no pressure to become or do something other than who I already am, and what I already practice. And they were very friendly. Oh, and-- so important, people, so important-- I liked my zafu. Yes. It was properly worn-in, which is important to short people like myself.
"3 out of 3 enso"