As we move toward another winter season, I’m reminded that in the communities I love, there are two separate worlds unfolding. In one, people are looking forward to a season of connection where holiday gatherings, parties, and travel abound. In the other world, people are having difficult conversations about risk tolerance, taking stock of safety measures needed for travel or gatherings, or abstaining from these activities altogether. 

Over the last few years, I have witnessed the incredible dissonance between these two worlds within the Buddhist communities I practice and teach in. This spring, when the US ended the COVID-19 Public Health Emergency, I saw practitioners who were thrilled that meditation centers were dropping mask mandates and couldn’t wait to get back to a “normal” retreat. I also spoke with, sat with, and cried with others who knew that for them, this change meant something close to exile from the dharma communities they cherished. Overwhelmingly, that second group of people were chronically ill, immunocompromised, or disabled.

I feel acutely aware of this in part because I currently live with a chronic, invisible illness that places me at greater risk of long-term suffering and disability were I to contract COVID. Retreat practice and sangha have always been a deep refuge for me, so I was heartbroken as meditation centers that had once been my spiritual home became increasingly risky to access. Even as rates of the virus surged, I have found it difficult, and at times quite unwelcome, to out myself as vulnerable and ask for accommodations. As a result, I have lost the unfettered access to once beloved communities, practice opportunities, and aspects of my livelihood.

For many in the US, the rationale for dropping protections, like masking and free access to testing, has been deceptively simple: today, only members of vulnerable groups or the elderly are likely to die from COVID. Take a moment and really read that carefully. Allow the unspoken part of the sentence to grow louder. Place yourself in the shoes of someone who is chronically ill, disabled, or elderly and is receiving the message from our government and institutions that their life is acceptable collateral damage to neighbors who are eager to get back to normal at all costs. Ableism like this is baked into every aspect of the culture, and our meditation centers are certainly not exempt from it.

It may be helpful to remember that COVID-19 is still among the top leading causes of death in the United States. This year, Long COVID will also induct millions of new people into the ranks of the sick and disabled. Depending on which study you review, Long COVID affects anywhere from 7.5 to 40 percent of people who contract the virus and has more than 200 possible symptoms. It can last for months or indefinitely, and there is no cure or standard effective treatment. Long COVID can negatively impact a person’s quality of life, leave them bedridden, unable to work to support themselves, and more. Unfortunately, as a culture, we seem eager to forget this reality. Our yearning to return to “normal” is incongruent with the fact that vulnerable people must continue to live, work, and practice in a world that often feels like it would rather pretend they don’t exist than adapt in a compassionate way. In the Buddhist community, how do we face this truth, rather than turn toward delusion?

Ableism like this is baked into every aspect of the culture, and our meditation centers are certainly not exempt from it.

This delusion is consistently fortified by the invisibility of sick and disabled people in public spaces. Whether these spaces are physically inaccessible, or a person feels too unwell or unsafe to join them, the end result is a disappearance from the public eye. I often think about this in relation to dharma communities throughout the country. Which sangha members are now absent from your local sitting group? Who are the longtime community pillars that have quietly absented themselves from our meditation centers? Did they just stop practicing, or do they no longer feel safe in the communities that used to be a refuge? 

I’m not alone in longing for a spiritual community that holds on to an ethos of care at a time when masking and other precautions are unpopular. Monica Magtoto, a movement teacher who supports many meditation retreats, shared her concerns about dharma centers dropping mask requirements in a recent conversation:

“As someone who has experienced the life-changing impact of retreat, knowing that that experience is now not an option, or is now a dangerous option, for so many people is disheartening to say the least. It’s a huge reminder that many dharma spaces are only created with the most privileged and able-bodied in mind. Are we living the precepts if we choose to exclude or do active harm to so many? Are we living the eightfold path?”

Today, meditation centers have a wide range of approaches to COVID, and while some protocols are inclusive, many reinforce the message that our sick, elderly, and disabled sangha members are acceptable collateral damage. For drop-in groups and daylong retreats, a vast majority of centers have eliminated previous precautions such as masking and onsite testing. Some communities offer suggested recommendations like vaccination, testing negative with an at-home test, or not attending when sick. Other centers have kept mitigations like air purifiers and CO₂ monitors, and a few even hold occasional outdoor events. For most residential retreats, precautions have typically dropped to a testing requirement on the first day of the retreat. A very small number of retreat centers do offer retreats with a focus on practice outdoors, and some retreat centers have brought back masking for specific retreats this fall as COVID cases see a seasonal increase.

One notable outlier, the East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California, still has a wide range of COVID precautions in place, including masking, clear descriptions of the air filtration systems present in their space, and priority seating next to windows and air filters for the elderly and disabled. On their website, they share:

“When we commit to justice movement building and mindfulness, this means that we commit to self-care as collective care, and we also dedicate ourselves to supporting the health of our communities. This is not achieved through policing. It comes about through building relationships of trust that express themselves in our saying to one another, ‘I’ve got your back. Your health and your family’s health and the health of the people with whom you come in physical contact with are important to me.’”

While we may have seen public declarations like this in 2020 and 2021, such an explicit statement committing to collective care today is relatively uncommon. To those living with chronic illness and disability, however, such sentiments can offer tremendous refuge and allow us to better plan where we sit or go on retreat. This refuge is especially needed as meditation centers resume prepandemic levels of programming with fewer safety precautions. In the past year, I have watched the meditation centers I work with make sweeping changes to their COVID policies, often with little to no leadership or input opportunities for vulnerable groups. One colleague who works at a retreat center, and asked to remain anonymous, shared her thoughts about how dharma communities are showing up for the sick and disabled, and her own experience with Long COVID: 

“It feels hypocritical that we wouldn’t ask our sangha, who are dedicated to awakening and freedom from suffering, to put on a mask to alleviate someone else’s suffering. It feels deeply contrary to our mission. How is it that we are not open to being even slightly uncomfortable when it could mean someone else’s life? The stakes are too high and long-term effects are still not even fully known. When I share this view, people often respond, ‘Well, that’s because you have Long COVID.’ Well, yes… that’s precisely the point.”

This is not the first time a dharma community has faced this type of devaluation of sick people. In fact, it goes all the way back to the time of the Buddha, in the Kucchivikara-vatthu Sutta. In this sutta, a monk was incredibly ill with what was likely dysentery. He couldn’t care for himself and, due to his illness, also couldn’t do anything to support his fellow monks. Because of this, the monks stopped caring for him. As you might imagine, the Buddha had some things to say about this. He said to the monks:

“Monks, you have no mother, you have no father, who might tend to you. If you don’t tend to one another, who then will tend to you? Whoever would tend to me, should tend to the sick.” 

This is not far off from what we face today. Without a public safety net that demonstrates true care for us, if we don’t take care of one another, who will? The Buddha is clear that if we would care for him, then that grace should also be extended to others. This is at the heart of our dharma practice: not just to meditate and receive the teachings, but to truly live them. It’s said that the Buddha once shared with his attendant Ananda that sangha, with its admirable friendship and camaraderie, is the whole of the holy life. So many of us know this in our bones: the friendships we’ve made and the support we’ve both given and received within our dharma communities are jewels of immeasurable value. But how are we living this teaching today, if we cannot extend this sacred friendship to our sick and disabled sangha members? 

As we explore this question, perhaps even more questions will reveal themselves, opening up deeper teachings around sangha, sila (right conduct), and our own mortality. We may ask ourselves: What delusions are we clinging to, particularly in terms of how we devalue the sick, elderly, or disabled? Are we denying the inevitable reality that, in time, we too will become sick, disabled, and pass away? Are our decisions truly aligned with our commitment to nonharming? As we sit with these questions, it is likely we will also ask how we might do better. Fortunately, there is a simple place to begin: actively listening to those who are sick, immunocompromised, and disabled and taking their needs for inclusion and safety in our communities seriously.

The post Sangha in the Age of Long COVID appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Gochen Tulku Sang-ngag Tenzin Rinpoche and Stephen Small Salmon need an interpreter to understand each other’s language, but not the meaning behind their words. Small Salmon’s wife, Juanita, could see it from their first meeting, when Rinpoche shared a story of his exile from Tibet in 1981. Following a nine-year imprisonment by Chinese authorities who invaded his country, the Tibetan Buddhist leader found himself lost in the Himalayas. Then wolves appeared. The pack helped guide him to safety in Bhutan when his trail was obscured by snow.

“That’s the kind of story that Stephen completely and totally understood. … That’s the relationship between humans and animals,” Juanita Small Salmon says. “We’re all related. There’s no separation.”

Rinpoche would later find refuge in Stephen Small Salmon’s homeland in western Montana, and, from that place on the Flathead Reservation, plant a peace garden. The Garden of One Thousand Buddhas, seeded two decades ago, continues to flourish under the care of a Tibetan diaspora within the domain of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. The garden is tucked into Rocky Mountains reminiscent of the snowcapped Himalayas of Rinpoche’s youth.

Small Salmon—a spiritual leader for Indigenous people in that region as Rinpoche is for his Buddhist practitioners—blessed the land the garden rests upon. A shared vision for a world that respects all life helps the garden continue to grow.

“There’s a lot of similarities between the respect for the land and balance and the spirit,” says Tom McDonald, chairman of the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes. “There’s a lot of correlations there. There’s a lot of overlap.”

* * *

The Garden of One Thousand Buddhas rests within the tranquil Jocko Valley, a small basin between several ranges of the Rockies north of Missoula and south of Glacier National Park. Its circle of monuments and plants adorns a rural site in Arlee between green farm fields. To the northeast, the fields give rise to the Jocko Hills, and beyond, the majestic Mission Mountains and expansive Flathead Lake.

On a trip to Montana to teach the dharma, Rinpoche recognized this scenic spot from a vision he had as a child of a peace garden in a mountainous valley, and knew this was the place he should create it.

In Tibet, Rinpoche was recognized as a Buddhist leader in early childhood. He is considered the reincarnation of the Gochen Tulku, who tradition holds as the incarnation of Gyelwa Chokyang, one of twenty-five heart disciples of Guru Rinpoche. Following many years of training—including while imprisoned by the Chinese with other Tibetan lamas—he went on to found Ewam International in 1999. Its centers and monasteries in Asia and the United States, including the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas, promote the nonprofit’s mission to advance and cultivate spiritual awareness throughout the world in the tradition of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism. Rinpoche also occasionally collaborates with affiliated organizations, including a Buddhist retreat center that’s also situated on the Flathead Reservation.

Rinpoche, now 69, started making plans to create the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas in 2000, after one of his students offered him a sixty-acre parcel in the Jocko Valley. The terrorist attacks of 9/11 the following year further informed his vision. With the intent to pacify evils and help restore peace and happiness, Rinpoche created a garden rich with symbolism about enlightenment connected to the Heart Sutra. Destroyed weapons and symbols of war are buried beneath some of the statues, representing a triumph of compassion over negativity.

The Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, planned to inaugurate the garden until the 88-year-old’s traveling schedule became more limited in recent years. After Rinpoche had a private audience with the Dalai Lama in India last year, it was decided that another high-ranking Tibetan lama would instead visit the garden this October for an official opening and consecration ceremony.

The garden is laid out in the shape of a dharma wheel, with eight spokes representing the eightfold path “which teaches that true freedom comes from living in a non-harming and compassionate way,” reads a sign welcoming visitors to the public park and botanical garden. Atop those spokes sit 1,000 Buddha statues, each a couple feet tall, representing 1,000 Buddhas prophesied to appear in this aeon. Below each is a small plaque with a beautiful name, including Light of Good Qualities, Resounding Sound, Pure Meaning, Lotus Rays, Full Moon, and Intoxicating Fire. The inclusive circle features Heart Sutra teachings in eight languages, one for each of the spokes.

The rim around them is the foundation for 1,000 similarly sized stupas, Buddhist monuments that usually house sacred relics. Each contains a small statue of the deity Tara, who exemplifies the enlightened activity of all buddhas. At the hub of the wheel sits a larger statue, a twenty-five-foot likeness of Yum Chenmo, “Great Mother.” This central figure “represents the unity of great compassion and transcendent wisdom, which is enlightenment itself.” The monuments are filled with symbols of harmony and offerings to the Earth, like precious stones, sand from all the continents, water from all the seas, medicine, and mantras.

The last Buddha statue was installed around seven years ago thanks to the generosity of sponsors. Many are named on the monuments they helped create. Other plaques instead name people important to donors, like “Sacajawea and All Women of the World,” and in some cases, beloved pets, including a cat named Slug. Others simply signed the monument they dedicated with a blessing, including “Peace, Love and Light for All.” 

Symbols of peace are endless inside and outside this mighty circle, including a still pond and 1,000 plants and trees growing as an example of “safeguarding and replenishing” the environment. Colorful prayer flags dance in the wind from a hill just above the grand dharma wheel. Smaller monuments along walking paths, such as rocks chiseled with Buddha wisdom, are no less significant. One rock reads: “Let yourself be open and life will be easier. A spoon of salt in a glass of water makes the water undrinkable. A spoon of salt in a lake is almost unnoticed.”

* * * 

The three tribes of the Flathead Reservation—the Bitterroot Salish, Upper Pend d’Oreille, and the Kootenai—are really friendly people, McDonald says, and that openness means “all religious groups are always welcomed here.” A variety moved onto the reservation over the years, he says, including a colony of Amish, Mennonites, German Baptists, and Latter-day Saints—making the Buddhists’ arrival not at all uncommon to tribes who have seen endless waves of newcomers over the past few centuries. 

The Flathead Reservation is beautiful country, so beautiful that Congress passed the Flathead Allotment Act in 1904, opening it up to homesteading for non-Native people, and once again breaking another treaty with tribes. Since then, McDonald says, “we’ve been a minority on our own reservation.”

Some purchase land with little thought of the tribes who still call it home. That wasn’t the case with Rinpoche, who invited spiritual leaders of the tribes to accompany him from the start, including during land rituals performed in both Tibetan Buddhist and Native American tradition. During one of those rituals, Small Salmon added his blessings from the front of a special procession at the garden.

“It makes me feel good,” the 84-year-old Pend d’Oreille man says of walking with the Tibetans. “It makes me kind of honored, you know.”

So does their keeping in touch.

“Rinpoche is always asking about me … and that’s wonderful,” Small Salmon says, “to share our stories together.”

Stephen Lozar, a former tribal council member for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, was thrilled about these Tibetan neighbors from the start.

“I actually was so excited I yelled out in the tribal council meeting,” Lozar recalled in 2011 for a PBS broadcast. “I think it’s a spectacular opportunity for cross-cultural associations that are peace-based, that are based in the holiness of this land.”

McDonald describes the Tibetans as “very low key,” interactive and respectful. “And that’s really what you ask for, right?” he says of having them as neighbors. “You want to be inclusive and be included and be respected. So it’s a two-way street, and I think that they’ve done pretty well.”

* * *

When Rinpoche is teaching at the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas, he resides in a modest home on the property. A collection of crystals and traditional Tibetan art adorn its interior, including colorful textiles and embroidered leather. Many treasures are wonderfully akin to Native American art, including the turquoise. Tibetans consider the precious stone to be “like a life force,” explains Rinpoche’s secretary, Khenpo Namchak Dorji, while serving as an interpreter for Rinpoche. 

Sitting beside them, Tsering Karchungtsang, executive director of the garden, pulls at a necklace he’s wearing, featuring a small piece of turquoise, and says Tibetans always have this sacred stone with them. Karchungtsang sees his Tibetan grandparents in the features of his Native American neighbors, including their braided hair. And while attending their annual powwows, with round dancing and the use of feathers for ornamentation, like Tibetans, he’s filled with the feeling that “my people are dancing there.”

Rinpoche says when Small Salmon blessed the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas, his smoke ritual of burning sage, drumming, and invoking ancestors was like ceremonies performed by traditional Tibetans practicing Bon, or shamanism, before Buddhism came to Tibet. And like Native Americans, Tibetan Buddhists believe in sharing prayers and offerings before starting construction, Karchungtsang says. “We don’t dig in soil right away,” he adds—consideration is first given to whether the project is OK for the land and its native inhabitants.

All these things make Rinpoche think some scientists could be right about a theory that people might have first arrived in North America through a lost land bridge connecting Asia and Alaska, making Tibetans and Native Americans anciently connected.

The similarities go beyond cultural customs. There’s also a shared understanding of what persecution feels like. Tibetan culture has been repressed in Tibet since the country was invaded by China over seventy years ago, resulting in an estimated 1.2 million Tibetan deaths. The Dalai Lama was forced to flee and has lived in exile since 1959. In the Americas, millions of Indigenous people were killed in a genocide that spanned centuries.

“The tribes are very sympathetic to anybody that’s had oppression like the tribes have had against them. We’ve walked in their shoes,” McDonald says. “A lot of our membership feel it every day as far as racism, oppression, and conformity to dominant society—that type of pressure.”

For Small Salmon, the trauma began as a boy while attending a boarding school for Native Americans. Torn away from his family, he was abused at the school and not allowed to speak his Salish language. At age 84, he’s now teaching that language to children on the reservation at a school near the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas. 

“Stephen is trying very hard to pass this language and culture on, and Rinpoche is leading his people in the same way,” Juanita Small Salmon says. “They’re working really hard at saving that culture and practicing it. Their lives are kind of parallel in a way when you look at it.”

* * *

Just north of the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas sits another kind of peace garden: the Bison Range, formerly known as the National Bison Range. The range is in its second year of being fully managed by the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes.

The change restored the range to its original Indigenous stewardship. When the National Bison Range—an 18,766-acre square carved into the center of the Flathead Reservation— was established in 1908, it protected bison, or their descendants, that were brought to the reservation in the 1870s by a man named Little Falcon Robe. The Ql̓ispé (also known as Kalispel or Pend d’Oreille) man led some orphaned bison calves across the Continental Divide to the Flathead Reservation at a time when mass slaughter by white settlers put plains bison on the brink of extinction. Bison from that herd were also used to revive a dwindling population of the animals at Yellowstone National Park in the early 1900s. 

Martin Charlo, a Confederated Salish and Kootenai tribal council member, relates his tribe’s generosity with that of caretakers at the nearby Garden of One Thousand Buddhas. 

“Back to being good neighbors, we’re trying to help establish other herds in eastern Montana. … We’re always willing to share knowledge and resources if possible,” Charlo says, while gazing out upon the Bison Range earlier this summer. “I feel like the garden down there does the same.”

Beneath each of the garden’s 1,000 Buddha statues are the words, “May All Beings Benefit!” That includes even the smallest of creatures, like insects, Karchungtsang explains. He’s happy that a family of foxes found sanctuary around the garden’s prayer flag mound. The foxes are a bane to some nearby farmers. Rinpoche says that Tibetans, like Native Americans, find sacred symbolism in animals, including eagles and hawks. 

One of the most revered on the Bison Range was a rare white bison called Big Medicine, named after the gift that he was. After the creature’s death the same year the Dalai Lama was forced into exile, Big Medicine’s body was shipped to Helena, where it became a museum display. The Montana Historical Society agreed last fall—at the urging of tribal members—to send the white bison’s body home to the Flathead Reservation, which will likely happen once a new Bison Range visitor center is built.

Rick Eneas, executive officer for the Confederated Salish and Kootenai Tribes, said last year about Big Medicine that “a symbol like this allows us to feel proud of who we are and will help us understand who we can be in the future.”

The same can be said of the Garden of One Thousand Buddhas. Understanding our connection to the Earth and divine source is what both groups are striving for, Juanita Small Salmon says.

“These teachings are really important, whether it’s coming from the garden or coming from Native Americans,” she says. “We all need to learn.”

The post 1,000 Buddhas on a Native American Reservation appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

So commences a letter sent by ninety-six Zen priests to the judge of the DeKalb County Superior Court in Decatur, Georgia, on March 20. The priests were condemning the arrest of Colin Dorsey, who was arrested at a music festival at an ongoing peaceful protest and charged with domestic terrorism. The festival occurred near the site of what has become known as Cop City, a $90 million police training facility in Atlanta’s South River Forest, critical green space for local residents, and the ancestral home of the Muskogee People. Two years of public outrage and resistance to the project has significantly delayed construction, but repression has been fierce, including the police assassination of 26-year-old Indigenous land defender Manuel Paez Teran, known by the nickname Tortuguita, in January; domestic terrorism charges against forty-two people; and violent raids and felony charges against movement infrastructure like the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. Below, Dorsey recounts his experience in jail and the work of activists, including the Zen priests who were instrumental in obtaining his bond.  – Jean Wolguelam, an organizer with the Weelaunee Defense Society

***

My arrest happened at dusk in the Weelaunee Forest. I had just finished eating dinner at the collective kitchen when tear gas began to spread into the area. Just as suddenly a snatch squad of officers charged out of the dark with bright flashlights, tazed me and handcuffed me on the ground with zip ties so tight that circulation to my hand was cut off. This snatch squad included officers with night vision goggles, automatic weapons and full body armor, supported by helicopters and drones and armored vehicles, prepared for a military encounter. As I was pinned by an officer on the ground, I heard clearly over the radio a superior say, “We just need bodies! If we’re not getting bodies, get out of there!” 

I was then taken to a parking lot that was used as a processing center for all the people that had similarly been rounded up. There were nearly fifty people in zip ties sitting around the parking lot. One officer then divided us into a group from Georgia and a group from out of state. We were called individually into a van marked “Homeland Security” and questioned. In the van were two officers, one wearing a balaclava. Also in the van was the prosecuting attorney, presenting himself as a lawyer for the benefit of the arrested. I refused to be interviewed and was quickly escorted onto a bus to be transported to the jail. In what appeared to be an attempt to cast the protest as the result of outside agitators, all Georgia residents were released, and all out-of-state residents were put on the bus. But from where I was sitting, it seemed that every person arrested that night was randomly detained because they were easy targets at the edge of the forest. There were twenty-three of us. At our first bond hearing, regardless of character, criminal history, or evidence, all but one of us were denied bond. After this we were moved to the general population of the jail.

The structure of the jail and culture implemented by the administration is meant to disorient, overwhelm, and keep inmates on edge. The dayroom, in which a group of twenty to thirty inmates known as a “pod” share space, is constructed so that even two or three people talking creates a booming sound, and there is a constant din of indistinguishable noise reverberating through the pods. In the cell beneath me, I could hear an inmate in solitary confinement screaming for help and banging on the door for hours at a time. Food was brought irregularly, and was cold and insufficient for nutrition. Guards entered abruptly and aggressively, particularly when the environment among the inmates was calm. The threat of violence was constant, mostly from the guards, but it also erupted unexpectedly among inmates. At other times the guards ignored the inmates. I was locked in a small interview room after an attorney visit for over an hour, and was told by other inmates this type of intentional indifference was routine. Another of my pod-mates was left in a different pod for most of the day until they got a guard to see that they were in the wrong place. This is a terrifying experience, as being in the wrong pod means you are essentially lost, without a bed, clothes, or any of the minimal things you can rely on. Many inmates I met were in a state of purgatory, without timely court dates or outside assistance to demand they be released at the appropriate time. Recently, I was informed that an inmate in my pod committed suicide. Death while imprisoned at DeKalb County Jail is common. 

Through all of this, by continuing the practice of zazen and walking meditation, I was able to cut through the systematic attempt to reduce life to a series of overwhelmed responses to trauma. But I was not able to practice solely through my own efforts. While in the jail, I found incredible solidarity among the inmates. In the complete neglect and intentional cruelty of the authorities, the people subject to this misery find a way to care for each other. These were the most immediate and poignant experiences of horizontal mutual aid that I have experienced. My pod in particular spoke of a history and conscious attempt to create a cohesive community. Newcomers and those causing strife were brought close and integrated into the community spirit through shared chores, nondenominational prayer circles, invitation to group activities, and caring conversation. When I first arrived in the general population with two of my codefendants, we were welcomed by people who wanted to help us. They provided us with basics for survival, from information, like how to make phone calls and order commissary, to everyday objects like cups for water and towels. These simple items are rare commodities in jail, and sharing them with us was a gesture of care and respect. We participated in self-organized chores and assistance for inmates navigating their legal situation. Eventually, as time passed in the jail, it became our turn to welcome newcomers to the pod.

I had previously taught meditation in prisons and worked as an activist against conditions that I was now subject to. I remember, years ago, after teaching a meditation class, one inmate asked me how to practice nonviolence in a situation in which doing so can be perceived as weakness and expose you to predation. My response was that I could not possibly know his situation, so I could not tell him how to enact nonviolence. The clarity that I have attained through my own short experience is that nonviolence is not a matter of individual ethics and actions. Cultivating peace is only possible through building a community of solidarity that looks out for itself and addresses violence collectively. 

As Soto Zen priests our commitment to nonviolence includes not being passively complicit in systems which cause harm. As citizens of the United States we see the inherent violence of mass incarceration, militarized policing, and the statistically unfair racial outcomes of the criminal justice system. We see damage to our environment, destruction of habitat, and disregard for future generations in our approach to matters of ecology and climate change. It is natural for a commitment to nonviolence to call us to oppose this status quo.

The struggle against Cop City is not local to Atlanta. Georgia politicians and police are currently attempting to address the resistance to environmental destruction and structural racism through repressive means: prosecuting forty-two protestors as domestic terrorists, murdering forest defenders, criminalizing the acts of distributing fliers, or operating a bail fund. If they succeed in crushing this popular resistance and build a massive police training compound, we can suspect their efforts will be replicated across the country and the world.

While the state is taking unprecedented measures to suppress the movement, this is reciprocal to an equally potent strategy of fearless self-organization. The initial media after our arrest was crafted to define the movement as violent. They neglected to show trees being planted, structures being raised for collective use, plant identification walks, herbal medicine clinics, yoga classes, potlucks, a music festival of diverse genres and subcultures, and support by academics and clergy, all among the backdrop of the recent police killing of a forest defender and the threat of egregious charges and decades-long sentences that I faced. 

Just as the threat of the training center and draconian legal maneuvers risk spreading if they succeed, so does the alternative: success in defeating these measures by a diversity of actors moving independently yet tolerant of difference, creating structures of joy, care, and courage.

The movement is not intimidated, and popular support is growing. The extent to which the state can crush this movement will be the extent to which those risking the most to defend it are isolated from the broader sections of society supporting it.

We support Mr. Dorsey’s engagement in nonviolent protest at the site of the proposed public safety training facility in DeKalb County’s South River Forest. We support his efforts to create public safety through nonviolent action, opposition to military-style police training, and opposition to the destruction of one of the largest sections of green space near an area with a large population of Black citizens in the Atlanta area. The evidence to support domestic terrorism charges against Mr. Dorsey is negligible. The reasons to support his acts to promote public safety and nonviolence are many. We advise that he be released immediately, and the charges against him should be dropped.

 Sincerely, 

Rev. Ben Connelly, Minnesota Zen Meditation Center Rev. Shodo Spring, founder and guiding teacher, Mountains and Waters Zen Community Rev. Greg Fain, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center Rev. Hozan Alan Senauke, Berkeley Zen Center, Clear View Project Rev. Joan Halifax, Founding Abbot, Upaya Zen Center Rev. Chris Fortin, founder of Dharma Heart Zen Rev. Norman Fischer, Former abbot, San Francisco Zen Center, Founder Everyday Zen Rev. Taigen Leighton PhD, Guiding Teacher,, Ancient Dragon Zen Gate Rev. Pat Enkyo O’Hara, abbot Village Zendo, New York City Matt Streit, Minnesota Zen Meditation Center Rev. Zenku Smyers, Guiding Teacher, Mission Mountain Zen Center Alan Eustace, Minnesota Zen Meditation Center Carrie Garcia, Minnesota Zen Meditation Center Ekyo Susan Nelson, Minnesota Zen Meditation Center Rev. Myo On Susan Hagler, Clouds in Water Zen Center, St. Paul, MN Rev. Gyokei Yokoyama, Montebello Sozenji Buddhist Temple, CA Rev. Ryushin Andrea Thach, MD Berkeley Zen Center, Red Cedar Zen Center Rev. Kokyo Henkel, Green Dragon Temple Rev. Shosan Victoria Austin, Beginner’s Mind Temple Rev. Dōshin Mako Voelkel, Beginner’s Mind Temple Rev. Onryu Kennedy, Sanshinji Zen Center, Bloomington, IN Rev. M. Denis Lahey, Hartford Street Zen Center Rev. Rakugo Castaldo, Soji Zen Center, Philadelphia, PA Myozen Barton Stone, Stone Creek Zen Center, Graton, CA Rev. Sara Jisho Siebert, Zen Fields, Ames, IA Rev. Daishin McCabe, Zen Fields, Ames, IA Rev. Koshin Paley Ellison, Co-Guiding Teacher, New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care Rev. Chodo Campbell, Co-Guiding Teacher, New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care Rev. Konin Melissa Cardenas, Guiding Teacher, Dassanāya Buddhist Community, Alexandria, VA Rev. Kuden Paul Boyle, Forest City Zen Group, London, Ontario, Canada Rev. Dr. Daijaku Kinst, Guiding Teacher, Ocean Gate, Zen Center, Captiola, CA Rev. Shinshu Roberts, Guiding Teacher, Ocean Gate Zen Center, Capitola, CA Rev. Gaelyn Godwin, Abbot Houston Zen Center, Houston, TX, and Director of Soto Zen International Center North America Rev. Inryū Poncé-Barger, All Beings Zen Sangha, Washington D.C. Rev. Bernd Bender, Akazienzendo, Berlin, Germany Rev. Jakuko Mo Ferrell, Chapel Hill Zen Center, Chapel Hill Rev. Renshin Bunce, Beginner’s Mind Zen in Eureka CA Rev. Choro Antonaccio, Austin Zen Center, Austin TX Rev. Shinchi Linda Galijan, San Francisco Zen Center, CA Rev. Nomon Tim Burnett, Guiding Teacher, Red Cedar Zen Community, Bellingham, WA Rev. Ted O’Toole, Guiding Teacher, Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, MN Keidō Jeromy Thotland, Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, MN Rev. Joan Amaral, Zen Center North Shore, Beverly, MA Rev. Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, Zen Mountain Monastery, Mt. Tremper, NY Rev. Shinryu Thomson,  Village Zendo, New York City Rev. Dr. Jūshin Stephyn Butcher, Hokyoji Zen Practice Community, Eitzen, MN Rev. Domyo Burk, Guiding Teacher, Bright Way Zen Community, Portland, OR Rev. Korin Pokorny, Brooklyn Zen Center, New York, NY Rev. Daigaku Rumme, Confluence Zen Center STL, St. Louis, MO Rev. Sara Myoko Hunsaker, Monterey Bay Zen Center, Monterey, CA Rev. Josho Pat Phelan, Chapel Hill Zen Center, Chapel Hill, NC Rev. Tonen O’Connor, Milwaukee Zen Center Milwaukee, WI Rev. Eido Frances Carney, Olympia Zen Center, Olympia, WA Rev. Allison Yusho Draper, MDiv BCC, Spiritual Care Services, Stanford Medicine Children’s Health, Palo Alto CA Jey Ehrenhalt, priest-in-training, Minnesota Zen Meditation Center Rev. Senmyo Jeffrey Sherman,Chapel Hill Hill Zen Center, Chapel Hill North Carolina Kritee Kanko, Climate Scientist and Founding teacher of Boundless in Motion Zen Community Rev. Ryūki Tom Hawkins, Kojinan:Oakland Zen Center; Oakland, CA Rev. Eijun Linda Ruth Cutts, San Francisco Zen Center, CA Rev. Reirin Alheidis Gumbel, Milwaukee Zen Center Rev. Bussho Lahn, Flying Cloud Zen Community, Eagan, MN Rev. Jill Kaplan, Zen Heart Sangha, Woodside, CA Rev. Val Meiren Szymanski, Bamboo in the Wind Zen Center, Sunnyvale, CA Rev. Tova Green, San Francisco Zen Center, CA Rev. Myo-O Habermas-Scher, Hokyoji Zen Practice Community, Eitzen, MNs Ken & Elizabeth Sawyer, Sebastopol Ca Rev. Ensho Peter van der Sterre: Oak & 7th Street Sanctuary, San Francisco CA Rev. Myogen Kathryn Stark, Sonoma Valley Zen, Sonoma, CA Rev. Myoshin Kate McCandless, Mountain Rain Zen Community, Vancouver, Canada Rev. Kosen Gregory Snyder, Senior Priest, Brooklyn Zen Center, Brooklyn, NY Rev. Teijo Munnich, Abbess, Great Tree Zen Women’s Temple, Alexander Rev. Catherine Spaeth, San Francisco Zen Center, San Francisco, CA NC Rev. Kenshin Catherine Cascade, Senior Priest, Bird Haven Zendo, Eugene, OR Rev. Myogo Mary-Allen Macneil, Founding Teacher, Bodhi Oak Zen Sangha, Oakhurst, CA Ava Stanton, Teacher, Just Show Up Zen Sangha, Santa Monica, CA Rev. Dan Gudgel, San Francisco Zen Center, San Francisco, CA Shijun Heather Martin, San Antonio Zen Center, TX Rev. Doralee Grindler Katonah Valley Streams Zen Sangha Sacramento, CA Monica Reede, Santa Barbara Zen Center, Santa Barbara, CA Sergio Stern, Montaña Despierta, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico Carol Paul, San Rafael, CA Rev. Eden Kevin Heffernan, Richmond Zen, Richmond Virginia Rev. Hakusho Johan Ostlund, Brattleboro Zen Center, VT Kenho Emily Dashawetz, Zen Center North Shore, Beverly, MA Rev. Ann Meido Rice, Middle Way Zen, San Jose, CA Sandra M Laureano, Centro Budista Zen Soto San Juan, PR Rev. Gyoshiin Laurel M Ross, Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, Chicago IL Rev. ZenKi Mocine, Abbot Vallejo Zen Center Rev. Wendy Egyoku Nakao, Abbot Emeritus, Zen Center of Los Angeles Rev. Paul Tesshin Silverman, Abbot Yorktown Zen and Tetsugyuji Zen Temple Rev. Jan Chozen Bays, Abbot Great Vow Zen Monastery, Oregon Rev. Sessei Meg Levie, Head Priest Stone Creek Zen Center Rev. Kanshin Grevemeyer, Head Priest, Buddhadharma Sangha, San Quentin, CA Rev. Jisho Warner, Founding Teacher, Stone Creek Zen Center Rev. Dr Taikyo Morgans, Zen Buddhism Wales Brian Goller, Floating Cloud Sangha Rev. Paul Haller Former abbott, San Francisco Zen Center Ben internal note: 92 names up to this point. Erika Wild, Dharma Heart Zen Charli Vogt, Even Practice of the Heart, Atlanta, GA Rev. Tenzen David Zimmerman, Central Abbot, San Francisco Zen Center, CA Daya Goldschlag, Stonewillow Zendo, Spokane, WA

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How do we make the invisible visible? How can we see the unseen? We could get fancy and I could give this practice a name—the practice of seeing with the great wisdom eye of liberating compassion. In plainer language, in diversity and inclusion work, it begins with looking around the room and noting who’s here and who isn’t here. It’s a practice of mindful awareness.

For example, in the Zen Buddhist Temple in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where I started training in 1982, we were located in an old house that we were renovating. There were steps that led from the street level up to a porch, then a narrow doorway with a threshold that you had to step over, and then an entryway area that took you up to the meditation hall and other parts of the temple. But there was no wheelchair ramp. Therefore, by definition, we never had any people coming to meditate or practice with us in wheelchairs or who had severe mobility limitations. We never saw them in the meditation hall. Was it because there were people in that city in wheelchairs who didn’t want to come? We didn’t know, and we didn’t find out at that point. Since that time, a ramp has been built, and it has become a diverse and thriving sangha. Sometimes it takes time. We’ll never get to our goals unless we have in mind that we want to become more inclusive. 

Usually, when we ask who isn’t here, someone will be confused and ask, “How can I see who isn’t in the room?” We can extend “the room” to all the places we go on a regular basis, on vacations, and special trips, as well. We can look around any time and ask ourselves how many people appear to be here in the room. I want to emphasize the word “appear.” We can’t always know how others self-identify, but as humans we do look around, even if we’re not aware of it, and we’re constantly making these assessments.

How many people here appear to be people of color, younger, older, in wheelchairs or scooters? How many people here appear to be women, men, [non-binary], or maybe I can’t tell how they may self-identify in terms of gender? How many people here are of various body shapes and sizes? Or who appears to me to be low, medium, or higher income? I want to stop and emphasize that we’re invoking a mind state—and this is important as we’re beginning to ask these questions—that is spacious, gentle, compassionate, and contains friendliness and lovingkindness. As we begin to practice seeing the unseen, we’re going to get a peek of how much we don’t know, which can be unsettling, irritating, or just plain scary. We’re also surfacing our unconscious assumptions, thoughts we’re thinking that we don’t know we’re thinking, beliefs that we have held our entire lives. It’s likely that we’ve never examined these beliefs because they are so core to who we think we are and how we’ve been raised—how we’ve been conditioned. 

We need to invoke a mind-state that’s an antidote to whatever anxiety may arise, an attitude of gentleness, kindness, openness, curiosity, and interest. If you have kids or work with kids, you know that it’s natural as human beings to be curious about so many things, especially when we’re younger. We can practice metta, or lovingkindness, for ourselves: may I be safe, healthy, happy, peaceful, joyous, and at ease. Then we can proceed on as though we’re contemplating this koan. We’re talking about building inclusive sanghas, and as we know, the sangha is the third of what’s called the three jewels: the Buddha, the dharma, and the sangha. We go to the sangha for refuge, we go to the Buddha for refuge, we go to the dharma for refuge. So how can we create sanghas that are true refuges—harbors in the storm, safe and welcoming spaces of healing and renewal of spirit—in the samsaric world?

Ask yourself this without demanding a quick answer to emerge, but go deeply into the question. Of the three refuges, I’d say that sangha is the most difficult. It presents the most problems—not that we don’t wrestle with the Buddha and the dharma, but the sangha is made up of real people. They’re our communities. They’re our friends. They become our spiritual family. And that’s where the rubber meets the road in a lot of our practice. It’s hard to be serene and spiritually wonderful when people we find annoying, or difficult, or who we feel just aren’t harmonious with our group for whatever reason show up. In fact, we may really struggle with accepting others as our sangha members when we feel that they are just so different from whoever we are. At that point we need to step back and take a look and ask ourselves, “What is my dharma practice about really?” Many of us will say, “I want to become a calm, centered, wise, and compassionate person,” but there’s another way of looking at this as well.

In 1985, I was on pilgrimage with my original Zen teacher and we were passing through San Francisco. Along the way on this pilgrimage—which went from Mexico City all the way up through Texas, the West Coast, across the Rockies, through Colorado, and then back to the Midwest—we visited as many Buddhist groups of every sect and lineage that we could find. At a Chinese temple in San Francisco’s Chinatown, we met a Chinese monk who only spoke a limited amount of English. I remember distinctly that he said, “I became a monk because I wanted to learn about the world. I wanted to learn about the world.” 

We need to ask: How reflective are our sanghas, or spiritual communities, of the entire world? How can we learn? How can we see more deeply, and grow spiritually more and more? Very simply, how can we learn about the world?

♦

Further resources listed in this Dharma Talk include: “Making the Invisible Visible: Healing Racism in our sanghas, in our Buddhist Communities (2000) and “Dharma Color and Culture: New Voices in Western Buddhism,” edited by Hilda Gutiérrez Baldoquín, (Parallax Press, 2004)

The post Seeing the Unseen appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Every Buddhist tradition that I’ve studied talks about lineage. Every teacher will talk about their teacher and their teacher’s teacher and their teacher’s teacher’s teacher, going all the way back to the Buddha. We talk about lineage to honor the people that came before us and to have gratitude for them. But lineage also connects us to all these other beings and reminds us that we’re not alone. There are a lot of others who have gone before us, they will in the future, and they are right now.

That was very inspiring to me when I first started studying Buddhism. Then I realized that we all have a lineage, even if we’re not Buddhist. Our lineage is all the people that have supported us, all the animals that have supported us, and the earth that has supported us. You can even go back to before you were born. There were very likely people who helped your mother while she was pregnant: medical providers, family, and friends. People probably opened doors for her. This lineage continued when we were kids. People taught us how to walk and to read. And even if our families weren’t so great, there were teachers and strangers and friends.

When you start to review that lineage, you can realize that it continues today. A lot of beings are supporting us, and we’re supporting a lot of beings. Our lineage can remind us that we aren’t going through this alone. We can ask for help, and people will come out and help us.

[This happened to me] soon after my mom died. My mom and I had a terrible relationship, and when she died, I thought I would be relieved, or at least I wouldn’t be so affected. But her death was very, very affecting. For about six months to a year afterward, I was really, really struggling. My mind was very unsteady, and I really didn’t know what to do at times.

A Tibetan teacher once told me, “When you’re in trouble, you can just call on the buddhas because that’s their job. They’ll come. They’ll help you.” It seemed so silly, and I didn’t really believe that sort of thing. But, one day, I was feeling so hopeless, and I thought, “Alright, buddhas, if you’re here, I really need some help.” I was on my way to an appointment with a therapist. When I walked out of the subway, I encountered a street vendor who said to me, “Hey, are you OK? Can I give you a cup of tea?” And he did. Then someone else smiled at me, and then I got a text from my oldest friend saying, “I’m thinking of you. Are you OK?” And then, of course, I got to my therapist’s office.

I still continue to believe that that’s what’s meant by the buddhas, at least today. That’s how they’re manifesting. They’re from each other, from us. They’re all here right now. And we can ask for that help and really tap into it.

The post Calling on the Buddhas appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

In 2018 I was ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order, a spiritual community of people who have pledged themselves to following the Buddhist path to enlightenment. This was the culmination of ten years of effort and exploration, joyously completed. Something that had seemed impossible for me had finally happened. This is the story of how I was able to move from the statement ‘I don’t have friends’ to being able to say, ‘I have many friends.’ It’s the story of how Buddhism helped me to develop rich, close, emotional connections with people who are not family members. 

For most of my life I have understood that I think differently from other people, without knowing why. I saw some things very clearly while other things were a complete mystery to me. I can recognize patterns and see how these patterns connect. If you act in a certain way then certain results will usually follow. But I find it very hard to read non-verbal communication. Mostly I just don’t see it, but when I do, I often misinterpret what I’m seeing. If you say something to me, I hear your words but I don’t pick up on the context behind the words.

As a child I was often ill and I was also very shy. As a result, I regularly missed school or was by myself at school. I got on perfectly well with people, but did not develop close friendships. 

The same patterns were there when I left school. I worked well with people, I was intelligent and articulate, well organized and could explain things clearly, but I made no close friends. There were work relationships that I enjoyed, but they never developed into anything outside work. People asked me about problem-solving or process issues but never about emotional problems or other personal difficulties. We sometimes went out as a work group but never simply for a coffee. I did not miss having any close friendships but sometimes I wondered what it would be like. Other people seemed to enjoy them! 

Then, when I was 50 years old, I found Buddhism. I wasn’t looking for Buddhism at that point, I simply wanted to learn how to meditate. There were three Buddhist groups within my local area and I wrote to them all asking if they had chairs to sit on to meditate, because I find getting up from the ground challenging. Only one group replied, so I decided to go with them and went into the local Triratna Buddhist center for the first time. 

I’d never been anywhere like this center. I was welcomed at the door. The place was full of people chatting in small groups, with lots of laughter. People invited me into the groups and said hello. We all went together into the shrine room and then after the meditation came out and chatted more—with a large array of teas and biscuits! I knew that there was something different and wonderful about the place and I wanted to be part of it. I wondered if, here, I could find people who would continue to talk to me. So, I started attending the center regularly. The only real difficulty I had at this point was that people wanted to hug me and I didn’t want to be hugged by people I didn’t know well. It was very uncomfortable. 

One of the distinctive focuses of Triratna Buddhism is the crucial importance of sangha, the spiritual community of people who follow the Buddha’s teachings. Sangharakshita built the movement with this exchange between the Buddha and Ananda at its core: 

Ananda said to the Blessed One, ‘This is half of the holy life, lord: admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie.’ 

‘Don’t say that, Ananda. Don’t say that. Admirable friendship, admirable companionship, admirable camaraderie is actually the whole of the holy life. When a monk has admirable people as friends, companions, & comrades, he can be expected to develop & pursue the noble eightfold path.’ (SN 45.2 ‘The whole of the holy life’ – Access to Insight, 2013) 

Triratna Buddhists work hard to develop spiritual friendships between people and try to bring this into every encounter. So, the warm welcome I received on first entering the center was part of the ethos of Triratna. 

For a while I simply enjoyed the unusual feeling of being with people who accepted me and who were always happy to talk. It was enough just to feel part of something that wasn’t to do with my work. As I chatted, I started to be more interested in Buddhism and, after some reflection, asked to join a study group. This study group opened so many doors for me. The same people met together, with minor changes, for about six years. I was suddenly part of a small group with the shared interest of learning more about Buddhism. Study training in Triratna is well organized and comprehensive—and I loved it. But, even more importantly for me than the study aspect, it also exemplified aspirations about how to be with the same people over a long period of time and how to make connections with them.

To begin with it was hard. This was partly because I found the pressure of people difficult. The sensory input of several people having an animated discussion was challenging. I found myself tensing up and trying to block some of it out. However, as we learned how to listen to each other, there were fewer times when several people were talking at once. I learned by watching other people how long it was good to talk for. I also learned how to leave space for other people in the discussion. I discovered how to live with the feeling that I’d missed the time when it was appropriate to say something (so sometimes I would not be able to say what I wanted). 

One of the other group members was really empathetic, a “heart” person, while I’m more analytical and a “mind” person. We discovered, to our mutual delight, that we could start a conversation coming from completely different places but eventually meet in the middle. This is such a rich experience, we both learned different ways of seeing and the world felt brighter because of this. I was beginning to build the foundations for closer relationships with other people. 

After studying for a year, I decided that I was a Buddhist and that I wanted to make a deeper commitment to Buddhism, so I asked to become a mitra. The word mitra is usually translated as “friend.” I discussed this with Order members, and they agreed this would be a good step. I then took part in a ritual, where I was introduced to the whole sangha and made the three traditional offerings of a flower, a candle, and incense, so that my deeper commitment could be witnessed. 

I’ve never found rituals easy. There are usually too many people in the room and the mantra chanting is overstimulating. Normally I don’t want to be in the room doing this but, in this case, it felt really important to be seen. I wanted to take part in this ceremony with other people. I did find the sounds and the pressure of people challenging but I knew why I was there, and I wanted to be there, so it was bearable. 

Once I’d made this deeper commitment, I also realized that I would like to be ordained into the Triratna Buddhist Order, so I entered the ordination training. To become an Order member, you have to build links with other people; it’s an integral part of being in the Triratna movement. That sounded like a lovely idea, but I’d never had a friend and I had absolutely no idea how to go about developing friendships. Eventually someone asked me if I would like to go for a coffee with them, and that was a huge relief. I made a note in my mind: you ask people to go for a coffee. 

But the fact that I was going to meet someone for a coffee brought up a whole new area of difficulty. What do people do when they “go for a coffee”? I assumed that the idea was to talk, but talk about what? I was terrified. At that point I had no “small talk.” I could not imagine how I was going to get through this meeting that felt so important. But I went, and it was very clunky. I could talk about non-specifics and we could discuss Buddhism, but I could not find any way of getting closer to the other person. I met other people after the first “coffee experience” and it was clunky with everyone. The conversations just didn’t flow. 

At this point, many people would have given up on the idea of building a relationship with me. I was incredibly fortunate that the people here did not give up. Instead, we kept meeting and people began to give me feedback about how talking with me felt for them. 

At the start of this process the feedback was helpful. People said, “You talk too much and don’t let me get a word in.” So I made a mental note to talk for less time and then pause, and this seemed to help. They said, “You are too intense.” So I tried to be gentler in the way I spoke and to give less detail. I tried to approach topics less directly and put effort into softening my speech. 

But as time went on and we still weren’t really connecting the feedback became more painful and confusing. I was given information such as “You are not listening to me,” which was confusing because I was listening, as hard as I could. I was told, “You are not interested in me.” This was very painful. I was more interested in people than I ever had been in my entire life, and yet this wasn’t coming across. I was told, “You don’t have empathy.” This was both painful and confusing because I know that I have lots of empathy and I was trying to express it. Why couldn’t the people I was talking to see that? 

This phase lasted for several years, with both me and most of the people around me getting more frustrated. Why couldn’t I do what was being asked? Nothing seemed to work. At the same time, I was finding that with two people things seemed to be different. I now know that both these people had met autistic people before. They assumed that I was autistic but that I didn’t know it. They didn’t expect the sort of responses that most non-autistic people were looking for. Our friendships developed more quickly because of this and they remain two of my closest friends to this day. 

Four years ago, when I was 60, my sister contacted me to say that she had just been diagnosed as autistic. I went looking for information to help her and found the best description of me that I’d ever seen. My first response was, “But that can’t be true!” When I thought of autism I thought of severely autistic people, and I knew that their experience was not mine. And yet, there was so much in the description of autism that did fit. I researched further and discovered the concept of the autistic spectrum and suddenly everything made more sense. It was possible for someone to be autistic but not be severely autistic. I did the self-tests and discovered that my scores were way above the threshold values for autism. So, I asked to be tested formally. I was diagnosed with what is now called “level 1” autism (in the UK) and might previously have been called Asperger syndrome. 

That diagnosis was liberating. Suddenly I understood why I was having problems with communication. I told the people around me immediately and from just about everyone I got the response, “Oh, that’s what it is!” Swiftly followed by, “Then you are doing so well!” I sent them information about how autism affects communication and the ability to build relationships. I explained that I could not respond in the ways that they were expecting. 

Immediately things opened up. We realized that I could not read their non-verbal communication accurately and so could not find the appropriate responses. We also realized that they often could not read my body language accurately as well. For example, when they thought that I was showing worry or anger, I was concentrating. Almost at once we began to develop genuinely deep friendships which have stood the test of time. I’ve also developed strategies for showing that I’m listening. One of the most useful is the phrase “What I’m hearing is…”. I often use this phrase to check that I have understood what is being said. Often, I haven’t, but that’s fine—we can clear up any misunderstanding immediately. As a result, people have started to say that I am a good listener, and that is precious to me. 

Now I can truthfully say that I have many friends and some of these relationships are close, intimate friendships. We can talk about anything. It’s just wonderful! It’s taken so much time and effort from me and other people. This has happened because other people were prepared to put the time and effort in—because of their Buddhist beliefs and the ethos of the Triratna Order. I am now an Order member and sometimes I still can’t believe that this is possible. I have so much gratitude towards Buddhism and the Triratna approach to Buddhist teachings. They have changed my life for the better. 

♦

Adapted from Autism and Buddhist Practice: How Buddhism Can Help Autistic Adults Cultivate Wellbeing (Jessica Kingsley Pub, December 2022), edited by Chris Jarrell.

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For chaplain Sumi Loundon Kim, sangha, or community, is the foundation of Buddhist practice. As a child, Kim grew up in a Soto Zen community in rural New Hampshire, where she learned about Buddhist practice through cleaning, gardening, and meditating with other families. Her immersive experience of Buddhism has informed her understanding of how we engage with the dharma, and she has worked to center this sense of community in her personal life and her professional career.

Kim currently serves as the Coordinator of Buddhist Life at Yale University, where she supports the Buddhist community on campus through meditation events and gatherings. Drawing from recent research in polyvagal theory and early education, she has been experimenting with alternative ways of structuring community in order to tap into the wisdom of the whole sangha.

In a recent episode of Life As It Is, Tricycle editor-in-chief James Shaheen and co-host Sharon Salzberg sat down with Kim to discuss the power of storytelling, the future of Buddhist communities, and how spiritual friendship can support us in facing the crises of our world today. Read excerpts from their conversation below, and listen to the whole conversation here.

***

Sumi Loundon Kim on growing up in a Zen community

In the early 1970s, both my parents were involved in a Soto Zen community in rural New Hampshire. I was born into that community, and I lived there until I was about nine years old. My first experiences with Buddhism were very immersive. In retrospect, I think that practicing together made what we were doing normative, even though it was well outside the mainstream of American culture at that time. I learned: This is how we conduct ourselves. We pay attention. We think of others. We perform acts of service. It was through shared space, shared time, and a shared schedule that I absorbed the early lessons of the dharma. I later realized that that was somewhat unusual. A lot of people come to the dharma through reading, practicing meditation, or studying the philosophies of Buddhism. But I came to it through community.

In general, there are two ways that people learn things: implicit learning and explicit learning. When I was raising my children, I began to notice that they would phrase things certain ways or their body posture and mannerisms would be certain ways. I came to see, “Oh, that’s exactly the way I do that, or exactly the way my husband does that.” We never directly taught them that this was how they should walk or these are the types of things they should say, but somehow, they were living those out. They were learning our culture and values implicitly through nonverbal absorption.

While we have plenty of explicit learning in our dharma centers, we could benefit from more implicit learning, where people can spend time together and begin to absorb the ways we are in the dharma with each other. When I look back on the time I spent at retreat centers like the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies and Insight Meditation Society, I can see that I was watching how the teachers interacted with the staff, how the staff interacted with each other, and how yogis comported themselves. I was looking for how people embodied what they were practicing. That was how I learned to comport myself.

On creating community spaces for college students

I work as the Coordinator of Buddhist Life at Yale University, and we hold weekly meditation gatherings. During the first year of the pandemic, we were only meeting virtually, and when in-person programming started up again in the fall of 2021, I wasn’t sure anybody would come back to the meditation room for events. But the room filled to capacity, cheek to cheek. I think there were two main reasons that students came. First, they had been isolated for many, many months, and as a result of that isolation, they had a lot of time for introspection. Some of the students later shared that they had previously oriented their life around materialism and professional success, and then after an extended period of internal reflection, they had come to see the vacuity of some of those pursuits and now wanted to pursue something more meaningful. After the isolation, many students were also desperate for the company of others. What space offers that very unusual combination of being with others and structured self-reflection but a Buddhist meditation space? The room filled up, and the students were very excited to see each other.

During the pandemic, I started learning about polyvagal theory, which is a revised understanding of how our nervous system might be structured. According to the theory, we have a set of nerves in the front of our body called the ventral vagal nerves. These nerves are our prosocial nervous system. They ask the question, “Am I safe?,” scan the environment to look for safety, and get the answer through the social cues of others: a friendly wave, a smile, a tilt of the head, eye contact. When our nervous system receives those signals, then the ventral vagal nerve is soothed and reassured.

As the students came back to the meditation space after the lockdown, I wanted to draw on this idea and give people even more permission to introduce themselves to each other. Typically, when people arrive in a meditation space, they beeline for the cushion, face forward toward the teacher or the altar, listen, meditate, and then beeline back out without much contact with the people around them. Some of the students would enter the meditation space in exactly that way, and I could see that they were a little uncertain, wondering, “Am I welcome here? Are other people like me?” This year, unlike previous years, I built in a meet-and-greet period right at the beginning of each gathering. I said, “Please turn to your neighbor, say hello, and share your name and major.” As soon as I gave people permission to do that, I could feel the energy of the room go way up. People were so happy to find that they were welcome here. After a few minutes, we would come back together and start to meditate. I suspect that those few minutes of social time are actually conducive to better meditation practice because each person isn’t wondering, “Is the person behind me safe? Is the person to my right safe, to my left, in front of me?” They already got that smile of reassurance, that eye contact, that tilt of the head to help them feel safe. And when we feel safe, I suspect we relax more. When we relax more, it’s easier to meditate.

On why religious people are happier

I was recently reading an interview with cognitive scientist Laurie Santos in the New York Times. She shares that there’s lots of evidence that religious people are happier overall, and she asks: Are they happier because of their beliefs and theological principles? Or is it the spaghetti suppers, donating to charity, and volunteering together? According to Santos, in as much as those two things can be divided out, the research shows that it’s probably doing things together that generates feelings of happiness. When I read that article, I thought, “How could we implement this on the ground?” For the rest of the spring semester, I deliberately created tasks for people to do. For example, we needed to build a shoe rack. And even though it would have been more efficient to just do it myself, I experimented with asking people to get involved. The students were very happy to help, so I just stepped back and supported them as they did it, usually imperfectly. But the end result was that when they walk into the entryway, they get to see the shoe rack that they built and that other people benefit from using. And so they feel like the community is theirs. I think that doing things together in Buddhist community could be a powerful way of increasing participation and involvement.

♦

Listen to the full podcast with Sumi Loundon Kim here:

The post Re-Envisioning Buddhist Community appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I walked a long and winding road before I found dharma friends. I’d always thought meditation was basically a solo affair. In my twenties, I got a mantra from a Transcendental Meditation class and meditated twice a day alone in my apartment. After a few years, I stopped, and then many years later I learned T’ai Chi Chih, a Qigong-infused moving meditation. Except when practicing with my teacher a couple times a month, and when I eventually became a teacher myself, I always did this practice of nineteen repetitive movements alone in my apartment. It wasn’t until later that I discovered the meaning of “dharma friends,” which in Sanskrit is kalyanamitra: “a spiritual friend” or “a virtuous friend.”

My first dharma friend might have been the bus driver on my sixty-mile, four-day-a-week commute into Manhattan and back. Usually, I was the only person on the bus for the first twenty miles or so. I became friendly with the bus driver, and one day he joked with me about the meditation practice I’d started on the bus. I wore large noise-canceling headphones, and put a big shawl around my shoulders, then put on sunglasses. This had the advantage of signaling to any other rider that it would be nice if they didn’t sit next to me, or if they did, they might also enjoy being quiet. The bus driver and I began to have conversations at the beginning of the trip, and after fifteen minutes or so, I knew I had twenty minutes left to meditate in peace, on this very bumpy ride. Sometimes we’d talk a bit longer, and then he would interrupt to admonish me and, smiling, remind me it was time to meditate. 

When I moved to the next town, still on the same bus line, and into a twenty-six-story apartment building that was affordable housing for seniors, I began to teach Tai Chi Chih, and, with another tenant, started a weekly meditation group that drew a handful of residents a week. There was no formal practice. We played ambient music in the background. There wasn’t much to say afterward, and people were busy moving onto other things. But these neighbors became dharma friends, too.

Then, I met Sister Sylvia, who came to both my class and meditation group and was in her late eighties. She was a part of a small group of Dominican nuns whose Order transferred them to our building for retirement. The two of us decided to read and study Thich Nhat Hanh’s book, Living Buddha, Living Christ. She would bring a small Buddha figurine to accompany us while we took turns reading a paragraph or two out loud, which we would then discuss. She was certainly a spiritual dharma friend. Of course, when one lives in senior housing, people come and go. Jerry, one of my T’ai Chi Chih students in the building who was then 97, had to move to a nursing home a few miles away. So I started going there every Sunday to bring him the practice. After a while, two female residents, Marie and Jackie, joined us. Marie and Jackie were both blind. Jerry was fast losing his hearing. Still, we had great conversations at high volume, for a half hour or more after the practice. We often talked about longevity and mortality, and the past, hardly ever about sickness, or the future. They were dharma friends: virtuous, indeed. 

Then the pandemic hit, all the nursing homes were restricted, and I could no longer teach there or visit.

Within a month, I had to close my Manhattan office, where I worked as a clinical social worker, and I started working remotely. I still haven’t returned to Manhattan. I missed the city, and particularly a thirty-minute lunchtime Mass I had started attending at the Episcopal church near my office, where, in addition to workers on break, homeless people, residents of the rather posh neighborhood, and even tourists now and then used to attend. We all took communion together, which I found to be a daily reminder of our interdependency. I usually arrived early so that I could sit quietly in the small garden beside the church, and sit meditatively with my thoughts. Eyes wide open.

A friend, who was sensitive to my loss of the Mass, told me about the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, and that since the pandemic, they now had meditation sessions on Zoom. Their midday sit became a wonderful parallel to my lunchtime Mass, and I’ve been practicing there ever since. About thirty to forty people from all over the world—Germany, Ireland, South Africa, the Philippines, Turkey, to name a few—come to the midday sit. 

Gradually, I no longer looked at the mid-afternoon sit as a replacement for Mass, but felt, wholeheartedly, that I’d found myself on another part of that winding road, which has now led me to so many friends. 

Over time, it seems, it has become a sangha. In the beginning, I didn’t expect that I would make friends. I assumed, as usual, that meditating would be singular. I even suspected that with Zoom, it would be even more detached. Yet as people begin collecting in my living room via those little square videos, I’ve discovered that there is more connection available than I ever thought possible on a computer screen.

After thirty minutes of sitting, there are optional breakout rooms. A prompt from a Buddhist text is given and three to four people in each room get seven minutes to talk among themselves. It’s also made clear that one can talk about anything else, or even simply stay silent. Each day the breakout rooms fill up with a different group of people. As the weeks went on I began to enjoy the anticipatory silence, as I waited for someone to be the first to jump in. By the way, it’s never me. 

Without requiring it, everyone is encouraged to keep their videos on. I love seeing people’s rooms in their apartments and houses, and even occasionally a backyard. Sometimes a cat’s tail will appear, undulating across the screen, or a dog barks “hello.” Each day there is a different configuration of dharma friends appearing on the screen, and then into the breakout room. 

Nowadays, I’m often reminded of the Three Jewels—the Buddha, dharma and sangha—and think of how all three seem to be present when my dharma friends come to sit zazen, talk for seven minutes on my screen, and most of all, bring friendship to what many of us are now affectionately calling our “Zoomdo.”

I continue to be amazed at how, wandering about for decades, I began, nonetheless, to find friends who, one way or the other, keep me on this winding path. Friends walking with me, sometimes silently, even invisibly, other times right there on my computer screen, each afternoon, offering words of encouragement, and validation of all the anxieties and questions that arise. It makes me want to strive to be a good dharma friend, too.

The post My Dharma Friends appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I have had many strong loves in my life: children, animals, the color and smell of orange, swimming, fish, flowers, flamenco, Foucault, the art of Agnes Martin… The list is kaleidoscopic. But one of the most moving and indelible loves I have had is for my sangha. 

By sangha, I mean the group of people and the organization where I received not only training in Buddhism but also a profound sense of personal succor. It is where I encountered “shelter from the storm.” It is where I was welcomed with all my disheveled confusion and gently invited to sit on a cushion and delve into the crevices of my mind. It is where I learned to sit straight, follow my breath, and let go of my thoughts. It is where I learned how to extend myself to others with compassion, one baby step at a time. It is the multiple friendships that allowed me to see others and myself without judgment. It is everyone who held my hand, made me laugh, shared their story, gave me a livelihood and a place to live, and, last but not least, showered me with the gift of the Buddhist teachings. It is where and with whom I sat in meditation and grew.

I could go on endlessly about the qualities of this third of the famous three jewels that are part of the foundational elements of Buddhist training. Sangha is right up there with the Buddha and the Dharma as a vital part of the path of unimpeded peace. 

Before I was introduced to Buddhism, I was a very confused young woman, and I eventually realized that I needed to find a teacher. Not long after, I met my first dharma friend—someone equally confused and on the same quest. This friend “knew someone, who knew someone, who KNEW,” and he gave me a book. One phrase from that book—“mix your mind with space”—became my mantra. I followed its echo to the source, and there I found a vibrant world of intelligent people gathered around a dynamic and unfathomably brilliant mind in the form of a chubby, not very cherubic person who became my teacher, spiritual mentor, and door to wisdom.

It was an extremely diverse scene underpinned by a well-organized and financially accessible program of training staffed by enthusiastic and devoted students. I was deeply impressed. The basic practice was a simple meditation. The teachings presented were ancient, precise, and intellectual, representing a lineage of unbroken scholarship dating back to the Buddha. There were time requirements, testing, and progressive levels of instruction. Meanwhile, the dignity and intelligence of the central figure, the teacher, never failed to stop me in my tracks. The whole atmosphere was permeated with a playful creative wisdom that was gentle, incisive, clear, and inclusive.

I had found my spiritual home and felt deeply inspired. I was given a lifetime of practice and study materials and I imagined growing old within that sangha. I could think of nothing better to do than continue learning and practicing the progressive stages of meditation, and to help newer students in the same way I had been helped. 

And then, one day, the teacher died, and everything changed. 

I naturally expected the new leadership to support and maintain the brilliant and complete stream of teaching that had been established by the founder. Gradually, however, vital elements began to be edited or deleted. A new guru figure was installed and eventually an entirely new curriculum introduced. As things changed, some of us started referring to the new structure as “Buddhism Lite,” seeing it as more of a nod to the new age mindfulness movement than a serious study of Buddhism. Those of us who questioned the changes were not welcome and friends literally turned their backs. We were no longer eligible to teach, hold administrative positions, practice as we had been trained, or speak freely. The masterpiece that was the world of our teacher was carved up and damaged to the very foundation of its lineage. So I left. 

In the end, however, the details of what happened are inconsequential to this story. The general experience of profound disappointment fits with anyone who has witnessed upheaval and change within their spiritual group.

Watching one’s beloved sangha collapse is a devastating experience, but one that I now see as not only inevitable but enlightening.

It was a terrible personal loss. I grieved. I blamed. I was angry—about losing my connectedness, my entitlement, my world, my future, my investment of time and energy. I found myself out in the cold and on my own, and most devastating of all, my practice faltered. I couldn’t sit on a cushion without mentally claiming my due in revenge or recognition. Early on in my dharma life, I used to say that the sangha organization gave me the strength to maintain my mindfulness. But with the sangha not in my life anymore, my mindfulness went right out the window. Poof.

I was a child who had lost my home. And I know I am not alone in that. 

Watching one’s beloved sangha collapse is a devastating experience, but one that I now see as not only inevitable but enlightening. It’s easy to be comfortable and supported in a beautiful bubble. But there’s the rub… 

A sangha, when viewed as an organization, is a composite like all things. As described by Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche, Chandrakirti—a scholar of the Mahayana Madhyamaka school from around 600 CE—painstakingly analyzed the nature of a chariot to describe the inherent insubstantiality of our experience:

We apprehend chariots. We think that there are such things as chariots. Supported by a chariot, we can go from place to place. However, if we really look, where is the chariot? Are the wheels the chariot? Is the axle the chariot? Is the place where the driver stands the chariot? No. The wheels are the wheels. The axle is the axle. The place where someone stands is just that and nothing more. Each part of the chariot is, individually, just that part of the chariot and, individually, none of them are the chariot. Is there a chariot that is separate from those individual elements? Not at all. What about the shape of those elements? Is that the chariot? The shape is formed by the gathering together of many things; how could it be a chariot? Well, what is going on? We apprehend the gathering of many things as a chariot when, in fact, there is no chariot.” (From Khenchen Thrangu Rinpoche’s Essential Practice: Lectures on Kamalashila’s Stages of Meditation in the Middle Way School) 

And that’s how sangha organizations are. They are chariots that deliver the dharma. They are never anything singular, solid, or long-term. So, when sanghas inevitably dissolve or change, or when they can’t provide a desirable practice environment anymore, what happens then? Are we left helpless? 

In the biography of Milarepa, the famous Tibetan saint, it was only when he left his teacher Marpa’s sphere of influence after years of study and returned to his hardscrabble home and unfinished karma that the teachings finally stopped being theoretical. He had no choice but to take the wheel of dharma into his own hands. When he collapsed at the height of his distress and pleaded for Marpa to visit him, a vision of Marpa appeared, telling him to get a hold of himself and apply the teachings. And that, then, is what he did. He hitched up his chuba, went back into his cave, redoubled his resolve and exertion, and continued his practice.

According to Chögyam Trungpa in Cutting Through Spiritual Materialism, “There is a very dangerous tendency to lean on one another as we tread the path. If a group of people leans one upon the other, then if one should happen to fall down, everyone falls down. So we do not lean on anyone else. We just walk with each other, side by side, shoulder to shoulder.” 

I think that becomes very clear when things fall apart. You can’t lean, even on the teacher. Suddenly your own life, and your relationship to all that you have learned, becomes a very intense and lonely place to be. Can you maintain unwavering conviction in the truth of your meditation practice without having your hand held? Are you prepared to face the rawness of your own insecurities without weekly support meetings? Can you really, truly apply the teachings of emptiness and radiant compassion and stand on your own two feet as a warrior in the world? If you can, no one can ever take that away from you. Then, perhaps, you are truly walking the path. 

Seeing the organization fall apart, and having the rug pulled out from under my feet, freed me. It allowed me to finally face the reality of my aloneness, the genuineness of my commitment to the dharmic path, my naked weaknesses, and my karmic situation, solely on the basis of my practice and understanding. Without the cocoon and distracting politics of the organization, my journey suddenly became very, very personal. 

After leaving, I fell into a long period of not practicing. But as my old confusions began to arise, I realized I too needed to “hitch up my chuba.” If I was going to stabilize my practice this time, I had to learn how to walk on my own, even if it meant starting over, which was not going to be easy. Rather than finding a new teacher to follow, as some of my other dharma friends had, I decided to devote myself to studying the legacy of my teacher from beginning to end. Eventually, and with no little exertion, it became crystal clear what makes the dharma important to me, and why it works.

Now my commitment to this path is indelible and not dependent on the changing fortunes of a composite organization. Though I continue to connect with interesting, supportive teachers and fellow practitioners who help keep me moving along the path, I don’t think I will join another organization. It was fantastic being immersed in my teacher’s world and I came away with a treasure trove that will last me several lifetimes. But the Buddhist world is incredibly vast, rich, and accessible these days, so there are many communities and traditions to explore. I do feel a deep sadness that such a brilliant community has been lost, but all my anger about those dark days has disappeared. I consider myself lucky to have experienced the particular magic of that time, and I hope to share what I can with the same generosity. In the meantime, my sangha has opened to include a wide variety of companions, and is growing every day.

The post Leaving My Sangha appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

If there is anything that living through a global pandemic has taught us, it’s the importance of community and interdependence. But what has this time shown us about our blind spots when it comes to matters of inclusivity? How can we become more conscious around barriers to access when it comes to seeing who is in the room and who isn’t? 

Dharma centers like East Bay Meditation Center in Oakland, California were founded on radical inclusivity, and, alongside countless others, continue to actively advance this principle. Increasingly, culturally specific sanghas, independent and within established dharma centers, provide safe spaces for those who need them. But the pause of in-person gatherings over the past year and a half provided a natural time for further reflection and mobilization. 

Tricycle spoke to three dharma centers about the ways the pandemic has affected their understanding of inclusivity within their own sanghas and the concrete steps they are taking to cultivate a more equitable society. 

***

Durango Dharma Center  

When the Durango Dharma Center in southwestern Colorado went into quarantine last year, among the early questions raised by leadership were, “What does dharma look like during a pandemic?” and “How do we keep the community strong while not leaving anyone behind despite the range of needs among practitioners?” 

With in-person gatherings on hold, there was concern for members who lived alone or had a limited support system. In response, the center created the Compassionate Listeners program, connecting sangha members with a peer listener who could walk them through a challenging time. Not unlike the sangha’s other program offerings, Compassionate Listeners use the Kalyana Mitta model, a Pali term meaning “spiritual friend,” as a means of nurturing a sense of belonging and connectedness. 

Erin Treat, a guiding teacher and 25-year member of Durango Dharma, noted that it’s not therapy—nor is it meant to act as a substitution for it. It is meant to connect people.  

“Anybody who is in need, could send us an email and we connect them with a person who might be the best fit for them,” she said. The program draws from a handful of “compassionate listeners,” all of whom are senior dharma students at the center. “It’s kind of a no-brainer to have a program like this,” she said. “It’s really, really isolating for some of our elders, in particular, and we want to be sure they weren’t just left behind.”

The center also instituted a Sangha Care program, which provides assistance to sangha members who need help with grocery shopping, dog walking, and errands—through an all volunteer network. As restrictions ease in the coming months the sangha hopes to offer meal preparation, light household chores, and transportation to and from the Dharma Center for programs and retreats. 

Both the Sangha Care and the Compassionate Listeners program will continue as things open back up. But being able to respond to those needs so that everyone feels seen and heard is not easy. Treat said it has been the willingness of at least 40 active volunteers who step up when needed that makes it all possible. “People just keep saying, ‘How can I help? What do people need?’” 

Zen Mountain Monastery 

In July, Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper, New York unveiled a new Jizo house as part of a multi-year initiative to make the monastery grounds and buildings more accessible and inclusive. The modern, 4,800 square foot building expands accommodations for residents and retreat participants with a firm nod toward those with accessibility issues. 

The original Jizo house was a former parsonage built in 1929 when the property was a Christian retreat center. Zen Mountain bought the house and land in 1980 and since then the structure has provided housing, office space, and a place for the Monastery store. As the community noted on its website, “the building is at the end of its life” and was demolished to make way for a newer and much larger incarnation.  

All of this speaks to the sangha’s ever growing, and aging congregation. “In our main building, when people come for retreat, most stay in a dorm room with a bunk bed,” said operations manager Bear Gokan Bonebakker. “Older members of our sangha are not really able to do that.” The new building has eight double rooms with no bunk beds. One room is fully ADA compliant and can also be used as a room for monastics who need end-of-life care.  

In the monastery’s main building a lift was installed to allow greater access between the dining hall on the ground floor and the zendo, one flight up. The sangha reconfigured a guest room on the second floor that is also ADA compliant. Being able to move freely between guest room, dining hall, and the zendo means “someone using a wheelchair could fully participate in sesshin now,” said Bonebakker.   

Railings in the main building have also been installed, along with ongoing improvements in lighting along the sidewalk for greater visibility between buildings. For those with hearing issues, the monastery relies on headsets when amplification within the zendo is used, but that too will need upgrading soon. 

Fundraising for the project took less than a year and brought in one million dollars. Work on the new Jizo house began in June of 2020 and was finished one year later. The dedication ceremony took place on July 25th, in time for the monastery’s 40th anniversary. 

While the sangha remains closed due to the pandemic, using this time to make Zen Mountain Monastery a more inclusive and hospitable retreat center is worthwhile. Bonebakker said, “It’s about making this place accessible so that members can practice here for as long as they possibly can.” 

Rochester Zen Center 

Rochester Zen Center (RZC) in upstate New York is one of the oldest and largest Zen Buddhist centers in the country. The move to online during the pandemic was a big reveal in just how large the wider sangha had become with nearly 60 people logging on from across the country for the group’s daily morning zazen. 

“We noticed right away that we had this new life, new energy to the sangha,” said Donna Kowal, RZC’s programs office manager. But what the pandemic brought to light was how the core focus on Zen training and Zen practice was superseding what it means to be in community with other practitioners. 

“The folks that would travel here once or more a year for sesshin now engage with us on a daily basis through the online offerings.” Kowal said getting to know people she previously only saw and spoke to sporadically during in-person retreats has been gratifying. 

“I used to only see them during sesshin,” she said, laughing, “Maybe I see their feet in the zendo.” But with the extended time together online, that sense of community is much richer now. “We see that and the path forward is not to make sacrifices to the training, and the practice, but how to integrate them,” she said. 

Last summer was a turning point for the sangha as Black Lives Matter protests erupted across the country in response to the death of George Floyd. Sangha programs coordinator Dene Redding said, “The whole world was starting to put out these statements about George Floyd. We had to really think about how we live up to the statements that we would want to write.” 

In coming up with a mission statement and educational programming around systemic racism, the center was able to tap the expertise of one of their out-of-town members who helps organizations deal with equity and justice. With resounding support from the sangha’s trustees, a group called “Uprooting Racism” was formed with the sole purpose of “acknowledging and addressing issues of racism and racial inequity and to join Zen Centers across the United States in denouncing white supremacy.” 

One of their inaugural programs looked at racism within the Zen Buddhist community and anti-Asian violence. Interest in these kinds of discussions remains strong, with the acknowledgement that cultural shifts take time. Kowal said, “We can’t tell what this programming may or may not yield in terms of changes in our membership. We just know that we need to do this work.”

The center also has continuing discussions on how to be more in community with people who live and work in Rochester. “It’s not like in the Zen tradition that we proselytize and can draw people in,” said Kowal. “What can we be doing that we’re currently not doing that would make people more aware of the center as a resource?”  And while in-person events like the annual celebration of Buddha’s birthday draws an enthusiastic crowd, meeting the needs of the local community while not leaving behind those who live elsewhere remains a delicate balance.  

Despite all the challenges, watching the culture shift as Buddhist communities wrestle with what it means to live in equanimity with other living beings has been exciting for people like Redding. 

“The dharma is not complete in any one of us,” she said. “It takes all of us.”

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