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From Nomon Tim
Dear Sangha,
Buddhism and Zen are full of fantastic teachings, images, and ideas.. I'm looking forward to diving into the Lotus Sutra again later in the month and enjoying that enthusiastic depiction of the transformational power of our practice in a human life.
And yet the essence of Zen isn’t that.
It isn’t fancy, it's down to earth. It helps us stay deeply rooted in our lives. The core practice here, you know it, is zazen. To just sit.
But it's hard for us to sit with purpose and depth regularly in the way we deeply need. The mind is so conditioned to want to keep us busy. And there is much to do. It's hard to settle down.
That's were sangha comes in. This is one of the great supports we offer each other. Your practice supports my practice and mine supports you. And without sangha it's so much harder to sit regularly.
I include myself here. I'm a recovering workaholic and I'm a lot more attracted to doing one more thing than stopping, setting it all aside, and sitting down on the cushion. When I was first moving to Bellingham in 1990 actually, I went to see my teacher, Norman Fischer, and told him that I didn't think there were any Zen sanghas in Bellingham so I was probably done with Zen practice. I felt certain that without that support I just wouldn't keep it up without sangha.
(That ended up going another way as you know, but that's a story for another day!)
A great supports for daily practice that arose during the pandemic is our weekday morning sits over Zoom. I hope we'll be able to keep this going for many years.
Most weekday mornings at 7am I have the delight of sitting down on my cushion, opening the laptop, and there "ba-ding!" are a dozen and more wonderful sangha members at their sitting spots ready to start the day together. It's amazing.
I still need to make a little inner effort to take this half hour opportunity for deep setting seriously. The screen is a portal to sangha here but also a portal to a million distractions and work associations for me. But usually I pull this off pretty well. Sitting up straight, letting the body soften into the earth, allowing my breath drop into my belly, lowering my gaze. (Pro tip: you can also turn sideways to the laptop or sit further away from it).
As I write this I can feel my body respond to the years of zazen. That this deep settledness becomes available most of the time. Maybe eventually all of the time! What a gift from our ancestors. I know I never would have thought of all of this.
After 30 minutes of zazen we enjoy a brief service dedicating the merit of our practice and chant a verse setting intentions for the day. Sometimes a brief reading or someone has an announcement to share. We're off by 7:40 at the latest.
If it at all fits your schedule I encourage you to visit the weekday morning sit. What a wonderful gift we received from those traumatic years of the pandemic.
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