Practice Together, Way Seeking Minds...

Last night at Young Urban Zen Lydia gave a wonderful way-seeking mind talk - as always, I felt humbled by hearing about how the twists and turns, the ups and downs of life lead us all to this place.  Every person has a different set of circumstances that have brought them here, and hearing about those circumstances always leaves me with a certain emotion - a grounded sense of how large this is.   This is about Buddhism, but also not about Buddhism: just supporting all beings.  Each way-seeking mind talk is a small window into humanity.

After the talk, I had a few short conversations: one woman was telling me that she had just moved to San Francisco, and had never meditated before.  She told me that if she had not been in the room with us, she would have decided after five minutes that this whole sitting still thing just wasn't worth much.  She stayed - and gave meditation a try - only because she was part of a group. She expressed how astounded she was by being around so many people, being so quiet, for such a long time.  It was difficult and surreal for her but she opened up to it, and when Lydia began talking about her own path and process after zazen was over, it began to make sense to her. 

We're all in this together: if it wasn't for each other, we might never have been able to start a practice, or to maintain it, or to make sense of it.  What might seem utterly odd - or at least foreign - on television or in a magazine or book, or when tried all alone or thought of in the abstract, becomes something we can feel close to if done in a supportive community.  On Sunday at Green Gulch, Fu talked about how we need to be around others in order to go deep into ourselves.  By sitting zazen together, we are able to really be alone - we often need to be together to be alone.  Alone together, we can look at and feel the truth of ourselves in zazen.  Alone-alone, this work is difficult.