I just finished reading Jeff Wilson's essay in Tricycle "Meditation: a rare practice" discussing how rare zazen practice is for householders in most Buddhist cultures, including Japan. It puts a new perspective on the Western householder practice. Emphasizing zazen as a foundation of householder practice seems to be a new and particularly Western practice. The struggle to balance householder life and zazen is being lived out as a great experiment in our time and place, and we do not yet know the outcome. I am not sure how I feel about this new information. On the one hand, it is daunting to think that zazen practice has perhaps been tried by other householders in far more supportive cultures and not taken root. On the other hand, it is exciting that we live in a time and place where we have the luxury of building sanghas around this Zen experiment. Boil water, put the kids to bed, sit zazen.Thursday, January 31, 2008
Boil water, Put the kids to bed, Sit zazen
I just finished reading Jeff Wilson's essay in Tricycle "Meditation: a rare practice" discussing how rare zazen practice is for householders in most Buddhist cultures, including Japan. It puts a new perspective on the Western householder practice. Emphasizing zazen as a foundation of householder practice seems to be a new and particularly Western practice. The struggle to balance householder life and zazen is being lived out as a great experiment in our time and place, and we do not yet know the outcome. I am not sure how I feel about this new information. On the one hand, it is daunting to think that zazen practice has perhaps been tried by other householders in far more supportive cultures and not taken root. On the other hand, it is exciting that we live in a time and place where we have the luxury of building sanghas around this Zen experiment. Boil water, put the kids to bed, sit zazen.
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I read an essay once about how householders in modern society are really more like home-leavers in the olden days (and no one has the security and closeness of the extended family and village that the householders had back before industry and transportation). We don't live with our families (the supportive parts of the families - we have our dependants, of course). We might see our families now and then, but the monks back then perhaps saw their families now and then as well.
I rather like the idea of being a great experiment. Darn it, I'm about to use up my child's nap time for blog reading instead of sitting!
Cheers,
--Chris
I like your on leave-taking. Our immediate families are scattered on both coasts and the midwest. We have truly taken leave, but the daily schedule certainly is more undefined than monastic life. Truly a great experiment on multiple levels: personal, familial, spiritual and cultural.
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