Being One

With palms together,
Good Morning Everyone,

Yesterday I talked with a Zen student of mine on the telephone, I also received emails from several other students, each asked if I were OK. It seems of late I have not been posting as regularly as I have in the past and my students have detected a shift in my tone. They are good students! They will make good priests in the Zen tradition.

I have not posted as often because I have less to say just now. Not being affiliated with the local Zen Center I founded has left me as a fish out of water, one might say. One of the things I have done, then, is I dove into the Jewish pool at Temple Beth El here in Las Cruces. I study Talmud there once a week, attend a weekly discussion group, a weekly breakfast with the boys, and offer meditation once a week there. I even joined the Mensch Club. This, in addition to weekly Shabbot services on Friday night. My reading, outside of a renewed study of Uchiyama's "How To Cook Your Life", has been also in Judaism. I am preparing to teach a class in Jewish History to begin the first week of April. I will also offer two sections (one introductory, one advanced) on Jewish Spirituality at the Academy. I am reading Martin Buber's book, "The Ten Rungs and the Way of Man", as well as several other books cast about my bedroom and study. Of course, my study of Hebrew is continuing.

Why?

Well, for one thing, we all need a practice group. Judaism, like Zen, requires a sangha, a community of practitioners. Judaism, like Zen is a practice, but with a vast history and many possible ways of understanding relationship to both the Infinite and the world. It can approach this idealistically or in the contemplative traditions of Jewish mysticism, non-idealistically. Without a Zen Center, my Jewish history and identity offered me support.

Most importantly, however, is this: Zen in America is not a religion. Its institutions are not well developed as community based centers. Zen communities, as I have found them, are not as family focused, and Zen Centers focus their attention on individual needs of members rather than the communal needs of the group and larger societal system.

We are a nation of cultural, if not religious, monotheists. Zen to thrive, must encounter this fact in ways that enhance the cultural monotheism, rather than fight against it.

While it is true, Zen does not have a "God" nor do we Zen practitioners "worship" in the same sense as the monotheistic faiths do, it is equally true that the more spiritually centered and contemplative branches of the monotheistic faiths share more in common with Zen than they do their own non-contemplative brethren

My sense is that Zen can be a serious teacher for us all. It can offer a real wake-up potential to those who sleepwalk through their days, dutifully going to work or church or synagogue on weekends. But to do so, Zen must enter these faiths and assume a role within them.

Personally I am fortunate to have a local congregation that is open, a congregation of learners, as Rabbi Emeritus Kane has pointed out, who are willing to learn with me.

As a result I will be a better Jew, a better Zen Master, and certainly a far better integrated human being. Another result will be a more American Zen tradition.

Be well.