The group we now call Bisbee Lotus Sangha began sitting in December of 2004. We have gathered every Sunday to sit and chant since then. Several of the initial members of the group were and are, students of Pat Hawk Roshi, dharma heir to Robert Aitken Roshi. With Pat’s sincere and very enthusiastic encouragement and availability to help us ask, and occasionally, answer appropriate questions, we began to practice here in Bisbee in an informal association with the Zen Buddhist Diamond Sangha.
The Diamond Sangha developed its style of Zen through the teachers Harada, Yasutani, and Yamada Roshis who brought together the Rinzai and Soto Zen schools. They directed their attention toward lay practitioners. This tradition was brought to America by Robert Aitken Roshi, (now retired) heir to Yamada Roshi and student of many other great twentieth century teachers. He has embraced the task of planting the seeds in the west, crossing cultural and linguistic boundaries, yet staying true to the essential truth and practice of Zen.
It has been said that it takes about two hundred years for Zen to merge with new cultures. It is like a great tree or giant saguaro that needs to send its roots far into the earth to draw nutrients and achieve the stability needed to soar skyward. Just as trees need a seed, rain, earth, and sunshine to flourish, so too our practice needs Buddha, Dharma and Sangha to grow. To ask a tree to grow without soil is akin to asking a person to fulfill his/her personal, cultural and historical potential outside a community of like-minded beings. We serve as mirrors for each other in the pursuit of acceptance, honesty and compassionate response; becoming part of a larger being through our unity. This is the process where the rubber meets the road. Zen is not based on theories but the actual experience of life.
“You who sit on top of a hundred-foot pole,
Although you have entered the Way, it is not yet genuine.
Take a step from the top of the pole
And the worlds of the Ten Directions are your total body.”
Chang-sha
So gathering some zabutons, zafus, arranging for a space, working through the details, graciously accepting gifts of a Buddha, a bell, and encouragement, was our “stepping forth” in December 2004. It was our practice sprinkled with dreams of what could be. It was mostly a giving back of what was so freely given to us by friends, the Buddha and the earth.
We are not really so different from other sanghas except our sangha exists in this time and this place. People of varied practices sit together with us: there is no need to be ‘Zen’ or ‘Buddhist’. Regardless of our various traditions we come together with our sincere practice, our effort, and our intentions which influence in unknown ways the arisings of tomorrow.
We still have many visions of what ‘could be’ but most important is now. There is a tangible excitement of what we do as a group to nurture each other’s practice when we sit, chant and open our hearts together.
“Those who regard the mundane
as a hindrance to practice
only understand that in the mundane
there is nothing sacred.
They do not yet understand that in sacredness,
nothing is mundane.”
Dogen: Instructions to the Tenzo
