The Green Edge

Lay Zen Teachers Association Meeting

January 14-16, 2011

Peg Syverson

Appamada  

Recently, I attended the SZBA meeting at Great Vow Zen monastery. I’ve been asked to give a brief report about that meeting. While I was there, I wrote a little piece that reflected my questions about the direction of SZBA, and the place of contemporary Zen centers such as our own in that organization, and I read it at the associates meeting. 

It is called “The Green Edge of Zen”: 

We, among others, are the green growing edge of Zen, like the growing tip of a new shoot on a plant. We are not heretics and apostates abandoning tradition or denying its foundational importance in nourishing and supporting this growth. The rich teachings from the Buddha down to the present day are the DNA that is unfolding as this particular flower. We are social evolutionaries. We are not revolutionaries: we do not want to tear anything down or abolish any institutions or structures. We respect tradition deeply and believe strongly in the necessity and value of traditional practice places. But we do want to grow Zen in America in this fresh, vibrant, alive direction. 

It is our hope that the traditional Zen organizations, that bring together so many different centers and groups, can find a way to honor our path as well, informing our practice, inspiring us, and fueling our sincere dedication to the evolution of Zen here and now. We feel we have something important to offer that can and should be included as a complement to the more formal, traditional practice centers. And we feel strongly that an organization that concerns itself primarily with formalism, with policy and procedures and narrow definitions of legitimacy cannot thrive and survive in this contemporary culture. 

We will continue to offer what we can do best, to the best of our capacities, and our teachings will continue to be grounded in the deep traditions and teachings of Zen; they will also be informed by what we continue to learn from neuroscience, psychology, physics, social sciences, the arts, and other disciplines, as well as our encounters with contemporary students leading their ordinary lives and our warm relationships with other teachers of the dharma. This is a rich, abundant expression of the dharma, flourishing in its inexhaustible way on new ground. It is not so different than Bodhidharma coming from the West, or Dogen and Keizan igniting Soto Zen in Japan. 

The traditional forms all had their origins, dependent on the culture and historical moment in which they arose. New forms are emerging in that same way here in the U.S. The salutary contribution of Zen practice here in the West is its potential for rich diversity in expression, and I think that is something we ought to celebrate, rather than disparage. However, that said, I can certainly understand how a particular organization, such as the SZBA, might decide that its primary mission is to foster and support a strictly traditional, Japanese style Zen practice, that it needs to be the keeper of that historical flame. It is an honorable aspiration, and we would have no quarrel with that decision. It simply means other organizations that either exist or emerge will be necessary as a medium for the evolution of Zen in America. 

I will say, though, that it is my opinion that to head in the direction of more formalism and more emphasis on correctness and procedures is to repeat the very same dynamics that led Japanese Zen to become fossilized and moribund over time. Don’t let the heart and the vitality drop out of the dharma in the interest of the preservation of forms and rituals, or priests may find themselves primarily officiants at funerals and caretakers of lonely outposts and dusty temples.

This piece was a strong challenge to conventional approaches to Zen based on the traditional Japanese model. I want to add that of course, on the other hand, we Americans are prone to mistaking arrogance for independence, and we can also mistake ignorance for “don’t know mind,” and self-centered impulsiveness for spontaneity. 

We are convinced we can make up our own rules. We don’t want to admit that the householder life really does present many difficulties and obstacles for serious Zen practice, and generally results in a divided commitment and often intermittent gaps in participation. I hope in coming together in this way we can support and invite each other into richer, deeper, more energized, and wiser teaching, inquiry, and practice, for ourselves and our sanghas.