Soto Zen

"The tuition of great learning is everything you thought you knew." says Stephen Jenkinson in his reflections on listening to those who are dying. This is the portal to Zen practice. The fine print under the verses of refuge. The Heart Sutra's "going beyond" of getting out of bed to meet the day. It is the offering of humility to a world of increasingly weaponized certainties. At first, this tuition may feel like having your car stolen or favorite coat snatched, but then we realize it's more like dropping off a backpack of bricks we forgot we were carrying. We have to be willing to "trade comfort and certainty for wonder." Zazen holds out her hand. ~Seido

Soto Zen is an approach to Buddhist practice that emphasizes intimacy with one’s entire life. Its holistic program has been refined over many centuries traveling from ancient India to China, through Japan, continuing to take shape in North America. The term "Zen" comes from the word for meditation or absorption in Sanskrit, dhyana, which becomes Ch’an in China, Zen in Japan. Soto practice is anchored in direct experience of this meditation (zazen), ritual, study, and mindful attention to the way one moves through the world. Learning alongside others in community (sangha) helps transform patterns of harmful reactivity to life affirming responsiveness.

Zen practitioners open up to a deeper awareness of the way we truly exist, a view that informs Soto Zen’s ethical teachings and compassionate care for the world. All Zen teachings are anchored in the Buddha’s original insight into the Four Noble Truths about the path to freedom from suffering. Zen belongs to the Mahayana stream of Buddhism that understands Buddha not only as a historical figure, but as a universal basis of mind. The Mahayana is also known for its faith in one’s inherent buddhanature, or awakened mind, and the liberating insight of shunyata, the nondualistic awareness beyond the conceptual mind, translated both as emptiness or boundlessness. The Soto school embraces the gradual path of awakening that unfolds in ordinary life amidst the joys and sorrows of being human and desire to respond with wisdom and compassion to whatever troubles the heart.