As part of our Fall Membership Drive, we’re excited to introduce you to sangha members sharing what practice and community at Brooklyn Zen Center means to them.

We’ll be sending out member profiles and their stories each week! Enjoy, and stay tuned…

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Mary Stone
Member Since: October 2024
Favorite BZC Program: Paula Arai’s Retreat on Healing, Online Morning
Meditation, Saturday morning program
BZC Roles: Looking forward to the Childcare Ryo and the HEAR Support
Circle. After events at the Zendo, I help with the dishes and launder
tablecloths.
Fun Fact: I am a Canadian.

My Story:

All my life, I have been obsessed with learning how social structures can promote equality, compassion and connection. As an undergraduate in Toronto, I got involved with the Women’s Liberation Movement, helped to organize consciousness raising groups on campus, protested against sexist policies, and marched on parliament hill in favor of FREE ABORTION ON DEMAND. During the summer I worked in a Canadian government program promoting participatory democracy, and when I graduated joined a new Women’s Program to promote women’s political activism. I eventually left to go to graduate school in sociology specializing in modernization. I became fascinated with how decision-making in Japanese companies was so different from the decision making in US companies — much more collaborative and inclusive, using methods such as nema washi — where you make an effort to build consensus before a new initiative. I studied Japanese and went to Japan to research the intersection of modernization and women’s participation in decision-making. In Japan, I met my husband and, later, we had a daughter who would later become a Buddhist.

Fast forward a few decades. I went back to school to become qualified as a psychotherapist. After I established a private practice, I found myself working with clients who were struggling with exploitative and toxic workplaces. It was not their fault but they had to deal with it, and in many cases could not quit. I started looking for new ways to help, and I discovered Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), which was developed by a prominent CBT practitioner who was also a Buddhist teacher, Marsha Linehan. She found that some clients could not tolerate the emphasis on change in traditional therapy (it felt critical and invalidating) and introduced the concept of “radical acceptance,” where you learn to acknowledge and live with what is happening, not avoiding or escaping. DBT also emphasizes the importance of mindfulness and being present. I was intrigued to find out that Marsha Linehan initially planned to call DBT “Zen Behavior Therapy.” The concept of radical acceptance became foundational to my work and I started meditating on my own. I began feeling a strong need to be connected to a collective with a passion for social justice. Brooklyn Zen Center is just a few blocks from where I live, so I decided to give it a try.

One of the first times I went to BZC, someone talked about how everyone joins in setting up and cleaning up the Zendo; that there’s no hierarchy of tasks — all are important. We formed a circle and broke up into work groups and I found pleasure in being part of a work group. I was impressed to see a teacher drying dishes. I started to take part in the Morning Meditation. And then we had the meeting that changed everything. BZC was plunged into an extensive exploration of power and its uses and abuses, which is now extending into how to maintain a supportive collective that supports a myriad of individuals and promotes the Buddhist values of addressing suffering with social activism.

I feel excited and privileged to have the opportunity to participate in the current restructuring and self-exploration happening at BZC. I feel like all my life’s experiences have led me to this moment. I am looking forward to this year’s Ango where “We will inquire into a living, somatic, practical nonduality together, as an inherently relational, communal practice, inseparable from social liberation.”

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Jules Becerra (she/they)
Member Since: 2020 (with some pauses along the way)
Favorite BZC Program: Buddha’s birthday celebration!
BZC Roles: Shika Ryo; Interim Work Leader this fall
Fun Fact: I do comedy around Brooklyn
How would you describe your practice in your own words: “Always a work in progress”.

From Jules’s own voice (watch below, and read on):

My Story:

During good times in my life, I think Brooklyn Zen Center has been a nice place to go. And during bad times in my life, it’s been a really nice place to go.

I started practicing with BZC in 2020, right before the pandemic, and have been involved intermittently since then. Pauses in practice were due to things like moving away temporarily for grad school, and pauses in membership have been due to changing job status (although I recently rejoined when realizing your monthly donation can be lower than $30!)

I try to make it to as many Saturday programs as I can, because it always gives me a sense of grounding for the week, as well as a space of calm to anchor the more chaotic elements of my life around. After coming consistently the past year, I have joined the Shika Ryo and will also be Interim Work Leader this fall! I’m excited to volunteer in this way because it feels like adding to a place I care about, and frankly I tend to enjoy simple repetitive tasks in low-stress environments.

I can remember a time I was paired up with a woman I didn’t know that well at a retreat and we were checking in with each other and I was talking about this conflict in my life that was really stressful and I couldn’t do anything about it. um nothing that was within my control. And the woman empathized with me and she thought a little bit and she said, “I guess you just have to sit in the discomfort.” And I feel like I really don’t get that anywhere else. And I was like, “You know what? You’re on to something.” And that’s sort of why I keep coming here.

The people at BZC have been such a huge part of my time there. It feels special to find a place with people who are not only kind, friendly, and interested in a common thing, but who have such interesting and thoughtful ways of looking at the world and are willing to talk about it after just meeting you.

Since I spend money on other nice little things like an overpriced ice cream cone or a streaming service, it feels good and doable to carve out a little bit to pitch in to a place that seeks to serve people.

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