The Nonduality of Teachers and Lineage: BZC’s End of Year Fundraiser

November 20, 2023

You may have to climb mountains and cross oceans when you look for a teacher to inquire about the way…When you encounter a true teacher, you invoke sentient beings as well as insentient beings. You hear with the body, you hear with the mind.

—Eihei Dogen, “Valley Sounds, Mountain Colors”

Dear Sangha,

I often think of Dogen leaving Japan, taking a risky journey across the ocean to China, and walking from mountain to mountain in search of a true teacher. 

When I first wanted to practice meditation, I searched online, took the subway three stops, and found several true teachers. 

I didn’t know, at first, the wealth of teachings I’d found. In my first weeks, I heard talks from Kosen Greg Snyder, who would become my teacher, from Lama Rod Owens and Rev. angel Kyodo williams crafting their book Radical Dharma, from Teah Strozer, BZC’s root teacher and an elder in our lineage. 

The Soto Zen tradition emphasizes the cultivation of teachers, and I felt that right way. I felt their decades of intensive, intimate work to face their karma. I felt their trustworthiness, their uprightness, their stillness. I felt it in body and mind. 

Part of the teachers’ vow is to pass the dharma to the next generation. And our teachers want to ensure that, as they do, they change what Soto Zen looks like in America: to create a sangha where all ancestries are invited, where unwholesome racial karma does not dominate. 

Help us raise $85,000 during this End of Year Fundraiser to: 

  • Support BZC’s teachers to care for the lineage, training, and practice in our sangha
  • Support BIPOC students and visiting teachers to nourish a community that welcomes all 

Donate Here

Watch my video testimonial on learning from the Teachers’ example in residential practice

Q: How does supporting our teachers support the lineage? 

For most of BZC’s history, our teachers did not receive a stipend. They did this work voluntarily, the tremendous undertaking of building a temple where there wasn’t one before. The Board recently decided to acknowledge the teacher’s work with a modest stipend.

This stipend, which is now part of the BZC budget, is not only for our current teachers, but for teachers to come. We are creating an organization where the work of teaching is acknowledged, to signal that the teacher’s path is not just for those with privilege, but for anyone called to it.     

Q: What effect does this have on the world? 

The world is literally aflame with the poisons of greed, hatred, and delusion. We are seeing wars consume cities and civilians, ecosystems crying out in pain, and political campaigns encouraging harm and disinformation. We need the medicine of the triple treasure: buddha (the awakened ones within us all), dharma (the teachings of compassion and wisdom), and sangha (the knowledge that we are all bound together as one). 

Our dharma teachers have trained for decades to skillfully hold our sangha. Soto Zen emphasizes intensive, long-term training. Our sangha members come to retreats, zazen, dharma talks, engaged practice groups, and residential stays, and go into the world to face greed, hate and delusion. 

Brooklyn Zen Center’s sangha is full of those reducing harm and offering compassion: social workers and therapists, teachers and artists, organizers and activists. The teachers help each of them do their work with even more skill, compassion, and wisdom. 

Q: Don’t program fees cover teacher stipends?

Brooklyn Zen Center now has an administrative staff coordinating programs, communications, and financials, and a practice side, in which teachers train priests and practitioners. The former salaries and expenses are paid for by program fees and grants. The latter comes from a culture of dana (generosity)—what we’re asking for in this End of Year campaign. 

The teachers and board feel it is essential to have an administrative staff tracking day-to-day organizational health so that the teachers can focus on the center’s spiritual health. And now that we have four dharma teachers and one entrusted teacher, both the offerings and the need are greater. 

Q: Why do we need to support BIPOC students and visiting teachers? 

Most of Suzuki Roshi’s first students were white. They were of a specific counterculture seeking Zen, and many had access to the wealth and resources to train monastically. This dominant culture made it hard for BIPOC practitioners to enter and stay. 

It’s not enough, given this history, to say “all are welcome.” We need to be active and intentional in creating a multiracial sangha, in working against those decades and generations of racial karma. 

We want to bolster our BIPOC fund, which acknowledges the racial wealth divide, and encourages BIPOC students to attend without worry of cost. And we want to continue inviting visiting BIPOC teachers, both to support their work and to support our sangha by their teachings and presence. 


Thank you for inquiring about the way; thank you for seeking true teachers—within yourself, within our sangha, and within the vast lineage of the Buddhadharma. 

Ryan Lee Wong

BZC Administrative Director
 

Donate Here

You can also donate via Venmo to @BrooklynZenCenter.

To donate by check, please make your check out to Brooklyn Zen Center and mail to:

Brooklyn Zen Center,
87 Kaye Road
Millerton, NY 12546