Zazen

The foundation of our practice is zazen, literally “sitting concentration,” an embodied ritual of awakening. Eihei Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen in Japan, taught shikantaza, or “just sitting”: allowing experience to arise without grasping or pushing it away, and ultimately resting in awareness. The practice of zazen is not to achieve a particular state of consciousness, but to become more intimate with life as it arises. This practice extends to all of life, and we cultivate awareness in zazen in order to bring it into everyday activity.

You can read Dogen’s instructions for zazen in his “Fukanzazengi,” which  is still the practice we follow some 800 years later.

Please join us for zazen in our online zendo most mornings of the week, or in person at our Saturday program at our Brooklyn temple or on Sundays at the Millerton Zendo. We encourage newcomers to attend zazen instruction, which we offer on the first Saturday of every month at Boundless Mind Temple, Brooklyn and on the first Sunday of the month at the Millerton Zendo (please see the Events page for exceptions).  

The Soto Zen Tradition

We trace our practice of Zen Buddhism from ‘warm hand to warm hand’ all the way back to Shakyamuni Buddha in India, who taught about suffering and the practice of liberation from suffering. In the centuries after the historical Buddha’s passing, Buddhism developed into many vibrant schools, including what is now known as the “Mahayana,” or “Great Vehicle,” emphasizing the liberation of all.

The legendary teacher Bodhidharma brought one of these Mahayana lineages from India to China, where he famously sat at Shaolin temple and faced a wall for nine years. His teachings became known as “Chan,” a transliteration of “dhyana,” or “concentration,” and the school flourished in China’s “Golden Age” of Buddhism during the Tang Dynasty.

In the 13th century, the Japanese priest Eihei Dogen traveled to China to study at various monasteries and received dharma transmission from his teacher in the Caodong Chan school. He returned to Japan and established Eiheiji, the first Soto Zen (a transliteration of Caodong Chan) monastery. Dogen’s followers took up his profound and poetic teachings and spread Soto Zen across Japan by emphasizing its capacity to reach people of all social classes and to offer a direct path to liberation.

Japanese immigrants brought Buddhism with them to Hawaii and North America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, establishing temples that often served as cornerstones of the Issei and Nissei (first and second generation) communities. In 1922, with the guidance of Rev. Hosen Isobe, Japanese Americans in Los Angeles established Zenshuji, literally “Zen School Temple,” the first Soto Zen temple in North America; soon after that, the Japanese American community in San Francisco established Sokoji temple. Both temples closed when the U.S. government incarcerated Japanese Americans during WWII, yet their communities reopened and rebuilt them after the war.

In 1959, Sokoji temple invited Shunryu Suzuki to move from his home temple in Japan to America and become its new head priest. Suzuki not only supported the community at Sokoji but attracted a following of young, non-Japanese students interested in Zen practice, part of a larger countercultural turn to Zen and other Asian traditions. Suzuki and those students established San Francisco Zen Center and, soon after that, Tassajara and Green Gulch Farm. These training temples offered intensive monastic practice modeled after Eiheiji. Scores of students and teachers trained there and went on to establish temples in the “Branching Streams” lineage across America, including the founders of Brooklyn Zen Center.

Brooklyn Zen Center is grateful and honored to carry on the practice carried, offered, and fought for by these countless generations of ancestors. Just as Buddhism and Zen have changed and adapted in every context, we aim to both honor tradition and meet the demands of our moment, and to pass on this radical tradition to future generations.

Bodhisattva Precepts

The ethical heart of Soto Zen practice and community life at Brooklyn Zen Center is our understanding of the Sixteen Great Bodhisattva Precepts: the Three Refuges, the Three Pure Precepts, and the Ten Essential Precepts. Our community endeavors to hold these intentions in our hearts.

Three Refuges

To take refuge in Buddha – the vast stillness, clarity and kindness that is the true nature of all life

To take refuge in Dharma – the teaching of the way of life, day by day, that accords with Buddha

To take refuge in Sangha – the community of all beings that is our refuge and support

Three Pure Precepts

To refrain from action that increases suffering

To perform all action that increases awareness

To live for the benefit of all beings

Ten Essential Precepts

1. To nourish life and not kill
2. To honor life’s abundance and not take what is not freely given
3. To respect every person’s whole being and not misuse sexuality
4. To speak with care and not lie
5. To polish clarity and not misuse intoxicants, including alcohol, drugs, food, technology or doctrines
6. To create wisdom from ignorance and not slander
7. To value the expression of all life and not praise self at the expense of others
8. To share freely and not be possessive, especially with the dharma
9. To dwell in equanimity and not harbor anger or ill will
10. To respect Buddha, unfold the Dharma and nourish the Sangha

Dana

“Here a Bodhisattva gives a gift, and does not apprehend a self, a recipient, or a gift.”
—Large Sutra on the Perfection of Wisdom

Dana (Pali for ‘generosity’) forms the foundation of our temples and the Bodhisattva path. Dana means both material and immaterial offerings. There is no right or wrong way to engage these practices of giving, no floor or ceiling to the amount one can offer or ask for—they are all means to illuminate the mind and body of generosity.

Material Offerings
Buddhism has always relied on the generosity of donors to sustain sangha, temples, and teachers. There are several concrete ways to give to the BZC community.

• Monthly membership: membership marks a deepening commitment to temple and sangha. Members offer money to the temple each month and in turn are entrusted with information about the temples and a greater voice in their functioning. Members are invited to pay at a lower tier for BZC programs.
• Teacher dana: dharma teachers offer their lives to sangha—a profound act of dana that means renouncing some material wealth. Teacher dana complements the modest stipend the teachers receive and can take place on a few occasions:
  • Dokusan (face-to-face meeting): one of the most generous offerings of teachers in the Soto Zen tradition is private meetings with students to discuss what arises in practice.
  • Leading Sesshin: teachers devote themselves to leading sesshin (retreat), a pillar of our practice lives.
  • Formal student-teacher relationships: asking to work with a teacher in a formal relationship means the teacher vows to support the student’s liberation; this is often met by the student’s regular financial support.

If you’d like help discerning what amount feels appropriate, we invite you to use our Equitable Pricing Model as a mirror or speak to a Practice Leader.

• Giving campaigns: BZC hosts two annual campaigns. In the Sit-a-thon, sangha members practice a version of takuhatsu, or alms, by going to their family and community and asking them to support our practice. In the End-of-Year campaign, sangha members give directly to BZC, a ceremony that bolsters the temples for the coming year.

Dharma Offerings
Dana creates the foundation upon which a sangha can assemble and manifest the dharma as giver, receiver, and gift. Dana might take the form of reaching out to a sangha member and listening deeply to their experiences; arriving early to set up the temple for others or staying late to clean; handing incense or ringing a bell; leading a ryo team and training others; asking a teacher a question or reading a sutra. Approaching any situation wholeheartedly is an immeasurable act of generosity.