Holding the Space

This is the first in a series of four meandering reflections. We begin today with the idea of holding a space and then passing from space to place, we end up with legacy. We begin at a diner in Bay Ridge, Brooklyn. I’m talking with Dharma brother, Michel Dobbs about training the next generation of Zen teachers. I’m thinking that the main things that we do as teachers is to offer teishos, our Zen, sermon-like talks, and daisan, the Zen interviews with individual students. Michel added, “And we also hold the space.” He talked about the importance of creating a sacred space. Bernie was always talking about creating practice containers. Why hadn’t I thought of this?

Six months after Dee and I were married in December 1995, Jishu gave me Tokudo, the first step on the Zen priest path. A couple of months later, Dee and I moved into the house where we’ve lived since. We didn’t have much furniture and there was a lot of space. When we proposed making a third-floor room into a zendo, Jishu thought that was a wonderful offering and performed the eye-opening ceremony, formally creating a sacred space. I officiated at services as part of our weekly sitting group, and we were able to continue the group even after Morri was born. As a baby, she would often crawl around the zendo as we sat and sit in my lap while I gave my talks. When Morri began to toddle, hosting the weekly group became too much.

The second coming of the Zen Community of Staten Island occurred serendipitously, the end point in an unplanned and unintended sequence. After Jishu’s passing, Bernie sent me to Bob to do koan study. New York State offered me early retirement. The FDNY Counseling Department asked me to help in the aftermath of 9/11. Emergency services were provided at Mt. Manresa, the Jesuit Retreat House on the island. Bob invited me to join him for a sesshin at the Trappist Monastery at Snowmass, Colorado. On the plane ride home, one of Bob’s benefactors shared the Jesuit aspiration for a Zen group in every house in the province. “If you ever decide to do one at Mt. Manresa,” I volunteered, “I’d love to help.”   A month later I was at a meeting with Bob and his benefactor and the Jesuit director of Manresa. Our Staten Island Zen group was reborn at Mt. Manresa on the eve of the first anniversary of 9/11.  We continued to sit there every Tuesday evening until the Jesuits moved out.

We moved first to Wagner College where I served as Buddhist chaplain, and then to a dance studio in one of our schools, then pivoting with Covid to zoom. All the time, we kept sitting on Tuesday evenings, finally resuming hybrid, in-person weekly zazen at Emma’s Place on the grounds of Snug Harbor Cultural Center. We have been sitting every Tuesday night now for more than 20 years.

Michel is right. Part of what I have done as a teacher is to hold the space, a safe harbor, where people have come and laughed and cried. And not just in the zendo. In my Zen entrepreneurship practice, I held the space. It was one of the most important things I did. Early on, as we began to build our charter school network, I was warned, “More charters fail as businesses rather than as education services.” My job was to insure that the spaces we were building, our harbors for students and teachers, would survive. My job was not to close my eyes and hope for the best, but to lead the sometimes hard work of ensuring the survival of the harbor. When we faced financial crises, it was my job to act quickly, to make the cuts that ensured our survival. Some of these cuts were painful. Were they absolutely necessary? I can’t be sure, but they were prudent. And our schools survived the crises and continued to grow and flourish.

Holding the space, however, is not uncomplicated. There are demons everywhere.