“Once you see the boundaries of your environment, they are no longer the boundaries...” ~ Marshall McLuhan

And yet we keep setting up boundaries. I never liked them. In the world of my childhood and young adulthood, “sectarian” was a bad word. The sectarians were the activists who spent more energy opposing other anti-war groups than opposing the war, more energy opposing other civil rights organizations than fighting racism. My first teacher, Kyudo Nakagawa Roshi, was part of the Japanese Rinzai sect. When I got to Roshi Bernie two years later, I was moving from Rinzai to Soto. Whenever Bernie or anyone else talked about Dogen Zenji, they noted that he was the founder of the Japanese Soto Sect. Bernie was proud of his membership in the Soto club, proud that Maezumi Roshi had taken him to both main Soto temples in Japan to perform the rituals of all new Soto teachers.

Years went by. I read Dogen myself, studied him some. It seemed that Dogen was as anti-sectarian as my parents. He wasn’t founding a sect. It was later generations who proclaimed him the founder. More years went by. Bernie disrobed and eventually distanced himself from the Japanese Soto world. When Bernie made me a teacher, he didn’t take me to Japan. I doubt that my name is inscribed in any of the formal Soto records.

Bernie didn’t like clubs. He didn’t like boundaries that created ingroups and outgroups. I liked that. I was always in the outgroup. Even when I managed to get into a club, my membership was precarious. When the club started talking about procedures for expelling members, I figured they were talking about me.

Maybe I was always secretly hoping to get into THE club. When Bernie began to talk about the Zen Peacemakers, was he finally creating THE club for me? I’m glad he wasn’t. Bernie’s clubs were always clubs that anyone could join. Bernie wanted to bring the excluded to the societal table. I love that. It’s my life. It’s why I became a social worker. I’m happy about that. And a little sad.