Sangha

Sangha is the community of practitioners, originally the monastics and lay people who surrounded Shakyamuni Buddha. Early on, I began saying that I was not a sangha person. What I meant, I realize now, is that I am not a potluck person. I didn’t go to Zen to fill a space in my social life. When Bernie asked me to become chair of the board of the Zen Community of New York, my first thought was to say, “No thank you.” I didn’t come to Zen for a new organizational role. If anything, I came for a respite from organizing. I chaired the board. I presided over the sale of the bakery to The Greyston Foundation and shepherded ZCNY toward extinction as Bernie and Jishu set out for Sante Fe, but I never warmed to potluck suppers.

But I am a sangha person. I just never called myself by that name. Zen had been calling to me for more than thirty years before I finally began to sit every day. It was hard. My Zen practice was a lonely place. I soon realized that I needed other people to sit with. I needed sangha. There was almost no one in my life, family or friends, with any kind of spiritual practice. Was I crazy to dive into Zen? When I talked about my practice, friends looked at me like I was losing my marbles.

I went looking for people to sit with and I found the Soho Zendo where I sat every Tuesday for more than two years. Just sitting in silence with others, even if I never learned their names, even if I never saw them outside the zendo, was comforting. I was not alone. I could sit alone the rest of the week.

Still, I craved companionship on the way. I found my first companions not in the zendo but in spiritual memoirs and diaries. I discovered the journals of Thomas Merton just as they were being published, and I waited for the next volume the way people were waiting for the next Harry Potter, except there were no overnight lines at Barnes and Noble for Merton. I found van der Wetering. Actually, I’d known him already from his detective novels. I was so grateful that he shared his Zen experience.

I didn’t appreciate my commitment to sangha until I was sitting at ZCNY, driving from Staten Island to Yonkers every week to sit. I almost never missed, and I knew it was most important for me to show up when Jishu and Bernie were travelling. I drove one day through a snowstorm for the sitting. Only two other people showed, and they had walked to the zendo. Driving home, I recognized my commitment.

I finally met my Zen companions in the Zendo. I met them on the plunges, on the Street Retreats and at Auschwitz, and in study intensives with Bernie and with Bob. They are my sangha, and the students who have sat with me on Staten Island so many years. We are a small group, and we are getting older together, and I am very attached to them.