Saturday 17th we will be sitting

(This wonderful photograph is from the yogaworkshop.com website, Boulder, Colo)

Yes, we will be sitting Saturday, 330pm, 711 Robinson. Same old, same old. Ring the bell, chant the chants, ring the bell some more, sit and stare at the wall, walk the kinhin walk, sit and drink some tea, talk a little bit of the talk, ring the bell, go home. Nothing new, nothing special. In fact, an ordinary day at the sangha. You could do it at home...

But true Zen practice cannot be fully experienced in all its diversity and richness by just one person alone. Sooner or later it becomes important to join with a group of people who together form a community of practice. The community of practice comes out of each person’s determination to achieve some fundamental understanding of what this life really means, what this self really is.

If a Buddha is one who realizes and lives enlightenment, and sitting is the deepest expression of that realization and life, then community is nothing other than going deeper and deeper into that realization, and becoming more and more at one with that life.

—from Zen Meditation in Plain English

(the chapter on Community, or Sangha)
By John Daishin Buksbazen