I Joined a Sangha
It might seem like weird timing given that human beings are morally obligated not to congregate until further notice, but after several encouraging Zoom gatherings, I decided to join my hometown Soto Zen center as a member yesterday.
I mean, on the other hand, it makes all the sense in the world; I’m starving for community during social distancing, and we’re moving back home in two months, so I might as well get a head start while it doesn’t matter where we physically are, anyway.
I’ve actually never been a member of a sangha before. I suppose my department in college was a sangha of sorts, but we had ulterior motives — namely, to graduate. This is a community of people with their own lives, brought together through the shared practice of Zen meditation and precepts. I have sensed for a long time that I belonged in such a community, but I hadn’t rooted down anywhere deeply enough to find one.
Naturally, the one I found is a mile and a half from my parents’ house, where I first read a book about Buddhism, learned to meditate, and began to dream of what my home life and practice would be like once I could construct it for myself. When I first found this sangha online, I noticed some feelings of regret emerging about not having found it during that early phase, but that’s not who I was in high school. I’ve found it now. The feelings of regret pass without lingering.
It’s unclear where this leaves me vis-à-vis being a Buddhist or not or both or whatever. Actually, it’s more interesting than that; I’m struck by how little being a thing is entering into this for me. To the extent I am identifying with this experience of joining a sangha, it’s as a member of a sangha, not as “a Buddhist” or believer in any particular thing. It’s a social identity, not an ideological, spiritual, or even a cultural one.
The religious project in my family is still my wife’s rabbinate. That’s what we’re moving home to figure out, and I plan to be a full part of it. As this fortuitous association has unfolded, I’ve actually been relieved to discover the extent to which I relate to Zen Buddhism as something I do — and seek to do while supporting and receiving the support of others who do it — as opposed to something I am.
This all feels like a good sign.
