Mirror of Zen Blog

Is Zen Center Life in the West a Failure?

A Kwan Um School of Zen student asked me this question this week during the daily Livestream. It gave an opportunity to address the matter of having strong experiences in retreat, then returning home to life and finding perhaps greater challenges. This is inevitable, once your eye begins to open. Also, the matter of not having residential, on-site teachers to guide and shape the practitioner through their disruptions and evolutions is perhaps a very key reason for why this student would ask such a question. I was very grateful for the chance to address this issue of how our modern approach to retreat-style practice was designed for a different living matrix than we pursue in modern times, and so should be understood accordingly.

See the whole video to follow the argument:

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