By J. Parrish Lewis
I spent years looking for a place I could consider a sangha, but could never quite find the right fit. As a Buddhist, I have long felt more at home with Zen than I have with any other practice. Yet where I live, there are no Zen centers. My practice was at home, and though I felt Zen was the right practice for me, I considered my practice to be a weak one. In large part, this was due to my countless attempts to develop a consistent meditation practice.
When I stumbled across No Barriers Zen Temple online and connected with Ōshin, I started to feel a sense of finding a sangha even with one person. I began learning more directly from Ōshin, which led to me renewing my personal Buddhist studies. From afar, I read about how the sangha was meeting in person and wished to be able to join them in sitting. For months, I continued to try meditating regularly, failing to even manage more than 10 minutes before running out of steam. I found myself too frustrated with my monkey mind, not fully knowing to accept things as they are.
It seemed it took the COVID-19 pandemic and the need to social distance to trigger change. When online sits became the norm for our sangha, I was able to join through Zoom. That first day joining the sit, I found myself facing a dozen members of the sangha online, all of us sitting for about an hour with a break in the middle. Although it was incredibly difficult for me, I did it. We all did.
Soon after that I began joining as many of the weekday morning sits as I could, my laptop open while my kids watched TV nearby. After a while, the routine settled in, and I began sitting on days that the sangha wasn’t meeting online. Consistency made a huge impact. Sangha makes a difference, even online.
Last August, we knew we would be taking a break for the month and not sitting together, so I was worried that I would lose my practice again. The truth is, I managed to continue sitting almost daily for several weeks on my own before I began to miss days. Then a week passed without any meditation. Sangha makes a difference.
I understand that ultimately, my practice is my own to cultivate and maintain, not anyone else’s. But sangha makes a difference, especially now. In these early days of developing my practice, having an online community of like-minded individuals reminds me that I am not alone in this. We are all connected, always, but meeting online is a visual reminder of that connection. For that reminder, I am thankful.
I think we do have a ways to go in learning how to connect with each other through this new format, but I think we will get there. We meet, we sit, we learn from each other in our post-zazen discussions. We are still in early days of learning what it means to be a sangha online. Even when the COVID-19 pandemic has passed, or it evolves into something else entirely, I can see how we will need to learn how to become a hybrid sangha, where some will be able to meet in person while others must connect from afar.
I know this is something we can achieve together, one sit at a time.