Gary Snyder just won the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize. I am delighted. Gary Snyder has always seemed to me to embody the Dhamma more completely than just about anyone; he amazes and uplifts us with his wit, delight in life, legendary generosity and kindness, and devotion to his Buddhist practice. I keep running across his poems in the most unexpected places: on scraps of paper picked up off the floor, on NYC subway cards, in books about totally unrelated topics. And every time I do, my eyes are opened to something new about our infinitely diverse universe.

Here’s one of my favorites. It may be the first Gary Snyder poem I really really noticed.

I’ve been talking with a number of people over the past several months about the kind of practice community that’s needed to respond the growing interest in Buddhism. I am convinced that such an interest exists. i’ve taught a couple of sessions now at the University of Cincinnati’s Osher Lifelong Learning Center on the Teachings of the Buddha, and they have been very well attended, with students who are intensely interested and committed. They see in the Buddhadhamma a path that is accessible and persuasive, and that does not demand their submission to an authority they no longer trust, or their acceptance of a doctrine that seems in conflict with what they know of the world. I’ve seen the same interest when I’ve talked at churches, a humanist Jewish congregation, an Atheist meetup, and among friends about the Buddha’s teachings.

But although people are interested in the Dhamma, that’s not what they typically find on a visit to a Buddhist sangha, at least in our city.

“From what I’ve seen, most Buddhist sanghas in the US are focused very intensively—sometimes almost exclusively—on meditation practice. If a person seeking enlightenment regarding Buddhism (not Buddhist Enlightenment, necessarily) were to visit any sangha in this city, she would find a small group of adults, mostly single or there without their spouses, coming together to chant texts, either in an unknown language or of such esoteric content as to be virtually impenetrable without an extensive crib sheet, and to sit in silence for long periods, punctuated only by shorter periods of walking in silence. While such groups may participate in some social mingling before or after the sitting, that mingling is likely to be excessively informal, with talk of current events or of people the visitor is unlikely to know, and little or no discussion of the Dharma. There are exceptions…, but the picture I’ve painted is not, by and large, unfaithful to the situation that actually exists.”

The quotation is from a concept that I developed for a new type of urban Buddhist sangha, one that is unapologetically designed to appeal to urban families who are seeking community, who are seeking practical ways to deal with the dissatisfactions of life, and who are not finding either of those things in their churches and temples.

I will be developing the site for the New Dharma Center concurrently with this site, and occasionally cross-posting content. I encourage you to visit that other site, and I’d be interested in your response to the idea.

In our first class, we heard a discourse that the Buddha gave to a group of people who were confused, uncertain about which doctrine, of all that they had heard, was true. In this last class, the Buddha speaks to a group of brahmim priests, and to one precocious student in particular, who are in doubt whatsoever about the truth. The discourse illustrates the aphorism, which (according to a Google search) has been attributed to dozens of different people: “The opposite of faith is not doubt; the opposite of faith is certainty.”

In our text for Class 8, the Canki Sutta, the Buddha has to deal with a smartass kid. Not surprisingly, he does that with compassion, patience, and gentle firmness.

The Buddha’s understanding of how things unfold in this world was keen, comprehensive, and most persuasive, and his explication of that understanding throughout the discourses has a coherence and logical consistency that’s unique among the world’s spiritual traditions. But the Buddha was not a philosopher or a psychologist. The term that’s most often used to define his role is “healer” or “physician”. The Buddha’s doctrine is not simply an explanation of how things are but a prescription for a path of practice that will end the suffering that is an inevitable result of how things unfold.

To be a Buddhist is not to “believe in” Buddhist doctrine, but to practice the Buddhadhamma, the Path that the Buddha defined, the end of which is the end of suffering.

Throughout the discourses, the Buddha gave quite detailed instructions regarding that path, and how to follow it. The most comprehensive teaching regarding the meditative practice that he prescribed is the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta. In that discourse, the Fortunate One gave his audience of bhikkhus precise instructions regarding how to establish mindfulness of their situation in such a way that they could end the attachments that trapped them in that situation minute after minute, hour after hour, day after day, birth after birth. Even today, the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta is the foundational text that guides the meditation of practitioners in nearly all Buddhist traditions.

The Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta is a long discourse, and I’ve prepared a prècis of that discourse for discussion on Tuesday.

To help us to understand the Satipaṭṭhāna Sutta and to teach us something about how its message translates into actual meditative practice, we are fortunate to have a guest speaker who has been a meditator in the Buddhist tradition for twenty years. Mary Ellen Landolina is an active member of the Tri-State Dharma Sangha; she has trained as a Community Dharma Leader at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Marin County, California and has also trained as a meditation teacher with Matthew Flickstein at the Forest Mountain Insight Meditation Center in Virginia. Prior to her Buddhist practice, Mary Ellen had an extensive background in Christian Contemplation. She remains active as a teacher, offering one on one and small group training, leading all-day retreats and occasionally participating as a teacher in longer retreats in such venues as the Insight Meditation Center and the Forest Refuge in Barre, Massachusetts. She is an engaged Buddhist, who, for many years, conducted regular meditation classes for inmates at Lebanon Correctional Institution; she is currently working with hospice patients who are alone, with no families. She is a woman of great wisdom and simplicity, an inspiring presence, and we are fortunate to have her with us on Tuesday.