Crestone Mountain Zen Center – A location that locates You
Suzuki Roshi asked me to find a place where we could live together with practitioners, where we could fully devote ourselves to face-to-face practice, a practice learned into gestural embodiment. He sought a place as far away as possible from the unrest and the 'dust' of the world. That place became Tassajara. And in my life, later, Crestone Mountain Zen Center.
A practice center is more than buildings and landscape. It is a site conceived and arranged as a mandala. A location that locates you. In Japan, such places are understood as balance points—you visit them to restore your balance. They are also understood as something like batteries storing the energy of their use, the accumulations of dharma practice, the accumulated presence of the Sangha.
My experience of fifty years has convinced me that a lay adept sangha needs a monastic component at the center of its practice. Even if many members do not participate in monastic life, if they are part of a spectrum of practice definitively rooted in monastic practice, their practice can mature.
I am writing this just as a way of speaking with you. Sharing my views on how Sangha works. But, of course, if these ideas were to inspire you to consider a participation in the Monastic Practice Weeks at Crestone Mountain Zen Center, then that would be wonderful! I am 89 now, almost 90. I don’t know how many more times I can participate in a Practice Period. But I am intending to participate this coming year, and I would be happy if you wanted to join as well.
P.S. Recent research confirms what practitioners have long known: the trees themselves are part of the practice. Scientists have measured how walking among trees lowers stress markers in the body. The phytoncides—the essential oils trees release—boost our immune system. At Crestone, surrounded by forest and mountain, we breathe in what the trees offer. The location locates you, the trees include you. |
