An Open Letter to Someone Who Asked Me About Where in America to Study to Be A Soto Zen Priest

Dear one,

Thanks for your letter.

Our community is putting together a priest training program. And I think it will be worthy. If you wish to study with us, I’d suggest coming to sit sesshin with us a few times. If it feels a fit then find a job in the eastern Massachusetts area, and start attending practice at one of our sitting groups or at the temple in Worcester. The process takes a number of years.

There are, of course, many good places to study, many wise teachers and good communities. As well as a handful of places you’d have to be crazy to go to, and teachers who probably their own mother’s don’t love, for very good reasons. Absolutely, you shouldn’t decide on one center or one teacher too quickly.

For a generic response, I would suggest that at this time in the United States the best place to go in general for Soto priestly training is the San Francisco Zen Center collective. There are a number of reasons for this.

For one they have a sophisticated range of training opportunities, from the City center in San Francisco itself, to the family oriented Green Gulch Farm Center in Marin county, to the traditional rural retreat intensive training opportunity of Tassajara. There appears to be a niche for everyone…

More important, to my mind, is that there are any number of teachers. You arrive, you meet with many, you find the right fit. And, perhaps even more important, if it doesn’t work out, you simply transfer to a more appropriate teacher. While if you really want to belong to a cult it is possible there, I know of a couple of teachers who would be willing to accommodate you, most aren’t interested. They’re very healthy about what it means to be a Zen priest. I cannot say how important this fact about them is.

Also, as koan introspection training is dear to my heart, critical to my life, that while they don’t themselves offer koan curriculum Zen training they are not, in general, opposed to it. So, for instance, two unsui priests in their community do koan work with me, with the permission of their teachers, as does one of their transmitted priests.

It is an open and welcoming community.

(Now, one major caveat. SFZC can be a seductive place. I’ve seen people stay way too long. Way too long. Go, get your training, then go somewhere where you’ll be of some use…)

In any case, I suggest you investigate the community as closely as the teachers. And do it. Ask around. Get the dirt. Don’t assume the dirt is completely true. Just get it.

And don’t just pick up and go. Visit. Sit sesshin. Sit a number of sesshin. That’s going to be the biggest teacher. And you can start that without relocating.

Then, once you’ve done all this, go for it. Throw yourself full into the matter.

Find who you are.

And save the many beings…

And, good luck.

It’s a long haul.

The good news is it might even be worth all the trouble.

Fond regards,

Many bows,

James

James Ishmael Ford
Boundless Way Zen