Back from Boundless Way: Feeling Good

I’m back from a sweet seven-day sesshin with Boundless Way Zen at their beautiful Mugendoji temple in Worcester, MA. Above are a few participants in post-sesshin bliss.

Simply put, Boundless Way is a healthy Zen group. Yes, you heard it right. “Zen” and “healthy” can go together in the same sentence and not be a mind fart. 

Further, the group and teachers are so minimally hung up, power trippy, and/or into the usual egolessness (aka, spiritual masquerade) double speak that one might wonder if this is still the Zen sect. 

To further that suspicion, the forms of practice (you know, like how people bow and use their oryoki bowls) lack consistency and specificity and flow (as those things are usually practiced in Soto Zen, anyway). Heretics! Eel wrigglers!

Yet, even though they don’t put their spoons, chopsticks, and/or spatulas in the correct places after cleaning their bowls – except maybe by accident once in a while – I found true heart after true heart. And all stumbling along in a delightfully human way. 

I did koan introspection with all three of their teachers – Melissa, David, and James – and so appreciate the clear dharma eye that they all manifest. I’m loving the koan process, btw, but more on that later. 

The key principle of the community from top to bottom and side to side is collaboration, even in the dokusan room. This is a real experiment in post-modernism and, damn, I loved it. 

The group too is impressive. They work together in harmony like grown-ups with normal problems and frustrations with each other, of course. And lots spontaneous helpfulness and most importantly, laughter. 

I think they’re all doing wonderfully together.

Now for some rest.