The Sitting Room

Every sangha begins the same way.

Every sangha begins the same way, with a few people willing to sit down. The beginning is quiet and ordinary. It is the decision to return, again and again, to the cushion and to one another.

For some time, a few of us have wished for a place in the Upstate to hold the practice in common. What we longed for is simple: a room with other people in it, where the bell sounds at the same hour each week, and the same silence is kept together.

What we are building is meant to grow slowly. A Zen community gathers one sit at a time. We hold a long horizon, and we hold it lightly, trusting steadiness over ambition. Little by little, week by week.

The practice is to sit. The community is what gathers around the sitting.

With gratitude.

This first issue belongs to everyone who has already given something to this beginning: time, counsel, a quiet word of encouragement. Each gift was freely offered, and each one mattered. A community founded on generosity carries that generosity forward.

We honor the founders together, as one circle. The founding of a sangha is a shared act. The people who held doors, asked good questions, sat with us informally, and believed this was worth doing are woven into everything that follows. You know who you are, and so do we.

Our hope for the years ahead is unhurried and clear. We mean to deepen from a single weekly sit into a fuller life of practice: regular sittings, dharma study, days of mindfulness, and, in time, a home of our own. Each rests on the same two things: people who come consistently, and a community generous enough to sustain a place. We are content to arrive slowly. We are here to keep returning.

A teacher at our first sit.

We have news that humbles us. We have begun a friendship with Great Tree Zen Temple, an established Sōtō Zen temple in Alexander, North Carolina, that has held the practice since 2005. We hope to let this friendship deepen, gently, over the years to come.

From that friendship comes an early gift. Genjo, Great Tree's Head of Practice, will join us for our very first sit and offer our first Dharma talk.

It is a rare thing for a sangha to receive a teacher at its first gathering. Many communities sit together for months, even years, before a teacher in the lineage comes to speak. To be offered a Dharma talk on our opening morning is a generous welcome from the wider Zen world, and an encouragement we will long remember.

For those new to practice, this is also a quiet stroke of good fortune. Your very first morning on the cushion will include words from someone who has walked this path with devotion, in a living temple, for many years. We bow in thanks to Great Tree, and to Genjo for his kindness. To sit together, and then to listen together, is the whole of it. It is the finest beginning we could hope for.

Our first sit.

Reserving a place is a small kindness that helps us prepare a seat for you.

To everyone who has carried this beginning, in ways large and small, thank you for being here. We look forward to sitting with you.

The Greenville Zen Center · In Gassho