Our Roots
The ground we grow from
We are a new and small community, but the practice we keep is old. It reaches us through a long line of teachers, and through the kindness of friends nearby who have held it longer than we have.
Our practice belongs to the Sōtō Zen tradition that Eihei Dōgen founded in thirteenth-century Japan, centered on shikantaza, just sitting. It has been carried forward in the same simple way for many centuries: person to person, sitting together, with little fuss and no shortcut.
We are lay students keeping a lay practice. We make no claim to a formal affiliation or a lineage of our own; we simply follow the Sōtō way as faithfully as we can. What we offer is a room, a steady hour, and the willingness to return.
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. To be welcomed this way, at the very beginning, is a generosity we will long remember.
In many zendos, the call to sit is sounded on a wooden board, the han, struck in measured rounds that quicken as the hour to begin draws near. On its face, a traditional verse is often written, reminding us how swiftly life passes and why we practice at all.
Great is the matter of birth and death.
All things are impermanent, swiftly passing.
Awake, awake, each one.
Do not waste this life.
