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zen for free
zenff
Veteran
A (very) loose quote from the Vimalikirti-Sutra goes like this:
“O, Rahula, do not ask about the goal and benefit of meditation.
To be without goal and benefit, is meditation”.
Not chasing benefits, I think, is an essential part of mindfulness and opens up our hearts to what has been ours from the day we were born; to what is naturally pure and perfect, to what is here and now.
So if we simply want people to wake up to that, and we don’t really have anything to offer them, how can we charge them for money? Charge money only, if you have something to give in return.
Nothing is lacking to begin with. Nothing is transmitted. Zen is for free.
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I am looking for meditation groups that are offered free of charge,
so I can mention them on a website. If you know such a group, could you
please let me know?
“O, Rahula, do not ask about the goal and benefit of meditation.
To be without goal and benefit, is meditation”.
Not chasing benefits, I think, is an essential part of mindfulness and opens up our hearts to what has been ours from the day we were born; to what is naturally pure and perfect, to what is here and now.
So if we simply want people to wake up to that, and we don’t really have anything to offer them, how can we charge them for money? Charge money only, if you have something to give in return.
Nothing is lacking to begin with. Nothing is transmitted. Zen is for free.
-----------
I am looking for meditation groups that are offered free of charge,
so I can mention them on a website. If you know such a group, could you
please let me know?
0
Comments
Strongly disagree with your premise.
Ending suffering is a benefit. That was Buddha's goal, and I believe it's the goal of most Buddhist meditators.
There are a lot of meditation groups that don't have any charges... however, there are recommended donations. I don't know if that's good enough for what you're looking for.
Where I live there is this Tai Chi school. They charge money for Tai Chi classes.
But one evening (part of) their building is open for a meditation group. There are sitting-mats and a senior-practitioner leads the group. If necessary he gives some meditation instruction to beginners. He reads a poem, and they do zazen.
It is completely free of charge. No donation box or anything.
Afterwards there is tea. They do ask a contribution for the tea!
"Recommended donations" -I think - are a subtle way of charging money.
Where is it located?
Can people get some instructions there?
If you prefer, you can send the info to
info@zenforfree.nl
I am not sure how common it is to use a shared space, but the community center which our sangha sat at for years had other groups as well, and the space is not free.
In my first zen-school it was easy. At the end of the semester people were asked if they would return for the next. If they did, they had to pay for participating something like twenty weeks.
I remember a student saying, she could no longer afford it. That was simply taken as a no.
I didn’t like that.
It felt like an insult.
Anyone who is willing to share his or here meditation with others should be welcome to do so.
I understand that the heating and the tea need to be paid for.
But it’s the underlying notion of sharing that matters. Are we sharing or selling meditation?
(Right now I think we could have done very well without him, but at the time I was impressed.)
When someone asked him to be accepted as his student, he said okay; but first I want you to give me the most precious thing you have.
It was a joke of course, but extreme giving (preferably to the Teacher / the Sangha) was highly appreciated. It was regarded as an advanced practice in letting go, I suppose.
Something like Jesus and the rich young man. Give away all earthly possessions and follow me.
Well I don’t know about Jesus, but I’m pretty sure the Roshi didn’t know what he was doing.
I mean, some people get influenced easily, especially when they are in a sesshin.
The adoration of Roshi; the humiliation of students; the whole thing was absurd.
Selling meditation is bad maybe. Abusing people is outrageous for sure.
>When someone asked him to be accepted as his student, he said okay; but first I want you to give me the most precious thing you have.
A persons false sense of self is usually considered much more precious than any material things. Perhaps that is what he was referring to? IDK.
Maybe attention is the most precious thing?
The economics of Buddhism is a rarely discussed topic. The Buddha lived in a premodern society in which religious practices had already become institutionalised, he simply begged for alms as did all other Sadhu's. Thus it was unnecessary for the Buddha to invent a new system, but it may have limited his ability to introduce some changes, such as those wrought in Western countries regarding the position of women and our relationship to modernity. These social changes have occured outside of Buddhism, but have opened the horizon for many Western Buddhist teachers in Zen and Vipassana to eschew the monastic system. There are two important reasons for this change. The first, is that many teachers are uncomfortable with the notion of merit as practiced and which largely motivates much of traditional buddhist dana. This is implicitly a challenge to a lot of magical thinking that had acreted around Buddhism over the centuries which privileges dana. The second, is that modernity provides the time and flexibility to develop a strong practice and insight outside a monastery. There are many talented yogi's have developed their insight further through the use the stone of lay life to polish their insight in ways that the cloistered life of a monk fails to do. These are not naive pretenders, but people who have lived in monasteries and got the measure of their peers and then returned to the lay life.
I quietly chuckle when I see Asian's revere baby monk's and treat senior female western lay teacher's as equals, particularly when the latter could probably teach the Abbot of most monasteries a thing or two. This is not to say that Abbot's have relatively nothing to offer, but the assumption that female western lay teacher's are pretenders reflects a certain familiar bias.
So, if you are genuinely seeking the dharma, my advice is not to get caught up in simple rules about money - remember if your teacher has a family and lives in a big city, they need to make enough to get by. And... just because they have a husband who helps support them, doesn't mean they should be short changed. Of course, you need to be careful about who you choose as a teacher, but desire and aversion are both issues. So, take your time, remember that teachers with insight may not conform to your expectations, and that some may be better at some aspects of the Dharma than others. Most important is your own practice: sit regularly and pay attention to your life - it is the best teacher of all. The Tibetan's Guru tradition places more importance on the teacher, this has advantages and disadvantages. My own experience suggests that there are no magic or secret paths which bear more fruit than perseverence and an open heart. In fact the most impressive teachers I have met were so disarmingly humble that I first thought they were simply fellow students. These teachers were able to do magic because they never went beyond the ordinary which is the most precious thing.
You are kind people; that’s something precious.