Rev. Koun Franz : Soto Zen North America : Taking Care of the Tradition

I came to this practice, probably as many of you did, or maybe as all of you did, with some sense of what I might get from it, that there was a kind of person I might become, or there was a kind of insight that I might gain access to, that there might be a way of being that I could kind of cultivate by being in this kind of space or being immersed in these kinds of teachings, and specifically in doing zazen, which is held up as so central, that if I sat long enough or hard enough or with the right people, then something would happen, something would change.

Just a really exciting idea.

And I held this idea for a long time.

And even in Japan, when I was working with my teachers and I was training in monasteries, I think I sometimes had this feeling that...

What they were teaching and what they were doing at their local temples was a little bit separate from what I was trying to do.

I was trying to do this really deep thing, and they were doing this very kind of religious thing.

And sometimes the overlap could be felt, and sometimes it really felt like these were two different rooms.

But I've come to see how over the years, and often without me even noticing the shift, that I come to see this practice and this tradition more and more, I think, through my teacher's eye.

And what I mean by that is that if I were to go back 20 years, 25 years, and ask them, what do you think is at the center of what we do? they actually wouldn't have said zazen and they wouldn't have said the shobo genzo.

They would have said this is a practice of offering.

That's what we do.

So I want to talk just a short time today about offering and something about how I understand this offering.

And then from there, I'm hoping we can move into more of a discussion about what is happening right now in the formation of this denomination.