How to Communicate the Essence of Our Teaching to the World

A plenary discussion from the Whole World Is a Single Flower conference, October 2023.

Editor’s Note: One of the central themes for the WWSF conference was “Zen Traditions in an Ever-Changing World.” Zen teaching has always found a voice that speaks well to the culture where it has landed. In Buddha’s lifetime and afterward, as the teaching spread and matured in different places, the Zen tradition has always found ways to stay rooted in the essential voice of the time and place. We are seeing this happening anew, as the past few generations have embraced practice around the world. We learn together how the dharma speaks with the sangha. The following plenary offered an opportunity for inquiry and dialogue about how this has been taking place for us now. Its theme was “How to communicate the essence of our teaching to the world in creative ways.”

So Ya Sunim [moderator]: The topic of discussion today centers around a series of questions: How do teachers approach different generations of students? How do new teachers approach teaching the dharma? How can we modernize our teaching? How can we connect our basic teaching to a younger generation?

Bon Sun Sunim JDPS: Let me begin with how new teachers are going to share our dharma to the public—but first, let’s experience a technique to connect our body and mind together. First put your right hand on the left side of your chest, and then put your left hand at your lower belly, and let's connect our body and mind. Breathe into your lower belly, which expands. Then slowly breathe out, and your lower belly compresses again. Slowly breathe in, and slowly breathe out. Relax your face, relax your shoulders, sit straight, and relax the muscles in your back. Continue slowly breathing in and slowly breathing out. OK, relax.

We younger students now have the job to share the dharma, so let’s look at a story from the Zen tradition. During the Tang dynasty, there was this Zen master called Dong Sahn, and everybody knew his name. One time, when he was doing a memorial ceremony for his teacher, Zen Master Un Am, somebody appeared in front of him and asked him, “What’s the teaching of your teacher?” Then Dong Sahn said “my teacher didn't teach me.” Then this man asked, why do a memorial ceremony for him? Dong Sahn replied, “I will not betray him.” Then the man asked again, “Do you approve of your teacher's teaching?” Dong Sahn answered,“Half approve, half not approve.” This man asked why, and Dong Sahn replied, “If I completely approve of my teacher's teaching, then I betray him.”

I love this story. Dong Sahn knew the times change, the generations change, so he cannot completely copy what his teacher taught. Later, because of this, his student and grandstudent established a new school that became the Soto Zen school. So right now how are we going to teach in this society? We have a panel about the Zen tradition in an ever-changing world. Do you agree with me that as times change, cause and effect also changes? But the suffering doesn’t change, right? In the old days, maybe people were suffering because their material life was too poor. But these days, people still suffer because their material life is too rich. So suffering is the same. Just the times change, cause-and-effect change, and the situations change. But something is not changing. The practice of our Zen tradition still works. I will give an example. One time, a student came into an interview, and right after she sat down, her energy seemed heavy. Then she said, “Sunim, I have strong emotions this day, and I have lots of negative thinking.” And then she couldn’t talk much. She was just completely into her emotions. So I just guided her with what my teacher [Zen Master Dae Kwan] shared yesterday: come back to your attention awareness, come back to your breathing and to your center. So I did maybe three to four minutes’ practice together with her just to help her calm down, return to her breathing, and come back to her center. Then I asked her, “If you are not this emotion, if you are not this thinking, then who are you?” And she completely stopped. Later, she shared with me that that experience helped her to see the distance between herself and her emotions and thoughts.

In the end, actually, the teachings come back to the big question, and they come back to don’t-know. No matter how society changes, how much the situation and cause-and-effect changes, in the end all suffering comes from this I-my-me—that is, it comes from our thinking. If we see the thinking is nonstop, then actually we have already attained this clarity inside. When we bring people back to this moment, that’s important. It’s not about any answer for kong-ans, and I think this is the way we are going to continue to teach and continue to share with people. No matter how changed this world is, we just use whatever kind of situation, whatever happens in front of us. We use our don't-know to teach and share with people.

Zen Master Seung Sahn said that if you are not thinking and I'm not thinking, then we are the same. So we just bring people back to this moment, and of course we are using this A, B, C, D, and E: attention awareness, breathing, center, don't make anything, and then we just put in effort and try, try, try, ten thousand years nonstop. I think this is useful all the time. Before Zen Master Seung Sahn died, I remember somebody asked him, “If somebody asks what is your teaching, then how are we going to answer them?” He replied, “In front of me, who is talking?” So no matter how it changes in this world, we just bring the teaching back to this point. This point is important. This great doubt and this don't-know doesn't change; it's useful for all generations. I think outside changes are just based on cause and effect, so we just work with the situation, and then this will be our job to figure out and use our don't-know mind to work with it.

Dušan Silváši JDPSN: I started to practice quite a long time ago, and the only reason for it was because I felt that it made me feel good. It was after the Velvet Revolution in Czechoslovakia, and somehow I felt good: “Oh, everything has changed, and now we have freedom. We can go anywhere we want, we can do whatever we want, and we know what to do.” But somehow I was like “OK, and then what?” So I started to search, and I just happened to see a talk by Zen Master Bon Yeon (Jane McLaughlin JDPSN at that time), from Cambridge Zen Center. She was giving a public talk in Košice, and when I heard this clear and vibrant teaching, somehow I felt that was it. Before that, I had gone to several churches, I went to Sri Chimnoy, to whatever yoga teachers that I could in Košice or in Slovakia. But when I heard this Zen teaching, it was like drinking cold water, plain cold water, when I was thirsty. So I decided to practice in this tradition. From that time till today, I know that this teaching is really a good teaching. What Zen Master Seung Sahn taught us, the techniques and the teaching itself, don't-know—it’s all really high class, and useful for the suffering world. But in Europe we have one big problem. Even though we know this teaching is good, only a few people in Slovakia know about it. So before we start to teach, we need to attract people to come and listen. That’s the biggest problem I think in all countries that don't have Buddhism in their history. People seem not to care. Some are religious but they will not come to a Zen talk or listen to any Zen teaching. Others are atheists, and they don't come because it's Zen Buddhism. So we have this problem, and we need to be creative to solve it.  

In 2014 we started the first kind of Zen fusion event for our sangha at a summertime outdoors festival organized by Košice city. Rather than just talk about practicing Zen or telling people about yoga, we presented more of a cultural event. We had a music student play the cello during our practice, and we put on three events during the city’s summer festival. Eighty people came to practice Zen and yoga in the first session, and a hundred came to the second. My wife is more into yoga than me, so she led the yoga part. It turned out that it was the most attended event from the whole festival, and we’ve been invited back every year since then.

We went on to have yoga and Zen practice on a weekly basis, and we even had a place in Eastern Slovakia, a gallery where we could practice every morning. About twenty to thirty people came each morning to practice yoga and Zen in a wonderful gallery with artistic paintings.

I also practice karate and work in technology, and I’ve been trying to incorporate Zen practice into those areas, teaching colleagues about calming the mind, about don’t-know. We call it “psycho-hygiene,” and we have practice once or twice a week in our company. We even presented a program about psycho-hygiene for IT professionals at one of the hackathons we attended.

So we are trying to bring people together and show them that we have something that could help them. This is one of the biggest challenges in Western countries—attracting people so they can learn what Zen is really about, because they often have funny ideas about what Zen is.

Moderator: There’s also a Zen center in Košice, right? Do the people who attend these events naturally pass on to the Zen center eventually, or are they a completely separate group?

Silváši JDPSN: Just a couple of them, but I would say I stopped being “Zen selfish” a couple of years ago. That means that for me it’s enough to give people information, and try a little bit, and they get a taste of what is Zen. I don't expect that they will come and do full practice. For me, sangha is much wider than our Košice sangha. So I’m happy that they even show up and learn a little bit. And after some years many of them will come again. They already know that there is something like Zen. They tried it out, and they know that it can help them. Perhaps they encounter a bad situation, and they already know “OK, I tried this maybe two years ago, and it was wonderful, so I’ll try it again.” So people are starting to come from those groups, so it's like planting a seed, and then we just wait and hope. We hope it's going to grow.

Moderator: You say you teach yoga and Zen. Most people already have an idea about what yoga is. But how do you introduce Zen to them?

Silváši JDPSN: First of all I'm trying embodiment. It’s a term that’s now in use on the internet in the sphere of health and wellness. Zen is an example of embodiment. Earlier, Sunim talked about how our body is connected with our mind, and you cannot take them apart. [Shows interlinked hands.] Like this. So I use these words about embodiment, how it's connected with our psyche, with our emotions and so on.

Nowadays there are many scientific discoveries from neuroscience about how it really works, and they can measure that it works. It’s not just that I have some subjective experience that it works. People may doubt the subjective experience, but if they see there are numbers and measurements, then they believe, and it’s easier for them to try it out. I'm not surprised that they don't believe me—I'm also a nonbeliever in many things, so I understand their minds. Today’s science is breaking down many boundaries, like between spirituality and the physical world. For centuries it was thought that there’s no way for science and spirituality to understand each other, but that’s not true today. It's very interesting.

I’m trying to use this new kind of language with people, especially younger people. Then, when they come to the Zen center, I will teach this wonderful original teaching of Zen Master Seung Sahn.

Kathy Park JDPSN: I'm here as a substitute, because originally Won Hak Sunim was supposed to be here from Ukraine as a fourth speaker, so I want to thank Won Hak Sunim. I'm sad he's not here, but I can share a little bit about the online sangha. Yesterday, I had a conversation with Linc Rhodes JDPSN. He’s one of the earliest students of Zen Master Seung Sahn, and I asked him what was most compelling to him when he met Zen Master Seung Sahn, that he became his student and gave his whole life to him. He said he woke up at 4:30 every morning and was doing his bows 365 days a year, and he had a cushion for Linc next to him every single day. And when Linc said that to me yesterday, I thought “That’s great love.” I'm going to talk about online sangha, but I think this point that was shared by Linc is important. We talk a lot about practice, but what does practice really mean for us?

As all of you are experiencing, we are in a world of a great deal of uncertainty, and it is said that now, specifically in our time, the uncertainty of the climate crisis affects all of our lives. We all experience this uncertainty now even in this conference in the form of COVID. As a result of these difficulties appearing in health issues, and as we move, migrate, and travel, this and many other issues appear. There are geopolitical and economical constraints, and challenges to traveling to a conference like this. We have a big sangha worldwide. Those of us here are a small fraction of that. We’re all here because we can afford it, or we're in a good situation—enough to come all the way here with good health, amenities, support, and a good situation. But there are a lot more people in our sangha who are not here—perhaps you're attending via Zoom. Welcome! The online sangha is not a substitute for an in-person retreat or a Zen center. We’re a little bit different.

I want to talk about a few reasons why the online sangha is a useful place for many people, and perhaps for some of you. You may be familiar with Jim Quick. He’s an expert on brains and learning, a Chinese American who was born with a disability. He was actually called a “broken-brain child” by the teachers and students in his elementary school. He had a learning disability, and he thought as a child that he would never be able to study or read properly. But he met a good teacher who said to him “Jim, you can fix your brain. You can learn. You can read.” And he did, and not only did he do that, he became an expert in the science of learning. Now he’s a well-known, successful teacher. He coined a simple idea called the Four Horsemen of the Digital Apocalypse of our time.

In the Bible, the Four Horsemen are personifications of the problems that lead to the apocalypse, the end of the world. So Jim Quick came up with the Four Horsemen of the Digital Apocalypse, because the world we live in now is changing dramatically by technology. Right now technology gives us great wonders, but it also is dangerous, and we all experience that.

So the first horseman is digital distraction. How many of you were looking at your phones while this panel was going on, or are still looking now? That’s a common thing, and it seems quite natural—but then you didn't hear most of the talk, right? Digital distraction means we search for things based on our desire. If you scroll your social media and are looking for something, then dopamine, a hormone in our brain, spikes every time we go looking and searching. If you do that a lot, it actually gets depleted. The result is that you don't really want to do anything afterward, so depression is a result. We lose the ability to pay attention when we have digital distraction.

The second horseman is digital deluge: too much information. Eric Schmidt, the former CEO of Google, said that every two days we create as much information as we created since recorded human history until 2003. You can say that's exponential growth. That's a lot of information, more than we can digest. Anyone have brain fog? Low energy? Is being tired just part of your life? That kills our ability to remember things; we lose our memory muscle. The brain is not able to function the way it used to to retain information.

The next is digital dementia. This is what happens when we depend too much on our devices to do the work for us. Do you remember the phone numbers of your family members? No, nowadays we just keep contact details in our phones. We have to use GPS to get around. These tools often actually prevent us from finishing our tasks: you do one thing, and then you have to stop, and go to another room, and you're looking for something else; you forgot what you did. I have that sometimes. We all experience that. This is called outsourcing our memory skill, our just-do-it skill, so over time our brain is not able to just do small tasks like remembering phone numbers.

The last horseman is called digital deduction. Digital deduction is what they call loss of critical thinking, problem solving, creativity. Not only does your imagination wander off, but critical thinking also diminishes. You might say, as a Zen student why do I need critical thinking? We're not supposed to think. Well, Zen Master Seung Sahn said, “When thinking, think 100 percent, clear thinking.” Beop Hae Sunim right now is sitting in front of his computer, and he's paying attention to what's being projected on the screen, and when I say “next slide” he will press the button. That's clear thinking, not checking, not attached thinking. If we have clear thinking 100 percent, doing our job correctly, that's also Zen. But when we depend on AI or digital technology to do the thinking for us, then actually the result is that we become ignorant. We don't know how to use our brain, so in other words, your brain is hijacked.

Now, technology is not good or bad, and in Zen we say nothing is good or bad inherently; everything is empty. But it's up to us what we do with it. The thing I want to share is the next slide. You might laugh but this image on the left side is called a zinc spark. Does anyone know what a zinc spark is? It’s an electrical discharge that happens right when an egg is fertilized by sperm. It's the beginning of a life. It's actually when the sperm meets the egg and fertilizes it to become the first cell of the embryo. Every single one of us came this way. The zinc spark is now a new discovery in quantum mechanics and quantum biology that shows us that the spark is a proof of the reflection of electrical light, a field of energy. It’s like a halo that creates the first cell, which is the first cell for the heart, which is the first organ of a human being. In Zen we talk about bodhicitta, or bori shim in Korean, our bodhi mind. But shim is also the Chinese character for “heart.” Bodhi mind is not mind as in the brain, but it's actually indicating physically the organ of our heart. Why is that? The heart is the first organ. In Tibetan Buddhism, they call this spark of light at the moment of creation the “spark of bliss.” Bliss is when energy and matter come together.

This next image is actually from a 2016 study in which researchers from Northwestern University in the United States were able to prove this phenomenon. On the right side is a similar image of the same kind of evolution of matter appearing with light through a black hole in the cosmic universe. Isn't that amazing? Isn't it amazing we can even see that in an image? Our spark, which begins that primary point of our own human life, is our light. That light shines in ourselves, when we practice, when we experience joy, happiness, connection, love, generosity, even compassion, even for people we don't like. When that appears we call it our dharma light. Your dharma light is shining.

This is just a recent image of stars 290,000 million light years away photographed by the James Webb Space Telescope, released this year for us. Two hundred ninety thousand million light years away. How far is that? I'm just showing this photo because that spark that is in our own hearts, our own life, and the spark of the universe that's constantly creating life forms—energy, forms, matter, whatever it is—we're all interconnected. We learn that through our practice, through the dharma teaching. Yet we're very much stuck in our own darkness, in our own suffering, in our own opposites-thinking and habits, and this light that's within us is dimmed.

And instead of looking at our own mind-light, we go looking for the light in the screen. The screens in our computers and our phones are shiny, so they're attractive. It's like a child who always looks at the shiny things. Babies are always fascinated by shiny things. So human beings are attracted to that, and then our desires appear to look for those shiny things in our screen. Everything around technology is new right now; we're all experiencing it. The question is, what are we going to do about it?

Buddha said “Mind? Mind does not exist. Its expression is clarity.” So if you're awake, we say “Oh, you got enlightenment!” Do you realize this word enlightenment means the light bulb went on? Your mind opened. Zen Master Seung Sahn said if there is a mind-to-mind connection, then the body is not necessary. He said that about human relationships. How much do we believe that, though? We come together, because maybe that experience isn't quite what it seems to be, or maybe we haven't quite gotten it, so we want to connect. So, human connection is really important. In our teaching, mind-to-mind connection means don't-know. Returning to don't-know.

I just want to end here to let you know that Kwan Um Zen Online is actually available for those who don't have a choice about going to your local Zen center, because maybe it's too far away; maybe your circumstance or conditions don't allow you to. Many people ask how many members do you have in the online sangha? I usually say “That’s not the right question. You should ask how old are they?” I would say the youngest is thirteen years old, and she comes to practice regularly online, week after week. She rarely misses practice, and when she does, she'll write me a little note like she does in school, “I'm sorry I'll miss practice today, because I have another engagement or homework.” We also have on the other end of the spectrum those who are in their eighties. As their life changes due to aging and mobility issues and medical issues, we're trying to reach out to people who cannot go to the Zen center, or it becomes more difficult as much as they would love to practice in person. Zen Master Soeng Hyang has personally taught me that in our practice what's important is not to leave anybody behind. So that's been kind of my personal mission with the online sangha, because there are a lot more people out there, and mind-to-mind connection sometimes doesn't need a body.

We're also reaching out to people through social media—like using poison to take away poison. We help people understand how to have a relationship with their digital devices. It's important to understand what is your relationship to your phone, to your computer, and how to use them in public. Do you use your phone because you’re bored in the middle of a staff meeting? Or because you don't want to listen to other people? What kind of habits are we creating around the devices we have? How does that affect our life?

We can sit retreat after retreat, but we come back home, and between the last retreat and this retreat, what really has been our practice? Have we changed our habits? Have we gotten a bit better? Have we actually changed our karma perhaps? Online sangha offers the ability to connect, to have sustained, consistent practice between retreats. We also provide online community, where you can get support, and you can be accountable for your practice, and you can connect with a teacher online 365 days a year, wherever you are on the planet. But the online sangha isn’t a replacement for anything. If anything, we are an additional support for your life, and if you feel it's useful, please use it. If you're already a Kwan Um School member of a local Zen center, it's free. If you have conditions that prohibit you from practicing regularly in person, it's supportive. We can meet all our sangha members online wherever we are in the world, and we can stay connected.

Somebody asked Zen Master Seung Sahn, “What really is your job?” and he said, “I only make a hole so Zen students can go through.” I hope that all of us, our panelists here, all teachers, all sangha members continue to practice strongly, not just hard practice but clear practice. Then this mind-to-mind, this heart-to-heart becomes clear and we can benefit others. As Picasso said, “The meaning of life is to find your gift, and the purpose of life is to give it all away.” So I hope all of you find your gift through your dharma practice in your own unique ways, and we can let our dharma light shine brightly, but also shine on other people. Shine on them, give them the gift and the support. Thank you all for listening.

Jiri Hazlbauer JDPSN: I also want to talk about things we do where I am, starting with a little bit of a personal story. When I started reading about Zen, I was always drawn to the stories of great teachers building something deep in the mountains, far away from everybody. Since I'm a carpenter, I was like “Yeah, I can do that.” Then I went to Providence Zen Center. Often, one of the first questions that Americans ask me is what kind of university I went to. I don't even have a high school degree, so I felt weird being in our Western Zen centers, because I do not have an education. I don't think I'm stupid, not completely, but it was a weird feeling. I'm reading all these stories of old masters building temples from stone and walking among the mountains. And then I come to the Zen center, and he's a professor of this; she's a professor of that, and so on. But somehow I got over that. But for me, the work Zen was the practice that was closest to me. When I moved back to the Czech Republic, we were starting a new Zen center, and my dream was that I and my partner would move to this place in the countryside, and just build it for the rest of my life, like I read in the stories. So I did, and here’s how it ended up. [Indicates picture of a group of people.] 

This is our sangha at one of the work weekends. For me work was always part of practicing. We all know it is, but it seems we don’t emphasize the sangha working, being together, sweating together, creating these deep human connections. If you are putting a heavy beam above you, it’s not just that you get to know people—you actually have to trust them, right? So you do that, and it’s not always wonderful. Sometimes we get in conflicts. Maybe you get angry because he just dropped a hammer on your head—but it's part of being human; it’s part of our practice. So we live together, we build things together, and we want to share the space. When we do work retreats, we have practice morning and evening. When we were building the roof, we actually didn't do evenings, because we were just done for, working until we would really drop. I remember in one of the talks Dae Kwang Sunim said, “Your dharma brothers and sisters are the most important people in your life. You may not always like them, but they are the most important.”

Some people may think, “Oh, he just needs cheap labor,” but it really is not about that. It’s about creating something together—learning how to apply being in this moment, helping each other in a controlled environment, so we can easily take it to the outside world. [Points at a picture.] See that's last year about now, actually we were finishing a new part of the house.

So I strongly encourage any of you who have a chance to get your sangha involved in these kinds of projects. It’s a wonderful way how to connect with the community. It's actually nothing new. We’ve been doing this forever. For me, it’s really important, and I think that there's a great result in the sangha being together.

Moderator: Can I ask you a question about that? In Musangsa Temple, we tried to do a working retreat one day, and Dae Bong Sunim was enthusiastic about organizing it, but nobody else was. People were like, “What? We come to Kyol Che, we have to pay, and we have to work? We work every day already!” So how do you manage this kind of situation? Do you have a similar reaction from your practitioners?

Hazlbauer PSN: Not really. I don't know if it's a Czech thing, but we actually like to work together. Sometimes people are like, “Why do I have to work?” but it's just being lazy. But it’s this giving away something. We call it working Zen, but in yoga they would call it karma yoga, this doing something for others without expecting anything back. It’s just a wonderful thing. Actually many people come to these work events even though they don’t generally practice Zen with us. They just want to be part of something greater than them.

Moderator: We had like maybe eight participants for three months for this working Kyol Che from all over the world. What do you think—is something missing in how we present our teaching, that people were not encouraged by this opportunity?

Hazlbauer PSN: I don't know. What’s important is that you show that the project is important, but also that you care about the people, that you want for them to be there to share the space. We cook together and do other chores—just the regular human experience. Maybe because the temple is already established, it’s more difficult for people to see the need for it. I do not know. So far actually these retreats are often more successful than the regular retreats.

Hazlbauer PSN: Let’s go on to the next topic. We started doing retreats for everybody, including families with children. We need people from the sangha to hold the fort, sitting in the dharma room while those with kids have to be with the kids. But this gives the parents a chance to go in and practice too.

One thing that happened to our sangha is that people started having children. The Czech sangha started as a young sangha. We were all in our early twenties, and we started losing people because they started having babies and could not come for practice. It was too demanding. For me it was just heartbreaking that I could not see my friends because the practice was not available to them. We kept asking, “What is the thing families need from us?” and they would say “We need you to change.” But how? Nothing happened for years, so I finally thought, let's try this: we have a retreat; you bring your kids, the schedule is a little bit lighter; the meals are not formal. (We tried formal meals, but that didn’t work.) During the meals we can talk, because silence with all the kids around just doesn't work. There is just the group that watches the children, and there's another group that is sitting and taking care of the practice. Through the years we have tweaked the program, so now we start at six in the morning and go to eight in the evening. Some of the people are always taking care of the children. The children have been doing this now for six or seven years, so they have really gotten to know each other, and some are old enough to take care of themselves.

I remember Myong Hae Sunim was with us once. She said, “I have never seen this. I'm giving an interview, and there’s some screaming outside the room, and this woman is like ‘Oh, that’s my child,’ and she just runs out, comes back in two minutes. ‘Everything is OK!’” So it's dynamic, but it's just wonderful. I actually would like to do more of that kind of stuff, but we are running into not having enough capacity. Still, it's a great way to get families engaged and feel that they are still part of the sangha. So that’s how we do family retreats.

Now this one [indicating a picture] is an interfaith dialogue. Besides the people you already know, here is a Protestant Bishop, a Jesuit, Catholic nuns, and he is Carmelite, so we work with multiple, mostly Catholic orders. I was talking with my roommate yesterday about how it appeared, I think at least half of it was from my personal need to share the path. There are not that many of us practicing Zen in the Czech Republic, and so it’s important to share the space with people who truly dedicate their life to practice.

There are many people who do meditation to feel better. That is wonderful, but there are not that many people who want to be there all the time who dedicate their life to it. So when I got in touch [points to the next picture] with this one, Sister Denisa, she's one of my best friends. Any time I go to Prague, I'm actually staying in a nunnery, because there is a space where I can sleep. We cannot provide that as a school; we don't have that kind of facility. I go and teach in temples, in universities. They come to us and teach us. There’s a lot we can learn from each other. What we can call the mystical path within Catholicism or other paths is as good and as rich as our own tradition. We can help each other, and it's great for the sangha, if people want to be more engaged in society. I think that's overall my thing, to be part of the society we live in. These are our closest cousins, and it broadened my view of the possibilities we have as sangha in the Czech Republic. Our job is to help this world, use the tools available to us, and share those tools; we can help the society around us by cooperating and enriching our traditions. I only can strongly encourage you to seek what are the connections around you. Don’t be afraid to engage with society. People want us; they are really happy to have us in their lives.

OK, I’ll go to the last topic, a project that is in development. It’s about the environment, and environmental grief. Lots of people, especially the young generation, deal with what is called environmental grief, the changes in the planet and the inevitability that things will break apart, the forests burning, and so on. So we’re working with a few organizations to fill the need for people working in environmental organizations—but also the general public—who need to deal with these struggles to fulfill their spiritual needs on that path. In two weeks, we will have our first event of that kind, spirituality in the environmental crisis. The speakers will be a professor from the United States, along with my friend who is a Catholic priest. One of our sangha members will be moderating with another priest who is also a therapist. We are trying to see how we can talk to people about these problems, how we can tell them that meditation and prayer can actually help you to deal with these problems. People in our secular society do not know that there is this kind of help for them. How do we reach the public, so that they know that we are there for them?

Question: I appreciate your descriptions of how people can work together and how that becomes a way to support the building and structure of a sangha—how people work together and live together. Many of us keep our spiritual and everyday lives separated. I try not to, but it can be difficult to reconnect with don't-know mind when there's a lot to do. In your situation, you have people working together in various ways all the time. It’s beautiful just hearing you talk about it and seeing the pictures that you're showing us. It’s like this incredible dream come true, for you, because when you were young you imagined yourself going out and building. It’s like it's in the fiber of your being. When you come to a point where you finish building something with a group of people dedicated to working together and sweating together and doing everything together—when that’s finished, then you need yet another project because you still have this connecting energy. There’s this structure of energy and intention that holds people together. I'm wondering if you could talk about how you continue using this dharma energy to hold this grand idea together?

Hazlbauer PSN: Well, I will start with don't-know. I just do it. Just-do-it is really essential in this. It’s an essential part of our teaching, and the way to do it is just to keep trying, keep doing it. Obviously, for fundraising and all that kind of stuff you need to have a vision. You have to be intentional and not casual. You have to say “I'm going to do this, this, and this, specifically.” That is still something I'm learning, because I'm not great with that. But the plan we have with this particular place will keep going for the rest of my life. So I'm not worried I will run out of work where I am.

But we should always just keep trying to do our best. If you’re unable to make your practice life and normal life be the same, just keep trying. Any time you realize that, just come back to that, and then it's your practice and normal life together with no distinction. When we talk about it, we make this distinction between what’s formal practice and what isn’t—but in the end, there should not be any difference. It’s just what we're doing right now, and that's how I'm trying to build the place.