The most important support for practice is to have a community of likeminded, supportive people. But often, experienced practitioners find either they don’t have a sangha within easy reach, or that their nearby groups aren’t optimal for them.
During the Covid health emergency, we discovered that we could expand our sangha from our home in Scotland to include seasoned practitioners everywhere who are ‘homeless’, to our mutual benefit. We have online communal Zazen once a week, online single 40 minute no frills sittings every weekday morning at 6.30am UK time, a regular online study group and online activities, such as chanting, sutra tracing and other things. We have recently re-started sitting physically on Saturday mornings and Thursday evenings. The Saturday sits are blended sessions, so practitioners can attend physically or via Zoom.
We will continue our presence online because we have found it so enriching to have experienced practitioners from all over the world be with us online.
We practice within the Soto Zen lineage of Master Dogen. Read more about our group.
If you would like to be part of our community, take part in our sittings and events, we warmly invite you to contact us. We will arrange to have a Zoom or telephone call with you as a preliminary to your joining our activities. To help you assess if we are a good fit for you, we would also suggest that you contact us to obtain the text of our most recent three part Introduction, dealing with the place of Zen within Buddhism, Posture and Ceremony & Ritual. This will give you some sense of our orientation. Alternatively, you could just take a look at our Kusen [oral teachings] page here on the website.
