Falling Leaf Sangha

Zen Meditation. Weekly on Sunday evenings.
Every Sunday at 7:30 PM
Miller Performing Arts Center, Room 301
Alfred University
Alfred, NY




Founded in 1998, the Falling Leaf Sangha at Alfred, New York is a Zen practice group that meets regularly on Sunday evenings to practice seated and walking meditation. Though grounded in Buddhist tradition, this is a non-sectarian practice and is open to the general public. There is no charge for participation.


Most sessions begin with tea meditation, followed by chanting, a twenty-minute sitting, walking meditation, and a second sitting. Although no previous experience is required, we ask that participants sit in silence and stillness.


All sessions are conducted by Shiju Ben Howard, Emeritus Professor of English, who has practiced meditation in the Zen and Vipassana traditions for twenty years. Trained in Vipassana (insight) meditation, as taught by Western interpreters, and in Vietnamese Rinzai Zen, as taught by the Venerable Thich Nhat Hanh, he has since studied Japanese Rinzai Zen with Jiro Osho Fernando Afable at Dai Bosatsu Zendo and Shinge Roko Sherry Chayat Roshi at the Zen Center of Syracuse. In 2002 he received the jukai precepts in the Hakuin-Torei lineage of Rinzai Zen at Dai Bosatsu Zendo. He is the author of Entering Zen (Whitlock, 2011) and "One Time, One Meeting," a bi-weekly blog on Zen practice.


The Falling Leaf Sangha welcomes visitors to its Sunday sessions, which begin at 7:30 p.m. in the Miller Center, Room 301, and last about an hour. Newcomers are advised to bring a sturdy cushion, to wear loose-fitting clothing, and to arrive at 7:15 to receive orientation.

For more information, please visit "One Time, One Meeting"(http://practiceofzen.wordpress.com).

Monday, November 13, 2006

The Aim of Zen

From time to time, even dedicated practitioners of zazen may lose sight of the aim of their practice. Here is advice from Ruth Fuller Sasaki (1892-1967), a Rinzai Zen priest who established the First Zen Institute of America in Japan.

The aim of Zen is first of all awakening, awakening to our true self. With this awakening to our true self comes emancipation from our small self or personal ego. When this emancipation from the personal ego is finally complete, then we know the freedom spoken of in Zen and so widely misconstrued by those who take the name for the experience. Of course, as long as this human frame hangs together and we exist as one manifested form in the world of forms, we carry on what appears to be an individual existence as an individual ego. But no longer is that ego in control with its likes and dislikes, its characteristics and its foibles. The True Self, which from the beginning we have always been, has at last become the master. Freely the True Self uses this individual form and this individual ego as it will. With no resistance and no hindrance it uses them in all the activities of everyday life whatever they are and wherever they may be. This is true self-mastery; this is true freedom; and this only is truly living. Now have the long years of Zen study and practice come into full flower.

--Isabel Stirling, Zen Pioneer: The Life & Works of Ruth Fuller Sasaki (Shoemaker and Hoard, 2006), 178

posted by Ben Howard | 6:10 AM

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