What Is Silent Temple?

What Is Silent Temple?

I created a new school of Zen Buddhism. It is called Silent Temple. I did this because I wanted to. Also, it needed to be done.

In Silent Temple, we practice mindfulness, kindness, selflessness, and meditation 24/7. We are hardly concerned, if at all, with rituals, rules, roles, status, or lineages. We are free. We are all one non-thing as Mystery.

The Silent Temple practice is really nothing more than the practice basic goodness. Most of it does not even need to be taught. It can be grasped intuitively with the Heart. If we come together to practice, it is just to be happy with one another and to experience support and inspiration. Practicing detachment and happiness while engaging in mutual support and inspiration, as well as realizing our Center of being that cannot be defiled - we are increasingly autonomous, clear minded, and kind.

Each of us is a universe – dynamic, ever changing, inclusive, and ever expanding but nevertheless subject to transience, dissatisfaction, and suffering. So, we need to take good care of ourselves and each other. Like a plant inclining toward wondrous light, we incline our hearts towards kindness and goodness.     

When we practice in the Silent Temple way, we just practice. That is all. We are not being tested. We are not in any final or competition. We need no one’s approval or disapproval, and both “failure” and “success” are welcomed and expected. Our practice is just for the excitement, adventure, and discovery of It. Practicing having no gaining or losing ideas, we are free to live from our beings in open exploration and happiness.

This life of ours, this living practice, it should be an adventure that others support and encourage - not an increasingly ossified tradition, religion, or institution that robs us of our spirit and sense of personal worth and value. In this practice we are just as we are! Perfect! In the Silent Temple School, we embody freedom, realizing that freedom cannot be fully lived until it is fully given. We are free to be, far from the life-taking evaluations of a supposed master or proctor of antiquated criteria. The intrinsic goodness of all is realized, only needing to be nurtured and encouraged. The entire Path is everywhere a beginning Path of not knowing. In this way, true Zen is practiced and false or outdated Zen is dropped. Not projecting or declaring one thing while doing very much another behind closed doors or in the open, Silent Temple is depth-filled, mirroring the Zen realization that form is emptiness/emptiness form. We are a school of the Heart, practicing true kindness and goodness with our entire beings. Come in! Come in!     

Within our Silent Temple practice, we GET to be kind. Kindness is the core of our practice. Getting to be kind, we become progressively happier. Becoming happier, we make others happy. Experiencing their own happiness, they also positively effect and affect other people, beings, plants, and the seeming non-living. No separation. No distinct and discrete anything. Complete interconnectedness as fuzzy but clear emptiness.

Through our practice, an expanding sphere of kindness and happiness Is as one non-thing. This one non-thing-ness we can call emptiness. It just means that nothing has an inherent independent existence of its own and that nothing can be pointed to as a stand alone single thing – everything being essentially other things as non-self parts. Emptiness does mean meaninglessness and nonexistence. It is meaning laden and fully creative as non-static and dynamic Reality. Understanding emptiness as one non-thing and its realization that nothing is one thing in itself but many and usually countless other non-self things, everything is much more everything else than its surface self or seeming discrete identity. Yes? For example, being composed entirely of non-self parts, you are much more non-self than you are a self, much more universe than your individual identity. Having arisen from the universe as an aspect of the universe as the universe, you are It beholding It. The non-living world now bears living witness to Its very Self. So please acknowledge your awareness as Cosmic Witness.      

Witnessing as universe and practicing kindness, we cannot go wrong! Practicing love, however, things can go wrong. In fact, they go wrong too often! The difficulty with “love” is it more often than not carries non-love concepts, motives, and driving forces with it. This is why we practice kindness as Silent Temple monks and nuns. It is difficult to tarnish kindness. It is easy to tarnish love. So, the best thing we can do for any loved one is to practice kindness on them. Besides, kindness is really the highest form of Love. Love as we have been socially and culturally conditioned to think of is not really love. It is too contaminated with self, ego, and magical and mythical ideas. Kindness on the other hand is almost always selfless, happy, and pure. So please practice kindness if you can. In true kindness, there is no egoistic self.

The quickest road to selflessness is meditation if practiced with true Zen spirit and no mind technique. And today, we are here to practice meditation for the first time in a long time. We GET to do it. We GET to be kind, selfless, and good. We GET to meditate!

This GETTING TO DO is an aspect of true Zen spirit. And the GETTING TO DO is essential for kindness cultivation. GETTING TO DO is one of the highest spiritual realizations and forms of spiritual action. All masters GET TO DO. Few people understand this in their own lives. So I will repeat it. All masters GET TO DO. Please don’t forget. OK? You be a master.

I hope we GET to meditate. I hope we never HAVE to meditate. Please approach your meditation practice with the GETTING TO DO enlightened Buddha mind! If you consistently have that, you are a true master, not in need of me or anyone else; not in need of Buddha, Lao Tzu, Jesus, Mohammed or anyone! I say attain; don’t follow!

Our tradition is true freedom and open possibilities. None of us are followers. All of us are true Buddhas.

Beautiful Zen monk Suzuki-roshi said some wonderful and illuminating things. One of them was how important it is to practice with beginner’s mind. He pointed out that beginner’s mind is also master’s mind. Seeing this, seeing Suzuki’s realization and gift, it is important to have beginners mind at all times, even when we are a great master. Having any other type of mind, we cease to illumine and begin to oppress – even our selves.  

Some may ask why I am obstreperous and presumptuous enough so as to create a new Zen school. Some will also argue that it simply cannot be done – that it is against this or that rule. I will answer. First of all, forming this school is fun and makes me very happy. We need more of that in the world, don’t you think? Also, it is being done independent of any conditions that may be placed on me. My Center cannot be defiled or compromised, and like Buddha, my enlightenment comes from nowhere, not somewhere, not something, and most definitely not some person. And lest we forget, in an infinite or non-apprehend-able past there is no identifiable First Cause, and being further not subject to conditions as my Center, I am Hope just as all of you are Hope, no longer needing to follow traditions formed in times of oppressive slavery and Feudal States, unwittingly reflecting aspects of unenlightened consciousnesses. We are all free to assert our goodness and loving-kindness as illuminated beings.  

Silent Temple may be the first truly American Zen school, the others having clung tenaciously and fearfully to antiquated ideas, rules, roles, and rituals which long ago ossified into wrong practice and wrong thinking. Additionally, looking deeply into the essence of Zen, that essence has been defiled again and again in the modern East and West by supposedly the best of traditions, teachers, and masters. If Zen is the essence of Buddhism than Silent Temple shall indeed be the essence of true Zen. It is with Heart. May all the other Zen traditions be happy, healthy, comfortable, and successful, as well as surpass Silent Temple as a vehicle for enlightenment and liberation.

This having been said, we now get to meditate.

(Sound bell to begin meditation)

Please sit up in a comfortable and alert position. If we cannot sit up, we can lie down. If sitting, we can assume any of the traditional Eastern postures or just sit Western style in a chair. There is no magic in the way we sit contrary to what most espouse and encourage in their practice. Such magical thinking belongs in the time of the tribal religions, and is truly a form of egoistic Fundamentalism we no longer need as a kind and diversified humanity. We want to see things as it is. We are ready for the higher stages of consciousness. Sitting is just sitting. Lying down is just lying down. Meditation is just meditation. No magic is needed.

“Performing no supernatural acts, you bring the withered tress to bloom!”  

Now, please very gently extend your spine while relaxing the body. Try to hold this position without forcing anything. If discomfort occurs, try a new position. We are here to meditate; not to torture ourselves or others.  

Now, begin becoming aware of your breath as you slowly close your eyes or move them to a partly open position. And draw your focus to the sensations of your breathing. What are you feeling? Please stay with this for a while.

How long has it been since you were aware of your breathing? Deeply be your breathing. Please be your breathing for a while.

Now, become aware of your body from the top of your head to bottom of your feet. Please do this for a while.

Now, please take the time to thank your body for selflessly serving you. Please stay with your body for a while in thankfulness.

How long has it been since you were aware of your body?

Returning to your breathing, please say silently to yourself while breathing in, “I am greatly loved.” While breathing out, allow yourself to silently say, “I am safe and secure.” Please repeat this to yourself as you progressively relax, entering deeper and deeper into your being-ness.

“Breathing in, I am greatly loved.”

“Breathing out, I am safe and secure.”

Please stay with this for a time.

By now, after having focused on the body and breath, you may note that your breathing has radically slowed down, as well as your heart rate. You are now in the meditative state. Congratulations. I want you to know I am thankful for you and the gift of meditation you now are. I bow to you.

Fully allowing your self to fully be your self while meditating, please stop all thoughts from time to time if only for a tiny fraction of a second. You can do this. By thoughts I just mean any language in your head. Please stop thinking. Drop the language thoughts. Innocently Be. Stay with this for a time. It is tremendously transforming. More transforming than you can imagine. Only fractions of a second are needed. Please practice this for a short time.

If any distractions occur, thank them. We learn from our distractions as well as our uninterrupted focuses and beautiful times of non-thinking. When distractions occur, after thanking them, simply focus on your breathing again, completely relax, and return to your no mind practice. Don’t give up. You are now a spiritual warrior. You are “a temple amongst the ruins!”

(Remain aware of all of our states of being until meditation time is ended)

(Sound bell to end meditation)

http://www.silenttemple.org/