#2 A LIGHT IN THE DARKNESS

 Alaska!  It was hard to find a Sangha here;  at least online, there are only a handful.     I was so pleased to find the Anchorage Zen Community.   Further north, Cold Mountain Zen did not appear to be operating.  They did not seem to have zoom, and in-person meetings are cancelled when the temperature dips below minus 30! 

And then, I was so excited to find this webpage about the history of Buddhism in Alaska, which by the way is TOTALLY BOGUS.   Did Kalymk soldiers teach Buddhism to the Innuit?  I don't think so.  Is there Buddhist iconography on totem poles?  Can't find any. Is there a giant Buddhist University in Alaska?  No.  So totally weird.     

Back to reality: Anchorage Zen asks for a phone call before showing up, so I got on the phone with Genmyo Jana Zeedyk, who was super warm and kind and just wanted to 'fold me in' to the meeting and get to know me a bit.   I suspect that some non-natives connecting with Alaska are idiosyncratic.  Witness this article.  

I went to a Sunday service and it reminded me of how we did it at the Buddhist Sangha of South Jersey; 25 minutes of meditation, a few minutes of walking, and 25 minutes of meditation, a few minutes of walking.   The chants were interesting; I enjoyed the Soto Zen 'Repentance Verse':  

All my ancient twisted karma

From beginningless greed, hate and delusion

Born through body, speech, and mind

I now fully avow.

Following that we also listened to the Robe Chant.  After sitting, I sat in with five other practitioners and couldn't have felt more welcomed.  They were working on some ideas for community engagement; a couple of members had done prison work, and under consideration was meeting with the Unitarian church and exploring how to free all beings in the universe.  Which, by the way is a very Buddhist thing to do.  Pick one, and don't stop engaging, don't stop letting go, remember, we are not separate, permanent, or perfect.  

One member was clearly native, and zooming in from St. Lawrence Island, sixty miles (!) from Russia.  She works in a school, teaching karate and  now meditation to kids, in part to stem the tide of suicide among young persons there, due in part to Covid.  She noted that there was not a formal native meditation, but a kind of spiritual concentration is practiced by the Innuit for hunting and being good persons.   

The group invited me to sit anytime with them.  I can join their book club 'which usually lasts about a year', this time, Dogen's 'From the Zen Kitchen to Enlightement'.  I will miss this warm and kind and small and bright group.  But then, I may return. The sun always does. 

From the book: "As difficult as it may seem to be, the highest, ultimate truth in life is grounded in the fact that there are no favorable or adverse circumstances, no fortune or misfortune. All there is, is the life of the Self"