I was tired and worn out. Even though it’s still the beginning of the week, I always feel tired and worn out by Tuesday nights, thanks to classes and everything else I do on a daily basis that somehow doesn’t seem worth the effort I put into it. As I was on my way to a meeting that I wanted to sit in on for this story. I wondered why I was there when I could have been sitting at home relaxing and watching some TV.

As Ray Ball would put it, I was in need of some Zen.

Ray Ball is one of the founders of the Buffalo Zen Dharma Community, which holds Zazen (Zen meditation) services every Tuesday night at 7 p.m. at the Westminster Presbyterian Church at 724 Delaware Avenue. The point of the meetings is to help the Zen practitioners who make up the community to practice their meditation in a group so they can then take what they’ve learned about Zazen and use it when they meditate at home. Ray Ball explains, “Everyone here has renounced something...people come here and they see the chanting and the prostrations, and some voice inside them says ‘this is bullshit’…but that’s just the conditioning that we experience from a young age.” He believes that Zen meditation is a way to step back from our “conditioning” and to silence our inner running commentary, so we can find something more important within ourselves. He believes that Zen meditation is “the last thing society wants us to do. They want us to be soaking up whatever our television or radio tells us.”

I went to one of the Tuesday night services of the Buffalo Zen Dharma Community, thinking that participating in one of their services would be the best way for me to understand what the group does. I was going to do Zen meditation for the first time in my life, and I had no idea what it was going to be like. The community is a sitting group, which Ray Ball says is “A group of likeminded individuals who come together to practice Zazen on a regular basis.” Anyone walking into one of their meetings expecting to see a bunch of bald people wrapped in robes looking like the Tibetan monks that flocked to UB when the Dalai Lama came to speak here two years ago would be sadly disappointed. The people who make up the sitting group are more of the everyday sort, more likely found in a supermarket than a Tibetan monastery. When I went to their meetings, I thought that these folks looked like they would fit in better at a church group than in a Zen sitting group, except for the fact that most of them came to the services wearing sweatpants so they could be comfortable while sitting in their meditation position.

The format of the sitting group’s services alternates every other week. The first and third Tuesday of each month the group does three 25 minute rounds of meditation. On the second and fourth Tuesday of every month they do one round of meditation followed by a Dharma talk, which is a sermon by one of the senior monastics from the Zen Mountain Monastery, which the sitting group is associated with. Each service begins with chanting and prostrations to a statue of the Buddha. The first Tuesday of every month is an introductory service which includes a quick crash course in how to practice Zen mediation for those who get to the service by 6:45.

Zazen is the cornerstone of the sitting group’s services. The concept of Zazen is not an easy one to grasp for people brought up in a western society because there is no singular goal to mediation. When asked what someone is trying to achieve by practicing Zazen, Ball replied, “They’re not trying to get at anything; they shouldn’t be trying to get at anything…It’s an attempt to get in touch with a more original self underneath all our conditioning. So Zazen can be thought of as a form of de-conditioning.” The practice of meditation in Zen thinking is very much founded on the idea that we have lost our own true voice, which has sort of been drowned out by all our concerns, thoughts, ideas, and cares. Ball emphasizes that meditation “is a subtractive process; it’s about letting things go.”

The actual practice of Zen meditation sounds really simple. One sits in a meditative position, with a cushion under their rear end, and knees on the floor. This is to give one a strong base, which is really necessary because the whole point of the meditation is to sit completely still and pay attention to nothing but your breathing. Learning about all this, I came to see Zazen as the science of being silent and still. Believe me when I say that not moving or making a noise for 25 minutes is a lot harder than it sounds. Zazen trains one to focus their mind and ignore both physical and mental distractions. When trying to sit still, most people begin to fidget: they start checking out their surroundings and their minds begin to wander. All these things are forbidden while practicing Zazen. One just sits, staring into space, thinking about absolutely nothing that could distract them from focusing on their own breathing. They sit up straight so that their weight is evenly distributed down their spine and into the base of the sitting position. By sitting with the back straight, it allows the diaphragm to move freely, so one can breathe deeper. The important thing is to focus on one’s own breath as they inhale and exhale; it was recommended to me that I should count my breaths up to ten and then keep starting over. This is all supposed to train our ability to focus, as we learn to let go of our thoughts and simply focus on our breath. Ball explained the significance of focusing on one’s breath as follows: “Our breath is our life force. We don’t have to think about it when we inhale or exhale; it’s involuntary.”

According to him, the hope is that focusing on this involuntary act will help us “to get in touch with our original self, our original nature, or Buddha nature, ‘Buddha’ meaning awakened. We are naturally, originally awakened, but we lose that along the way, and how are we supposed to get back to that in today’s culture, when the culture is designed to keep us separate and distant from that?” He adds that, “When you sit, and you’re quiet, and you turn your attention to your breath, you notice that you talk to yourself constantly. That is the self essentially reinforcing itself, recreating itself, seeking to be the center of everything, and distinct from everything around us. In fact, we are very intimate with everything around us.” The focus on the breath and letting go of our inner voice is supposed to help us regain that intimacy.

The service I attended began with the usual chanting and prostrations. The chanting is very monotonous, and really does have the effect of slowing down one’s mind. As easy as it sounds to count your breath up to ten over and over again, I rarely ever made it that far. My mind kept wondering here and there, as I sat in the silence of the sparse room in the Westminster Presbyterian Church. Everyone else around me was totally quiet, immersed in their own meditation, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t keep distracting thoughts from arising in my mind. Distractions are the last thing one wants in Zazen. The whole point is to train the mind to not get preoccupied as one focuses on their own breath.

In other words, I suck at Zazen.

I was actually kind of surprised at how much I sucked at Zazen. As I said before, I was feeling fairly fatigued when I went into the meeting, and as I sat there silently trying to meditate, the urge to just curl up and fall asleep on the floor grew stronger and stronger. By the end of the 25 minute round of meditation, my posture was completely screwed as I was slouched over on my cushion. Now I understand why many people practice Zazen early in the day when they are feeling awake and refreshed. It also didn’t help that I had a cold at the time. I really didn’t want to be that guy who sneezed and interrupted everyone else’s meditation, especially as it was my first time, and everyone knew I was there reporting. Then, as the time wore on, I couldn’t stop wondering how much longer it was until the 25 minutes was up. I kept thinking to myself, “It’s been at least 20 minutes. No, more than that, at least 22,” and then I would realize I wasn’t supposed to be thinking about how much time was left. I was supposed to be counting my breaths. I would go back to trying to count my breaths up to ten. “One, two, three, four, five, shit, I need to sneeze again.”

However, Ball has advice for people like me who are apt to let their minds wander: “When you practice Zazen, you focus your attention on your breath. Then you notice that one of those fleeting thoughts arises, and you build it into a storyline, and it takes you away from your breath. It separates you from the moment. You catch onto it, you acknowledge it, and you let it go. Then you bring your attention back to your breath, and each time you do that you build joriki, which is self-power, the ability to put your mind where you want it, when you want it, for as long as you want it.” He adds, “If you think about how much we accomplish with scattered minds, just imagine what you could do if you could put your attention where you wanted it, when you wanted it, for as long as we wanted…we lose that ability as we are distracted and entertained by the culture. We have to turn inward...and by becoming more intimate with ourselves, we will become more intimate with everything around us.”

After my failed attempt at Zazen, and discovering that I have very little joriki and need to be more intimate with myself (which is a lot to discover in only 25 minutes), the Zazen was followed by a Dharma talk. Dr. Jeannette Ludwig described the Dharma talks as sermons by a senior monastic from the Zen Mountain Monastery, which the Buffalo Zen Dharma community is associated with. She said that the sermons are recorded on audiotapes which are purchased by the group from the monastery. She says the point of the talks is to supplement the Zazen: “They are nourishment for the heart and mind, which we need, as well as sitting practice [Zazen]. The two reinforce each other.” I sat and listened to one of these Dharma talks with the sitting group. The recording is played while the group sits in rows in their meditative postures. One sits just as if they are doing Zazen, only now the focus is centered singularly on the speaker and the sermon. This particular talk was kind of difficult for me to follow because the speaker was using a lot of Buddhist terms which I wasn’t familiar with. I realized very quickly while listening that I didn’t have the background in Zen teachings to understand the sermon entirely, but I tried my best to maintain my Zazen posture and pay attention to the speaker’s message. He talked at length about how life is impermanent, how all is emptiness, and how that emptiness makes all things possible and other subjects which left me a little confused, but also a little intrigued to find out more.

The Buffalo Zen Dharma Community is a sitting group associated with the Mountains and Rivers Order, which is centered at the Zen Mountain Monastery in the Catskills. The Buffalo sitting group is currently in its eleventh year. Dr. Ludwig told me about the group’s founding: “It started out with me, Ray, and his wife Gwen…Ray had been to the [Zen Mountain] monastery and knew about the Mountains and Rivers Order. We decided wanted to follow the teachings of John Daido Loori…and we became his formal students.” Loori is the abbot of the Zen Mountain Monastery, and according to Dr. Ludwig, is one of only a handful of Zen teachers in America who are certified to teach Zen in Japan. The sitting group was founded with the intention of following Loori’s teachings, and started out very small, but was able to find a space to meet in the Westminster Presbyterian Church on Delaware, where the group still meets today. The group wanted to follow Loori’s teachings because, as Dr. Ludwig put it, “He follows very closely the Japanese traditions. In fact, Japanese priests-to-be come to train at our monastery. that’s how close we stay to the traditions.”

Dr. Ludwig remarks that “People began to find our group through our website, and started showing up. Some people came and found they liked it, others didn’t, but the group has grown to its current size.” When I attended their service, there were a couple dozen people present. However, the number of attendees varies, as not everyone comes to every meeting, as the level of commitment differs depending on the individual. Six of the current members, including Ball and Dr. Ludwig, are formal students of Loori’s at the monastery. These students follow a training regimen that is very similar to that of the monks at the monastery. Ball explains that “There is a separate tract [of training] for lay practitioners, and the training is very similar to that of the monastics.” The difference is that the monastics reside in the monastery for the rest of their lives, where as the lay practitioners visit the monastery periodically.” The monks also take formal vows and live on a stipend of $100 a month.

Although the students at the monastery are devoted to a training regimen at the monastery, they are not necessarily the leaders of the sitting group. Dr. Ludwig says that their role in the group is to “practice alongside the other members, and bring our knowledge from the monastery to the sitting group, and kind of lead by example.” She continues: “We sometimes serve as role models, and sometimes as guides to help the other members find a better way in their practice.” In terms of the decision-making within the group, Dr. Ludwig says, “We are very egalitarian…everyone has an equal say in things.”

Dave Coppola is a web designer for the social work department at UB, where he studied as a graduate student. He has been a member of the sitting group for about two and a half years. Coppola officially became a formal student at the monastery in June of last year. He says that his finding the group and becoming more involved in Zen training happened over time, but as he put it, “It unfolded rather mysteriously, but it all felt very natural as it was unfolding.” He says that he was dealing with his father’s terminal illness, when one day he stumbled on a book in the UB libraries called Awakening the Buddha Within, by Lama Surya Das, a graduate of UB. Coppola read this and several other books about Buddhism, which he says helped him “understand what was going on with my father, myself, and my family.” After his father’s death, Coppola recalls that “the question of life and death, the Great Question, as it’s called in Zen, really became a burning issue in my life.” When Coppola came to see the Dalai Lama speak at UB back in 2006, he met a member of the Buffalo Zen Dharma community. He then heard John Daido Loori speak a week later, and he comments, “That was when I was really blown away. At that point I realized that there really is a religion, a practice, a way of living, which is very consistent with how I understood life for so many years, but had never been able to explain. So it really kind of unfolded and found me.”

He attended a service of the Buffalo sitting group, and he remembers feeling a little awkward at first, much like I did, but he adds, “On some very important level, it just resonated with me, and I said ‘I need to come back,’ and I grew into it, and I haven’t missed a Tuesday since.” He now practices Zazen twice a day on his own, in the mornings and in the evenings, and he regards Zazen as practice for his own daily life, because it helps him live in the moment. He says that Zazen for him is “The practice of letting go of everything, in preparation for the final letting go…I think that Zen offers a lot as to how to live well, but it also teaches how to die well, and practice[s] dying in each moment, because everything is changing. That’s the one thing we can be sure of is impermanence.”

When asked what the sitting group has meant to him, Dave Coppola replied, “This is a wonderful community of people who are here to support one another in this practice. I’ve made many wonderful friendships here. Having a home practice [of Zazen] is important, but there’s something someone’s missing if they’re just doing it one their own.” He adds that the sitting group has shown him that “we are all far more similar than we are different. This has been a wonderful experience in softening my heart to the world, but also strengthening my resolve to respect others.”