by Dillon Cullipher
The Atlanta Soto Zen Center is a large and welcoming center that is open to practitioners of all faiths. They encourage people to try Soto Zen Buddhism because, as they claim, all religions and faiths have some aspect of meditation. Since they are a non-residential center, they specialize in offering a variety of services to visitors, beginners, and lay practitioners.
Soto Zen Buddhism is the Japanese version of the Caodong School in China. The Caodong School was founded by Dongshan and Caoshan and was founded on the principle of “silent illumination”; this is the silent practice of meditation. This often involves wall-gazing, or meditating facing a wall. They believe that true meditation is to see your true nature and it is a path of sudden enlightenment. Soto was founded by Dogen, a man who traveled to China and studied and became awakened in a Caodong monastery. He returned to Japan and began the Soto Zen practice of Buddhism. This teaches using the “just sitting” method and follows the thinking that a human’s natural state is meditation and that meditation shows us the basics of what we truly are. The Atlanta Soto Zen Center embraces this in their teachings and classes.
The Atlanta Soto Zen Center is one of the largest in the country that is non-residential. It was founded in the early 1970’s under the guidance of the Abbot Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston, who was a student under Rev. Dr. Soyu Matsuoka-Roshi in Chicago during the 1960’s. Abbott Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston remains the leader of the center. Their practices consist of group and private meditation, retreats, and discussions. They offer various frequencies and levels of meditation, retreats, and discussion that tailor to the desires and frequencies of the practitioner. They also have a sizable library available to practitioners. Their Sangha consists of lay members that live in Atlanta and the surrounding areas. They offer a very open dialogue with members of the Atlanta community and encourage everyone to consider Soto Zen as a welcoming and accepting community. In their words, “While Buddhism differs from other major world faiths, it does not proselytize, and recognizes that spiritual truth is the same for all human beings. There is more commonality than difference between us, and we admire the uniqueness of each world view, including atheism, so please do not hesitate to join us”.
The Atlanta Soto Zen Center offers many services for both practitioners and visitors. They offer Newcomers’ Workshops where interested people can learn the mechanics for sitting for meditation, ask questions, introduce themselves, and hear from other newcomers while learning from a master. The Center encourages potential practitioners to attend several Newcomers’ Workshops so they can have a variety of experiences before entering the next level of classes. While these sessions are recommended, they are not mandatory and if a practitioner already had experience, they can attend meditation sessions without attending Newcomers’ Workshops. Outside of Newcomers’ Workshops, the Center offers occasional “Zen Buddhist Basics” classes. They offer special accommodations for large groups of visitors or groups that have special circumstances. To attend classes, the Center only asks that all members wear modest, comfortable clothing, arrive 5-10 minutes early, remove their shoes upon entering, and not wear any fragrances. The Atlanta Soto Zen Center offers the ability to become an official member of the community at any time; the initiation begins with an Initiation Precept known as Jukai, which marks one’s commitment to practicing Soto Zen Buddhism. The Center seeks to offer a variety of services in the name of Soto Zen to assist various levels and commitments of practitioners.
The Center offers a variety of ways to practice including silent private meditation, group meditation, beginner’s meditation, and group retreats. The Center primarily focuses on silent Zen meditation, known as Zazen. They also offer monthly all-day sittings, known as zazenkai, and occasional week long retreats known as sesshin. They also offer discipleship for practitioners who want to become more committed than lay practitioners; this is called Zaike Tokudo. Although it is known as a non-resident center, the Atlanta Soto Zen Center offers small residencies for practitioners that are more serious in their meditation. The Center offers residences lasting 30 or 90 days; these residences are referred to as Ango. Lastly, the Center offers a service known as 5th Sunday Dharma Combat, or Hossen, which are offered four times a year. Along with these meditative services, the Atlanta Soto Zen Center offers sutra services, Sangha dinners, guest speakers, and other social events to round out the experiences offered by the Center for practitioners.
The center has published two volumes of archives of teachings from their lineage founder Rev. Soyu Matsouka Roshi and a weekly newsletter to keep their practitioners up to date with the latest happenings at the Center. Most recently, they had a five-day retreat into the mountains of North Carolina, entitled “Are We What We Think We Are?!”. They offer three different types of sesshin and zazenkai: Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha. Sangha is the first level of sessions, offering time for zazen, but also schedules time for interaction between practitioners in the form of chanting, work practice, training, and discussion. This is the session that teaches practitioners Soto Zen traditional chants and protocols. Buddha sessions are the next level and offer intensive zazen sesshins, only breaking from meditation to eat and other services. This is considered a “no frills” kind of session. The most intensive is Dharma. Dharma is designed for practitioners to cultivate a deeper understanding of Buddhist teachings. Practitioners are given text materials and the sesshin leader gives several talks on the subjects of the texts. After these, there are dialogs and study periods. Practitioners then meditate on this new material and the messages they take from it.
On the website of the Atlanta Soto Zen Center, there is a long first-person passage written by the head Zen Master Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston about conversions with Matsuoka Roshi. The passage is a collection of stories meant to teach lessons and show the Zen master’s learning. Matsuoka Roshi’s teachings are often short and succinct; they are metaphors with multiple layers and often refer to everyday occurrences. One example is a story stemming from a hangover: the Zen master was hungover one day after a long dinner out with several other practitioners, including Matsuoka Roshi. His answer was only “Too precious!”. The Zen master expands on this phrase, but this is only an example of Matsuoka Roshi’s teachings. Other phrases include “Zazen is hard work”, “Just forget about it”, and “A person of Zen has no trouble following the sidewalks”. His teachings are simple, but considered profound and offer different levels that can be interpreted at the level appropriate to the practitioner’s mastery of the Soto Zen path.
The Atlanta Soto Zen Center is a non-residential center that embraces the teachings of Soto Zen Buddhism. Soto Zen emphasizes the importance of meditation and is a practice that believes in sudden enlightenment. The Center is very open to practitioners of all religions and levels of experience, even tailoring specific classes and sesshins towards beginning levels or practitioners who are new to either the Atlanta Soto Zen Center or Soto Zen Buddhism. They also have several others affiliated meditation centers in the area, to make it easier for practitioners to meditate in an encouraging and constructive space. By keeping their practice open to all practitioners, their Abbott is forced to make teachings applicable to different levels of meditation. Abbott Zenkai Taiun Michael Elliston clearly recognizes this and stays true to the foundation of Soto Zen Buddhism by placing an emphasis on sitting meditation, while still acknowledging this is a center for lay people and allowing for discussion and interaction between practitioners.
Works Cited:
“ATLANTA SOTO ZEN CENTER.” ASZC Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 28 Nov. 2016. <http://www.aszc.org/>.