I got up early this morning and opened the Zen Center, the first time I've opened on a Sunday in a long time. In fact, it's the first time I've been there other than my Monday evening classes in quite a while. Between my recent travels (Phoenix and Maine), speaking at a Christian church last weekend and so on, my Sundays have been booked. But in all honesty, my absences stretch back well before the Phoenix trip.

For a while earlier this year, I was coming mornings and sitting on a fairly regular basis. But even that has stopped lately.

Part of the reason has certainly been the hectic work schedule I've been under. The morning sittings are from 6 to 7:30, and if I need to be somewhere on business during the day, it only complicates things to try to schedule 90 minutes of zazen first. If I have an evening meeting, I crave the extra 90 minutes of sleep the next morning (I don't sleep until 7:30, but to be there by 6, I have to get up by 5. Some mornings, many mornings, I'd rather just sleep until 6:30).

It's the same on weekends - after an exhausting week of work, community advocacy, and, yes, opening the zendo on Mondays, I'd much rather sleep late on the weekends, brew a pot of coffee when I do get up, and catch up on my reading, etc.

But despite all of this absence, I still consider myself a Zen Buddhist. Zen, unlike some other religions, doesn't require regular attendance at its services - the zendo isn't a church. So it was mildly concerning to me when I got an email the other day from an old friend who used to attend the center fairly regularly but who, like me, has been slacking off on attendance.

"I left zen because I could no longer reconcile myself to the supernatural that was assumed in Buddhism," he wrote. I have no intention of trying to change his mind and bring him back to the Center, but I don't agree that the supernatural is assumed in Buddhism. I can certainly agree that the supernatural was assumed by many early Buddhist practioners. The 5th Century B.C. Indians to whom the Buddha initially taught lived in a world and a time when many things were simply assumed to be true, including reincarnation as transmigrating souls, karma as an accumulated burden that follows one from current lives to future lives, and supernatural realms of gods and demons that have a direct effect on the natural realm of man.

The Buddha distanced himself from these views, principally by stating that upon direct examination, he could find no evidence of a thing called a "soul." His essential lesson was always the Eight-Fold Path, and he spoke to it in both his first discourse and his last dying words, and none of the beliefs of the time are included in the Eight-Fold Path. But after he died, the earliest followers practiced in terms of the world as they then understood it, and many of the concepts that now seem arcane became inherent in the earliest forms of practice. Remnants of these forms of practice still survive in Zen as it is taught and practiced today.

Aesop's fables are still used to illustrate moral lessons to the young. But one does not have to believe that an actual, literal turtle had a footrace with an actual, literal hare in order to accept the virtue of not rushing but instead proceeding methodically.

Similarly, when we talk of the god Mara trying to distract the Buddha as he sat under the Bodhi Tree before gaining enlightenment, we don't have to accept the existence of a literal Mara. As the story goes, while the Buddha was meditating, Mara appeared before him first as beautiful girls and, when that didn't distract him from his meditation, then as an angry storm. While the society that believed in the god Mara in the first place might take the story literally, we can now look at the "god" as mere psychological states. When I meditate, my mind certainly conjures up all sorts of distractions, from erotic imaginings to firestorms of rage and frustration. When I get off the cushion and state that Mara was really doing a job on me today, that's not to say that I accept the existence of the god, but instead I'm merely using a somewhat poetic shorthand that other practioners will readily understand. Sort of like when I say "Santa was really good to me this year," after the holidays.

But these are just anecdotal examples. If the traditions and the references turn off my old friend, well that's just the way it is, and I'm sure he'll eventually find a form of practice that suits his personality.

"In closing," he wrote, "I would like to say that I still sit from time to time. The effects of meditation are well documented and good for mental health. However, the effects are independent of any belief system." I agree, and am glad that he is able to take away what works for him as he discards what doesn't.

There was much more in the letter, and I haven't really done justice to his arguments and concerns, but there's more there than I have the time to go into right now. I would like to pick up this thread again later for future postings, and look forward to hearing the thoughts of others about this topic.