Twenty Twenty Vision

In 2015, we made a five-year plan. We called it the ‘2020 Vision’ which we all thought was a very clever double entendre. It was two years after our Boundless Way Temple Zen community purchased the Temple building and grounds—a rambling Victorian mansion on an acre of land on the outskirts of the city of Worcester. It was five years after Melissa and I originally bought this same place to function as a Zen Temple for our local community and as a retreat center for our larger Zen organization.

Our original vision for the Temple was to create a place of beauty and practice. These words seemed to capture some energy of possibility. We didn’t know exactly what they meant, but they pointed in a particular direction and crystallized the courage that allowed us to step out into the unknown and to follow.

Our Zen group began with two friends in 1992. We decided to meet every Sunday at our house at to meditate together in the TV room of our house. We were happy to have others join us but were committed to sitting together ourselves, no matter who showed up or didn’t.

Eventually the group got so big we had to clear out our dining room table and meet in there. Then it was emptying the living room of furniture. The day we had forty people come for a day-long meditation was the day we realized we needed a larger place. Notions of an old warehouse space in downtown Worcester were scrapped when we found this current Temple building. It had been on the market for eight months and the price had dropped considerably.

When the Temple community raised the money to buy the Temple from us, these words ‘a place of beauty and practice’ were still alive and resonant. Many people joined in and we all took the risk of transferring the ownership. It meant Melissa and I were now dependent on the community for a place to live and that community owned a large building and was dependent on us for the leadership and guidance of this newly arisen organization.

The 2020 Vision came two years later and organized itself around the phrase ‘...to support and sustain a place of vibrant Zen practice for ourselves, for those around us and for those who follow us.’ A little more complicated, but these words touched some powerful longing within the community. The five-year vision itself contained a projected budget that dreamed of a gradually increasing size of the community, more residential retreats, a living wage for the teacher position and continual investment in the property and grounds.

I would say we got most of our predictions right – or rather we succeed in articulating a path that did indeed materialized under our feet. The two things we forgot to include in our plan were the growth of our larger community which led to its splitting into two separate groups and the coronavirus pandemic. The former we might have predicted if we had looked at other start-ups that grow quickly and the later might have been foreseen if we had taken our apocalyptic science fiction or our global immunology studies more seriously.

Unexpected large events seem to play a large part in the history of our planet—both natural and human. Until the meteor wiped out the dinosaurs, our mammalian ancestors spent most of their time hiding under rocks and trying not to get stepped on. Their size and insignificance were part of the survival strategy that got you and me here. The dinosaurs may have had a good plan, and certainly had a good run, but in the end, other things happened.

So now, here at the Boundless Way Temple, we’re in the reset mode again. Residential retreats in close quarters are not going to be happening here or anywhere for a long time. We haven’t even begun practicing in person here at the Temple yet, though plans are afoot.

But our online daily meditation sessions have two or three times the number of participants as we had when we met in person. Our daily Zen practice community now extends around the country and overseas. And our May virtual retreat (cleverly named as ‘The Distant Temple Bell Sesshin’) had a waiting list and we’ve just opened registration for our three-day July retreat.

Another five-year plan, in these rapidly changing circumstances seems a little premature. But we’re dreaming again.

We just don’t quite know yet what forms it will take next.