Practice and Teaching – TTS and the Diamond Sangha
Diamond Sangha Teachers Meeting, Ring of Bone, 2025
Leland Shields, June 8, 2025
I saw myself
a ring of bone
in the clear stream
of all of it
and vowed,
always to be open to it
that all of it
might flow through
and then heard
“ring of bone” where
ring is what a
bell does
– Lew Welch (1926-1971)
Today I’d like to talk about the meeting of American Diamond Sangha teachers that I attended at the Ring of Bone Zendo in the rural foothills of the Sierra Nevada, northeast of Sacramento. The poem I read a moment ago is a welcoming offering on the home page of their website. We met from Wednesday, April 23 to Sunday, April 27. Through months of preparation by a few, we arrived with an agenda of topics of interest that were previously identified by attendees. Topics addressed many facets of teaching and practice. We also had meals with our fellow attendees, social time with the Ring of Bone sangha, and some casual time to walk among the wildflowers and poison oak.
Accommodations were mostly tents, with a couple of trailers without electricity, pit toilets, and warm showers. The only heated room was the zendo for sitting that has a wood-burning stove. Ring of Bone is a hardy sangha. Our sangha-member hosts could not have been more welcoming or warm, caring for us in all ways possible.
Of the twenty-seven American teachers, ten of us were able to make it to this meeting. I’d met some of the group face-to-face before, and a few others I’d only met by zoom. Years of Zoom meetings could not have provided nearly the opportunity to get to know each other as in this in-person gathering.
In the talk today I’ll summarize what we all discussed, and I’ll leave some time for our own discussion about some of the issues raised that I think will be of interest to all of us.
We had major topic categories of Teaching, Sangha, and the cohesion and dispersion of traditions among Diamond Sangha communities around the world. The agenda was replete with subtopics for each of the major topics as well. Standing independently of the major topic areas, we met for about an hour in smaller groups of five on two of the days; together we worked with koans from the Gateless Barrier collection. These koan review meetings could be related to the topics of teaching, and to cohesion and dispersion as well. Personally, I found it rich to kick around perspectives on a koan with people for whom I have deep respect.
To give a sense of the kinds of things discussed related to teaching, I’ll share a few words about some of the subtopics.
Some of us wanted to know what things we do for development of our own practice and teaching, consultation with other teachers and mentoring. Much was said about how we worked with students in offering practices of breath, shikantaza, and how and when we offered koans. There is a protocol for sharing students – if a student will be doing a retreat with another teacher, the two teachers will collaborate before and after the retreat. We talked about ethical practices, and the statements of ethics of our sanghas. And we touched on the question raised; can we be friends with students? I believe the question was intentionally provocative – at least it seems to me, of course we can. But it’s also good to be aware of the potential for tensions that can arise due to the differences in roles.
Practice and character development was a major sangha subtopic. In a pre-meeting questionnaire, we were asked if there were things we wanted the teacher circle to address, and responses included questions as to what character is and how we cultivate it.
We observed that Zen comes to us from monastic roots, in which communities of practitioners lived together such that sangha was a rock tumbler to smooth the roughness of us all. One of us noted that it was not automatically a rock tumbler in lay practice, and particularly so where there is a top-down style of a teacher. We also talked about how conflict in the community spins the tumbler, but too much conflict can be damaging to community as well. An alternate view was offered that we all live in the world, and rock tumbling is inherent, and I’ll add that at times more so than we would wish.
One of our group said he periodically held Paramita classes to bring character development to the fore. In the Mahayana tradition, the six Paramitas, translated as “perfections,” are: relinquishment, virtuous conduct, forbearance, zeal, meditative concentration, and wisdom (Aitken, Robert. Taking the Path of Zen (p. 76). North Point Press. Kindle Edition). “Hakuin’s Song of Zazen” in our sutra book includes these verses:
Oh, the zazen of the Mahayana!
To this the highest praise!
Devotion, repentance, training,
The many Paramitas —
all have their source in zazen.
Those who try zazen even once
wipe away beginningless crimes.
Where are all the dark paths then?
The Pure Land itself is near.
Hakuin also has a later verse that goes like this:
Much more, those who turn about
and bear witness to self-nature,
self-nature that is no-nature,
go far beyond mere doctrine.
We can see how indeed, the Paramitas of relinquishment, virtuous conduct, forbearance, zeal, meditative concentration, and wisdom have their source in Zazen. And without contradiction, zazen goes beyond ideas of perfecting character. “The Song of Zazen” and the Paramitas could each be their own talk, and own discussion. Maybe we could take them up on Wednesday evenings after we go through the precepts.
I’ll also mention that posted on the TTS website is the TTS Misconduct and Harassment Policies and Procedures, and that the Diamond Sangha Teachers Circle has an ethics agreement that more broadly addresses ethical behavior.
Before jumping into the cohesion and dispersion of traditions among Diamond Sangha communities, I’ll set some context. Yamada Roshi of the then Sanbo Kyodan Japanese tradition gave Robert Aitken permission to teach. After the death of Yamada and many interactions between the group in Japan, and Aitken and his teachers, the Diamond Sangha remained grateful to the lineage, while continuing as an independent tradition. Sometime later as Robert Aitken moved toward retirement, he named Nelson Foster of Ring of Bone as the lineage successor. Implied in this is that there is a lineage and a Diamond Sangha. Now there are 66-some Diamond Sangha teachers on at least four continents. For years there were regular in-person meetings to gather teachers for meetings such as the one I attended. Now, and with climate conditions as they are, the international group holds periodic Zoom meetings, but will not likely meet again in one place.
That led to some wondering whether it would be helpful to bring conscious attention to those elements of the Diamond Sangha that should be preserved. During our recent meeting, one asked if in 30 years, Diamond Sangha groups visit each other, will they recognize the practice, and feel a kinship?
There are already many changes being made: The use of Zoom; in support of aging members – changes in the schedule, and no prostrations; not using lit incense; an “open sangha” versus offering koans only when there is a firm relationship with a teacher; the use of meta practice, and shikantaza; changes in sutras with new and ever-updating translations. (Do we purify evil karma or harmful karma?); inclusion of women in the list of ancestors in our dedications; softening sesshin sitting hours; the use of the kyosaku or oryoki bowls; dharma dialogue (1:1 dharma exchange) after teisho; and other adaptations.
All this led to the question: Who are we – Diamond Sangha – and how are we teachers of the Diamond Sangha? We have no central training center, central leader, and no central liturgy. What makes me a teacher among brothers and sisters? As one of us said, we are not looking for a single essence, but a family resemblance. And another asked, what about 3rd generation – distant cousins, do we still trust the genetics?
These are the global questions, that led me to ask myself – why am I here at the meeting? For me, it was the relationships, to enrich practice, and because I saw this group as my sangha.
From this point, we spent many hours kicking around elements that we individually saw as “Diamond Sangha.” Many emails were shared after the meeting, as ten people, all with their own ideas tried to refine a statement. Here is an introductory paragraph and the statement sent to all Diamond Sangha teachers:
Last month, during a gathering of our teachers in the Americas, as we reflected on the state of the world—of the climate, of the many beings, of international conflicts and domestic politics—we found ourselves wondering if it might be time to step forward and more visibly show what the Diamond Sangha is, what it sits and stands for. In the fifteen years since Aitken Rōshi’s death, we’ve grown in size, reach, and diversity of forms and practices, yet still seem to share a distinctive family resemblance. If you agree and if we can forge a succinct expression of that commonality, it would position us to offer the Dharma in a more collaborative fashion than we do at present and thus to better meet the needs of our unstable and imperiled world.
With that hope, we’ve drafted a paragraph that attempts to succinctly identify what makes the Diamond Sangha the Diamond Sangha. We intend it to be descriptive, not prescriptive, broad enough to encompass the ways our sanghas have evolved over time and still particular enough to differentiate our history and orientation from those of other Zen communities. We acknowledge that neither this set of words nor any other is likely to completely satisfy all of us, reading it as we do from varied vantage points, geographical, cultural, political, etc. All we ask is whether you feel it’s good enough to serve at least as a temporary statement of our identity—a banner of sorts that we could raise at this crucial time:
(…and this is the statement…)
The Diamond Sangha is a lay Zen Buddhist lineage grounded in the teachings of both the major streams of our Japanese heritage, Sōtō and Rinzai. We work to further the way of practice and realization laid out by masters of Chan and Zen down through the ages and specifically by our founding teacher, Robert Aitken Rōshi. Communities of the Diamond Sangha are functionally independent and diverse in many respects yet are united in a commitment to penetrating inquiry into the great matter of life-and-death and to the welfare of all beings, including the mountains and rivers themselves. We hold that Zen practice must be embodied not just in the ways that we conduct ourselves at temples and training centers but also throughout our lives—in relationships personal and familial, social and environmental, economic and political.
For the sake of time, I’ll share just two things that have come from what was an encouraging number of email responses (40 of 66 teachers at my last count). One was that there were back-and-forth messages discussing the need to more explicitly include “action” in the statement, going beyond the included statement: “We hold that Zen practice must be embodied.” I believe the preponderance of views was that embodiment was enough.
Secondly, I’ll share the comment from an Australian teacher: “Am I alone in finding mission-type statements difficult even to begin to want to read? They make my heart fall. This may be part of the silence…Putting that aside, I have no dispute with what’s been written here, and I appreciate that any such statement may have been not easy collectively to frame. So my thanks — to all who took the time to do so.”
I could say much more about the thoughtful comments that have been received, but at this point I’d like to open discussion about this.