Mark Pfaff
President, Sanshin Zen Community
Every summer, the members of Sanshin Zen Community’s board of directors come to Bloomington for an extended board retreat, which this year we held during three days at the end of July. We all cherish to this opportunity to work together in person with Abbot Shohaku Okumura, Vice-Abbot Hoko Karnegis, and the local sangha. It is a welcome reprieve from the monthly telephone meetings we hold during the rest of the year. This retreat provides us an opportunity for focused and intensive strategic planning to ensure that SZC thrives as both a physical temple in Bloomington and a global community of Soto Zen practitioners, teachers, and scholars.
This year, we devoted our time to what we are calling “The Three Sustainabilities” of Sanshin Zen Community: organizational sustainability, financial sustainability, and practice sustainability. These three are interdependent and reflected in each other, not unlike Indra’s net. This model serves to remind us all that the decisions we make as a community about things like staffing, building repairs, or book projects do not occur independently, but will substantially affect each other.
Issues our communities now face have ramifications on all three sustainabilities. As an example, we spent much time with the abbot, vice-abbot, and practice leaders discussing the strain on our current facilities and our options for investing in more housing and practice space by either expanding on our current property, building elsewhere in the area, or both. Obviously, this would have great impact on the breadth and depth of practice activities here, but only if our organizational and financial sustainability is mindfully attended to at the same time.
Both long-term and near-term planning are vital for sustaining SZC. During our board retreat, we were joined by several local sangha members for a half-day interactive discussion about addressing high-priority issues with actions that would have a near-term impact on the local Sanshin-ji community. One of the issues discussed was the increasing financial and organizational demands related to meal preparation for practice events such as genzo-e and sesshin. As a group, focusing on all three sustainabilities, we realized that we could substantially reduce expenses as well as the risk of burnout on the volunteers taking on the work of planning, shopping, and meal preparation by changing to a simpler monastic menu, without diminishing the form or spirit of practice events.
Local sangha members also shared with the board their stories about how and why they became involved at Sanshin, what our community means to them personally, and how they believe Sanshin is perceived by the broader population in Bloomington and beyond. Every person’s story was unique and raised many different strengths and weaknesses we face as a community. Without participation of the sangha in the board’s work, the board cannot fulfill its purpose of sustaining SZC now and well into the future. The entire board is deeply grateful that these sangha members took time out of their weekends to join with us, and we invite all members of SZC, near and far, to continue to share with us your stories, insights, concerns, and ideas for sustaining our community. You can reach out to me directly at mark.pfaff@sanshinji.org.
President, Sanshin Zen Community
Every summer, the members of Sanshin Zen Community’s board of directors come to Bloomington for an extended board retreat, which this year we held during three days at the end of July. We all cherish to this opportunity to work together in person with Abbot Shohaku Okumura, Vice-Abbot Hoko Karnegis, and the local sangha. It is a welcome reprieve from the monthly telephone meetings we hold during the rest of the year. This retreat provides us an opportunity for focused and intensive strategic planning to ensure that SZC thrives as both a physical temple in Bloomington and a global community of Soto Zen practitioners, teachers, and scholars.
This year, we devoted our time to what we are calling “The Three Sustainabilities” of Sanshin Zen Community: organizational sustainability, financial sustainability, and practice sustainability. These three are interdependent and reflected in each other, not unlike Indra’s net. This model serves to remind us all that the decisions we make as a community about things like staffing, building repairs, or book projects do not occur independently, but will substantially affect each other.
Issues our communities now face have ramifications on all three sustainabilities. As an example, we spent much time with the abbot, vice-abbot, and practice leaders discussing the strain on our current facilities and our options for investing in more housing and practice space by either expanding on our current property, building elsewhere in the area, or both. Obviously, this would have great impact on the breadth and depth of practice activities here, but only if our organizational and financial sustainability is mindfully attended to at the same time.
Both long-term and near-term planning are vital for sustaining SZC. During our board retreat, we were joined by several local sangha members for a half-day interactive discussion about addressing high-priority issues with actions that would have a near-term impact on the local Sanshin-ji community. One of the issues discussed was the increasing financial and organizational demands related to meal preparation for practice events such as genzo-e and sesshin. As a group, focusing on all three sustainabilities, we realized that we could substantially reduce expenses as well as the risk of burnout on the volunteers taking on the work of planning, shopping, and meal preparation by changing to a simpler monastic menu, without diminishing the form or spirit of practice events.
Local sangha members also shared with the board their stories about how and why they became involved at Sanshin, what our community means to them personally, and how they believe Sanshin is perceived by the broader population in Bloomington and beyond. Every person’s story was unique and raised many different strengths and weaknesses we face as a community. Without participation of the sangha in the board’s work, the board cannot fulfill its purpose of sustaining SZC now and well into the future. The entire board is deeply grateful that these sangha members took time out of their weekends to join with us, and we invite all members of SZC, near and far, to continue to share with us your stories, insights, concerns, and ideas for sustaining our community. You can reach out to me directly at mark.pfaff@sanshinji.org.
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