We're There.

Zen Lessons 2026 2 25: "We'll cross that bridge when we come to it..."

A note to readers… as some of you know, Community Zen is part of somewhat larger, looser something we call Counseling Confidence & The Experience Studio. Three of us are clinicians, and three of us are teachers. This newsletter reflects the thoughts and practice of Community Zen, where I am the Zen instructor.

Our local political moment, where tensions around Bucks County, Pennsylvania have cumulated, for now, in (what I suspect) was a police abbetted clash with high school students during an ICE protest. There are very serious charges and very serious civil rights violations at play here. The Studio has been working with local groups to provide an infrastructure of social, emotional, and mental health support for people affected by the violence and the pressures here. Perhaps some people just need someone to listen, perhaps more care is needed. Perhaps some Buddhist support will be asked for.

But more than politics, I have been reflecting on the crossing of Zen life with politics. American Buddhism, and its vague cousins in New Age and Yoga circles, tend to bypass politics as “too of this world”. I get the inclination. Politics and public life is difficult, and it is stressful. Especially these days. Zen, though, is a little different than Buddhism in a general sense, and this is something I would like to discuss here and in coming weeks.

I have a fire in my belly about this policing incident in Quakertown. For me, it points to the larger problem of corrupt local departments, especially in the sense of these being inflitrated by white supremacists. But that fire… is not at all just anger or worry. It is action taking form, but how will entangle with my past experiences of abuses by powerful people, or with this local moment, or with my desire for health and peace for myself, and then… my desire for health and peace for those around me?

How will that fire entangle itself, or cross with, or shape the uncertainty I feel about what to do… is it right to get involved at all? Does such action compromise my role as a religious teacher, as a clinician… does it invite danger to my business, household, to my family?

Zen practice is non-transcendent. It doesn’t offer a way out of the world, like so many religious traditions do. All the above, all that I wrote up there, is my experience, my working through language to sense my experience… it is a pause in the action that is developing… a pause to take note of the whole thing, my religious practice, my obligations, my past errors, and that fire.

I’ve written several times about the first koan I worked with: “the whole world is on fire, what do you do?” There is that fire, and there is the fire in my belly. All things return to the one, but where does the one return to? It is all one fire.

Whatever comes of this pause I will trust. I will trust where the fire leads me.