As the leaders of what has come to be known as the Worcester Zen Group, Melissa Blacker and David Rynick are very clear that their intention is "not to turn out meditators." Rather, they are interested in "exposing people to something that will help enrich their lives in some way, but we don't know what that way will be." In addition to the Sunday evening sittings in their home, Blacker and Rynick lead a meditation group at the First Unitarian Church, 90 Main St., on Monday evenings from 5:30 to 6:30 p.m., as well as monthly all-day practice sessions.

"It's not about learning to be happy," Blacker says of Zen practice. "It's about learning to be here. "And it's not even about learning to be calm," adds Rynick. "This isn't about zoning out, this is about tasting life as it is."

Although the basic requirements of Zen meditation are quite simple - to sit still and pay attention to one thing - the practice is quite rigorous.

"People don't come to meditation until they've tried all other kinds of escapes," Blacker says. "Enough drinking or enough money or enough power - if any of these things were truly fulfilling, people wouldn't meditate. The first teaching of the Buddha is that life is unsatisfactory, that there is some part of life that doesn't work. In some ways sitting quietly is turning to face our lives in a new way "

Both Blacker and Rynick liken the practice to mountain climbing, and both are quick to point out that Zen is just one path to the top of the mountain.

Blacker draws a distinction between "formal" and "informal" practice. "In formal practice you make a decision to keep your mind focused on one thing," she says. "There are a lot of different methodologies for that. For the other parts of the day you're doing informal meditation, which is being awake to whatever is occurring around you."

Not surprisingly, both Melissa Blacker and David Rynick carry their practice into their professional lives, though they leave the language of Zen behind. As an instructor in the Stress Reduction Clinic at UMass Medical School, Blacker teaches mindfulness meditation as a means of learning new ways to engage with the reality of one's life circumstances.

"All of our habits and thought patterns are like a riverbank thafs cut very deep and the water flows there," she explains. "When we first start to meditate, we're cutting a brand-new riverbank. We're going in a different direction. We're going to stay awake, stay clear, and the water will keep moving to the deeper channel."

In his work as executive director of Dynamy, Rynick works with young people and adults in helping them to explore the connections between themselves and their world. Like Zen Buddhism, Dynamy is an experiential program.

"When I go to Dynamy I'm not talking about 'Buddha nature' or 'karma' or 'life is suffering,' but we believe that people learn through their life," Rynick says. "So, they're doing internships, they're reflecting on their life, they're looking at themselves. This in some ways is a translation [of Zen language]."

As Rynick relates, one of the paradoxes of Zen teaching is that while enlightenment might come unbidden at any moment, you carft really "get it." At the very moment that you think, "aha - now I understand," you have created a mental image that gets in the way of enlightenment. "Today's insight is tomorrow's delusion," Rynick says. "So whatever comes along the way, you still have to go into the territory you don't know. And it's that edge that never changes. Whether you're a beginning sitter or whether you've been sitting for 50 years, you're always at that edge."

So, one might ask, if the essence of the Zen practice is sitting in silence, looking inward, then doesn't it promote a sort of radical self-absorption that is Anathema to living in civilized communities?

In the enigmatic words of Dogen, a 13th-century Japanese Zen teacher, "To study Buddhism is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the sell" Zen Buddhism has a set of precepts for moral and ethical behavior (don't lie, don't kill, don't intoxicate yourself, and so on), but they don't so much say "do this and dont do that" as they ask us to look, deeply into what we're doing in the world. Ultimately we will see the interconnectedness of all people, and once that has become clear, it no longer makes sense to behave in certain ways.

As Blacker says, "It's important to see that we can have some sort of impact on the world by being more conscious. It's about really being in the world in such a way that you're not like a bull in a china shop, going around breaking things, but you understand the consequences of your actions."

The Worcester Zen Group may be reached at 508-792-5189.
Missy Nicholson may be reached at editorial@worcestermag.com.
Photo by Tammy Woodard