Stories from the Zoomiverse: A Virtual Sangha in the Time of Covid

the guest house by rumi 

This being human is a guest house. 

Every morning a new arrival. 

A joy, a depression, a meanness, 

some momentary awareness comes 

as an unexpected visitor… 

Welcome and entertain them all! 

Be grateful for whoever comes, 

because each has been sent as a 

guide from beyond. 

Communicating in a group via the Internet during a viral pandemic has been an extraordinary experience. Sealed away in our bubbles, we came together weekly for well over a year. For some reason I wrote notes and this piece is a set of personal reflections on what transpired. There was no plan, no gaffer, no agenda, no minutes, no sense of expectation and only an opportunity to join together in virtual sangha, if we even knew what that was. I certainly didn’t. 

What emerged for me was a remarkable and wonderful sense of mutually supportive encounters ebbing and flowing with the tides. Someone read a poem or shared a joyful story, someone found out how to use gallery view, another quoted from the Maenllwyd liturgy, another just sat in their own stillness, another expressed a little of the demon the ‘virus-time’ brought from their heart to their lips. Another seemed to sit in silent distress. Another told of themselves through a personal act. Cats came to sit when they sensed they could create the most havoc. One dark evening a fox looked into my window seemingly wanting to join the sangha. It hasn’t returned thus far. Participants’ children some­times waved goodnight. 

The group often shared respectful and heart-felt silences before another story came to enrich the moment or perhaps enable us to explore the messy nature of relationships. Each of us often seemed to reflect awhile and then perhaps add to the richness through our own experiences and reactions. One of us saw these encounters as providing what they called the ‘after care’ post-retreat that often seems to be lacking in the work of the Western Chan Fellowship. I have tried to investigate human nature and relationships within our new kind of sangha to give an essence of what emerged. 

Here is just a little of what I recorded from our collective musings and investigations. The underlined headings are mine as an attempt to capture individual thoughts under themes, many of which were recurrent. The one-liners are the actual words that group members spoke or quoted as accurately as my scribbling allowed. 

fear, tiredness and bravery 

Tiredness is suppressing something 

Lightening the burden – NO!!! – Let it become so heavy you have to put it down 

Being with an addict is like holding on to the tail of a serpent 

Feeding the demons and using them as ally 

The demon of perfectionism – perfectionism is shame management 

Dying is easy, it’s living that scares me to death - Annie Lennox 

Say ‘boo’ to the demons – say ‘come on in’ – say, ‘I surrender to them’ 

Place the fearful mind in the cradle of loving-kindness 

See fear and bravery as one 

suffering, tears, anxiety, loss and illness 

We don’t need to suffer about suffering – just accept that it is part of things 

Accept some of the pain first as part of what comes in naturally 

Old me, new me – people look at you as the old, leaving no space for the new 

I just realised that I am getting in my own way too much 

From inter generational trauma to what may be ‘the original trauma’ 

My mind makes this stuff up

anger, impatience & frustration with others & ourselves 

Blaming Zoom for everything 

I angrily drew what looks like an arrow through my heart and wrote ‘no access’ over it 

Below the surface of the aggression we will generally find fear 

Lack of talking brings real danger / I am an ex-sulker / sulking is mis­managed anger 

‘I don’t have to be a good boy/girl’ is Mary Oliver’s version 

If I judge my insides by somebody’s outside, I am going to come up short 

Compare and despair 

Keeping myself muddled means I can’t tackle things 

powerlessness and powerfulness 

Just admitting powerlessness gives choices 

Don’t worry – everything is out of control 

I’ll get it all done and then everything will be all right 

just noticing 

The storm is just being itself 

With every storm comes new opportunity 

Noticing closing down is not a failure, but an important part of the practice 

Waterfalls are both wonderful and terrible – life-quenching or drowning 

Meditation is just watching what’s going on 

This too shall pass

joy and love 

Actually we are beautiful 

You will lose everything you love 

Love is about trusting people 

Love is the ultimate defiance (a remark by John Crook immediately after 9.11) 

I don’t know how to love 

One-to-one interactions are the most important ones 

learning to be open 

Being completely open can leave us vulnerable 

We need to honour the bits we find tricky 

What’s behind the feeling of the feeling? 

Be content with not knowing 

Start where you are rather than where you think you should be 

duty 

Why does the sense of duty to stay keep coming up and yet I don’t approach the fear and joy of possibility? 

We have rules in our head that need to be challenged – e.g. If I’m uncomfortable I am doing something wrong: 

I might just be uncomfortable at that moment and not always

not clinging, impermanence and acceptance 

Transiency – there is no abiding self 

Everything being an equal weight – awe and anxiety / joy and pain 

Get intimate with the ‘split-off’ parts of us 

Be with the ‘blundering about’ 

Stop resisting 

The whole notion of right and wrong can stop us from moving forward 

The body keeps the score 

I need to untangle this – I need to be courageous 

You won’t think yourself out of this one 

Not holding on or holding back 

Not longing and hoping 

There is a profound problem – I need to get out of this situation – I have been given an opportunity – now take it 

Where is the finishing line? 

‘No good’ hasn’t evolved into something better 

Habit release may be required 

Approaching myself for authenticity 

Making friends with all parts of ourselves 

Embrace life – the whole shitty freak show 

Don’t ruminate on the same old thing – don't get stuck in the stories 

compassion, courage and wisdom 

Haruka – the fierce face of compassion 

Widen our circle of compassion 

If only my sleeves were wider they would shelter more people in this up and down world 

Investigate and explore 

Suddenly it becomes obvious – suddenly it is worth the courage 

We have to let part of us die to be able to move on 

We all possess super-potential to go ‘off piste’ and be successful 

The courage to step into the void 

Don’t hesitate – Mary Oliver 

The way ahead must be fashioned by ourselves 

Wisdom is forgetting yourself – are we most caring when this is the case? 

In the other maybe we can find ourselves 

Less self-ness 

Accessing split parts of us 

Pay attention: that is our endless and proper work 

Ending and beginning 

We were curious in this time of lockdowns and seemed to find it in our hearts to share and support each other, even though some of us had never met face to face. I felt such warmth and compassion that I often did not want to leave our encounters. 

Our own weekly ‘guest house’ has been full of honesty, only occasionally disrupted by technical glitch, by my personal frustration when I was prevented from logging in, or my own judgemental silence as I raged as to why someone would bring a particular agenda to the group. 

As we approached the last few weeks of our gatherings, I wanted to gain a sense of what others had learned from our meetings. I received this response… “When we meet on Zoom there is a sense that all the participants are with me in my attic room, all of us on the screen. Whilst I don’t want to read too much into this, and the feeling is quite subtle, it is as if we have become one on that screen. This could be threatening, but in our discussions I have more and more come to see us as one unit and not a group of disparate Chan people. The separation between me and you and the other lessens. In Martin Buber’s terminology the conversation moves towards I-Thou rather than I-It.” 

So whatever has happened in our own kind of guesthouse, the richness of our new sangha recorded here has been entirely unexpected and largely joyful. Our discussions of our experiences form an interesting compendium of potentially useful ideas deeply rooted in both Buddhist writings and practical strategies for developing and enhancing our practice. 

Some of us are about to embark on a weekly offering of continuing virtual sangha alongside traditional face-to-face group practice. It will be interesting to see what arises in the coming months. Already our newly constituted on-line group has thrown up a jewel of real significance to me – a poem of real beauty, simplicity and support to those seeking the courage to take a major step to change their lives. It seems a suitable place to end this short piece.

come to the edge by guillaume apollinaire 

‘Come to the edge,’ he said. 

‘We can’t, we're afraid!’ they responded. 

‘Come to the edge,’ he said. 

‘We can’t, we will fall!’ they responded. 

‘Come to the edge,’ he said. 

And so they came. 

And he pushed them. 

And they flew. 

Oh admirable on-line friends, you have enriched my understanding more than I could ever have imagined. Thank you for helping to give me the courage to move forward in my own life.