What a Council is
Councils are small groups of committed practitioners who care for the forms of practice and pass them on together. They carry the practice life of Appamada. Our practice is designed for people engaged with the world of work, family and everyday responsibilities, and we have no priests or residents. Councils hold what they would hold: the forms of the zendo, the knowledge of how practice is done here, and the care that passes it from one generation of students to the next.
A Council is a small group of five to eight experienced practitioners who train together and deepen their spiritual friendship over many years. A Dharma Teacher facilitates each Council. The name recalls the councils of the Buddha's disciples, who gathered after his death to preserve and pass on his teachings.
What Councils do
Councils care for the practice and pass it on.
Caring for the zendo and its forms. Council members tend the altar and flowers and prepare the zendo for zazen, ceremony and Inquiry, leaving no trace. Each form has a reason, learned through caring for it.
Teaching the roles. Newer students learn the roles of monitor, timekeeper, jisha and chiden from Council members. They teach with the same patience once shown to them, knowing every role is learned through mistakes.
Welcoming newcomers. New people are greeted and helped to find their way into the practice. A warm and steady model of practice often teaches more than any instruction.
Offering programs and classes. Councils teach, lead study, and help shape what Appamada offers. Teaching what they have been taught deepens their own understanding and enriches the sangha.
Holding intensives. Councils help prepare, lead and serve our intensives. Their quiet work in the background lets everyone else give themselves fully to practice.
Every form has a reason. As we practice, our expression of the forms becomes more refined and more natural.
Who is invited
The teachers invite sangha members to join a Council. The invitation usually comes when a person's practice has become steady and has started to turn outward, toward care for the community. Typically, a Council member:
sits every day
has learned the key roles: monitor, timekeeper, jisha and chiden
works regularly with a teacher
has taken the Precepts, through the Precepts Program or individual study with a teacher
has sat at least four intensives
takes part regularly in the life of Appamada
wishes to train more deeply here
This is not a test of worthiness. It describes readiness. We can't ask anyone to take responsibility for others until they have taken responsibility for themselves. It takes a wholehearted commitment to learn and grow in this Buddha Way.
What we ask of Council members
The first thing we ask is presence. The forms are learned in the room, and only someone who is practicing them can pass them on.
Presence
Sitting with the sangha in the zendo several mornings each week.
Attending intensives.
Coming to the one-hour weekly Council meeting and to All-Council gatherings. An occasional missed meeting is understood.
Taking part in the life of the sangha, in its formal life (classes, ceremonies, Inquiry) and its informal life too (Friday morning tacos, Sunday brunch, informal gathers, etc).
Practice
Daily sitting, at home on the days away from the zendo.
Practice discussion with a teacher every two weeks.
Making a home in the precepts, and meeting one's own reactivity and conditioning with curiosity and friendliness.
Care for the forms
Showing up on time, ready to serve.
Enacting each role mindfully, and continuing to refine it as practice.
Taking instruction and correction thoughtfully, as support on the path.
Teaching with patience. Everyone rings the bells too fast at first, and mistakes are how the roles are learned.
Sharing the Council's work fairly, so that no one carries it alone and no one sits it out.
Friendship
Practicing friendship as part of the path. Without spiritual friendship, this is a barren path.
Listening closely to one another.
Being honest with one another, and staying in relationship when it gets hard.
Offering one's view freely, and holding it lightly.
Wherever they go, Council members represent the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha. They represent Appamada.
Council members abide by the Precepts and by Appamada's Ethics Policy.
What a Council offers
A Council offers a way to deepen practice and express the bodhisattva vow. It offers deeper training than an open class can, and the company of others walking the same path who both support and challenge one another. Every one of Appamada's Entrusted Dharma Teachers came up through a Council. The friendships formed in Councils enliven and enrich the sangha.
Open and growing
Councils are a network of care for the whole sangha, not a privileged few. We don't want to recreate a formal hierarchy, but a deep aspiration to practice needs some structure to support it. We form a new Council whenever five or more people are ready. Councils are numbered in the order they form, like generations, so newer Councils can learn from older ones.
No one lives up to all of this perfectly. Council members help each other remember these expectations and live them out.