This is a largely individual practice—sitting with others facing a wall. Sure, the collective aspect of practice, especially residential practice means we sit together, eat together, work together, live together.
How does the the focus on this one, this practice really extend outward? I mean outward in the sense of beyond the immediacy of family, friends, sangha….
Right now, is of great historical importance. The election is over—people are in the streets celebrating, or perhaps in their homes in mourning. Over the last fifty years, demographic change has changed the electorate, financial shifts have utterly changed the political economy of debt, capital, banking, there has been a steady decline in trust in institutions (marked by Watergate), wages have been more or less flat, there has been a structural reorganization in the provision of health care, and a surge in populism would be a short but not exhaustive list. We experience this…. in many ways that hide the historical changes of five decades.
What has driven the election and campaigns is rooted in the history…. so does this history matter? And how to think about what we cannot see, structurally, but which is felt in the the body of practice?