Some reflections on starting a Buddhist study and meditation group

I wrote back in December about one of my professors and I starting a Buddhist meditation / study group. I wanted to lay down some of my thoughts about the group, and being a “founding member” / leader of it.

First of all, I’d like to say something to everyone who has started groups, led groups, etc.: you have my respect! You had quite a bit of it before, but you have even more now that I’ve tried it myself. Starting and helping lead a group is much more difficult than I ever imagined.

I had envisioned our Buddhist group meeting regularly, with an agenda - what we would discuss, what resources we would use, etc. I also envisioned regular meditation meetings.

The latter has worked out fairly well. While we don’t meet as often as some of us would like, due to variety of schedules, we were meeting about once a week, up until the end of last quarter, at which point things kind of fell to hell. (I’m trying to rectify this problem now, by the way.) Our meditation sessions would usually last about an hour, and we would mix sitting and walking meditation.

I posed the question back in December, “What’s it like to meditate with other people?” I can now answer this question. The experience is different from meditating alone. Despite the fact that all participants are sitting, mostly not moving, and being silent, one is quite aware of your fellowmeditators . Before we started meditating, I was curious as to whether or not the other people would be a distraction. On the contrary, they actually help me focus on my meditation. Why? Because I know if I stray, if I shift and fidget, or even if I just get tense, others will know, and their meditation will be affected. It’s also reassuring to have others sitting, not “doing” anything, etc. I’d love to say that I always feel like I’m doing the “right thing” when meditating at home, but I’d be lying. I think everymeditator runs into the question of, “Just what the hell am I doing, sitting here like this, counting my breaths?” When all is said and done, I enjoy our group meditation sessions a great deal; they’ve not helped me solidify my at-home practice much, but that’s not the group’s fault - it’s mine!

The other aspect of the group, which I’d hoped would grow and flourish - that of studying Buddhist thought, doctrines, etc. - hasn’t gone so well. It is certainly not a matter of outright disagreement. Our group is rather small - there are four or five “regulars”, including myself - and we all get along splendidly. The problem is instead a lack of consensus, a lack of someone going, “Okay, this is what we’re doing.” In other words, the leadership is lacking - or perhaps, one could say that the leadership is just as confused and lost as the other members of the group!

The other members of the group often look to me and my professor for guidance, because we’re the ones who started the group. But honestly, I am personally not very good at that position! Why? Because I want to please everyone. (I believe my professor suffers from this as well.) For example, we talked about studying one school of Buddhism, and then moving on to others later. Some of us wanted to study Tibetan Buddhism; others wanted to take a look into Zen Buddhism. Who should make the call on what we go for? Luckily, no “executive decisions” had to be made, because we all agreed to study Zen Buddhism. But then what? Are we just going to meet and discuss Zen Buddhism? Study a particular book? Alter our meditation practice? What aspects of Zen Buddhism are we studying? We didn’t know; we had an idea of what we wanted to do, but we didn’t know what move to make next. We knew where we wanted to go, but weren’t entirely sure about the directions on how to get there.

It would be ideal if the group as a whole could simply decide on the next move, but it’s unfortunately not that simple. Buddhist or not, we’re all individuals, and we all have different takes on things. Some of us will want to use this book; others won’t want to use any book at all; others will still have an underlying desire to look into something totally different. What does all of this lead to? Inaction. I think that since we’re all a bit confused about how to move forward, we just don’t move forward. I’m certainly not saying that I dislike our meditation meetings, or find them useless - on the contrary, as I mentioned above, I find them helpful, and I enjoy the companionship. But our study sessions, when we’re supposed to be meeting, to discuss and learn about Buddhism and our practices - these sessions have sort of been dead in the water from the get go. And for that, I feel I need to take my fair share of the blame. I don’t think I (or my professor) foresaw the problems we’d run into, and we certainly didn’t plan accordingly.

I’m not sure what to do now. Perhaps we need to have a meeting specifically to talk about where we’d all like the group to go, what we’d like to do, and how we’d like to do it. Perhaps someone - me, my professor, anyone in the group - needs to grab the reigns and say, “Alright, everyone, here’s where we’re going, and this is how we’re getting there.” I’m especially hesitant about this, though, because I don’t “own” the group; no one does. Without the members, the group wouldn’t exist. For this reason, I hate to come across as dictatorial. Perhaps I need to email a Cybermonk and ask for his guidance.

In short, the experiences with this group have taught me that it’s one thing to say, “let’s start a group to do X”, and quite another to start that group and actively lead the group to growing, flourishing, expanding. Even if all of the members like each other, get along, have similar (but not identical!) ideas about how the group should work - even if all of these factors come together (which, in our case, they have) - it’s still not easy to steer the ship out of the harbor, and head off to where you want to go. It’s quite likely that you’ll have your crew on board, with everyone scratching their heads, saying, “Um, what do we do now?”

If you’ve been in a similar situation before (or not), I’d love your comments, and any ideas you might have that would help me jump-start our group’s activity. Thanks!