May 10, 2007

Some members of the Yellow Springs Dharma Center gathered on a recent Sunday at the meditation center on the corner of West Davis and Livermore streets. They are, in back from left, Mark French, Todd Frantz, Carol Young, Ken Simon, Loren Rice, Dianeah Wanicek, Robert Pryor, Robert Muller, Katie Egart, Kathy Robertson, Jacob Stockwell, Joyce Appell and Jessica Clark. In front, from left, Jake Kintner, Pam Conine, Fern Opotow, Parker Buckley and David Wilson.

By Lauren Heaton

The multi-colored prayer flags that hang outside the Yellow Springs Dharma Center are a quiet statement of the Buddhist community that practices there. The center’s wood frame house and garden on the corner of Davis and Livermore streets are kept tidy through the mindful work of its 40 active members. Everything they do, from holding board meetings on the floor cushions to meditating in front of the Buddha, is part of their path to developing clarity of mind and unconditional loving kindness.

Since the Yellow Springs Buddhist community began meeting in the early 1980s, none of the group’s pursuits has been goal-oriented, long-time members Robert Pryor, Katie Egart and Ken Simon said in a recent interview. The community, or sangha, has tended its needs like one would grow a flower, attentively but without attachment to grandiose designs. In that way, the sangha has grown from a few people meeting in each other’s homes once a week to a nonprofit group with a 12-member board of trustees and 70 to 80 financially contributing members.

The Dharma Center has been shaped organically by its members who each came with different Buddhist orientations. The center accepted all of them and now practices the three main traditions of Buddhism, Theravada from Southeast Asia, Zen from Japan and Vajrayana from Tibet. According to Pryor, a professor who leads the Buddhist studies program at Antioch College, the center reflects the way that Buddhism has grown throughout America, except that in other places, each tradition is practiced independently of one another and in Yellow Springs they are all practiced in the same center.

While each tradition has particular nuances, all three are bound by their commitment to daily meditation as a vehicle for developing the mind. The center houses two to four residents each year, who are responsible for leading 40-minute meditation sessions at 7 a.m. and at 7 p.m. each day. Each tradition also has a longer meditation sit one day per week. A Dharma book discussion group meets at the center every Thursday evening, a program for high school and college students is held there every Friday evening, and a children’s meditation and yoga program is held there every other Sunday morning. Wednesday evenings are reserved for an introduction to meditation course. In addition, the center hosts visiting meditation teachers from all three traditions who lead residential retreats in the area. Ordained monks and nuns from Asia also visit the center to lecture and lead meditation sessions.

The gifts of the Dharma
The practice of Buddhist meditation offers a way of focusing the mind in the present moment and reducing the power of useless thoughts that cloud judgment and keep people’s true loving nature from surfacing, according to Dharma Center board member Joyce Appell. She developed a meditation practice in the 80s when she realized that the stillness she needed to observe the workings of her mind was missing from the American culture. But it was hard to be disciplined enough to meditate at home alone, and she found that the Sangha members who met regularly in town helped support and inspire each other to accomplish the difficult task of sitting.

“Sitting with yourself is a lot more work than you might imagine,” Appell said.

She and the others in the group sat in silence on small round floor cushions, focusing on the breath. They sat for 20 minutes or they sat for several hours. They sat for days and weekends sometimes, simply breathing in and breathing out.

“Going behind the scenes of the spinning mind, you find out how powerful and convincing your thoughts are, and you sit through it until that storm passes,” Appell said. “To engage in the reality of change is disappointing. It’s the hardest thing in the world to close your eyes and realize this is you. It takes a lot of faith and support, and that’s why you need a group.”

According to Dharma Center member Dianeah Wanicek, training the mind for greater insight includes not only focusing on the present, but also priming it for kindness, compassion, generosity, and detachment from desire and force. As the Buddhist group continued to practice and grow, they got proof, through their increased clarity, calmness and kindness toward each other, that it was working, she said.

Newer Dharma Center members also have a sense that their practice results in life that is easier to deal with. Ten-year-old Samuel Smith attends the Sunday family hour that Wanicek began and Melissa Heston now leads using walking and sitting meditation to heighten the senses and yantra yoga to integrate mind, body and spirit. During the sessions Smith says he gets time to think about things that have happened that week, which, instead of holding them in, enables him to let the thoughts go.

“It makes you happier to let it all out,” he said.

Current Dharma Center residents Jessica Clark and Jacob Stockwell, both Antioch College students, have found that practicing the Dharma helps keep their lives grounded and fulfilling, they said. For Stockwell, the Dharma has helped him through the transition to college and the center has provided a sanctuary that allowed him to grieve the loss of a family member.

“It’s a blessing that this house is open for villagers and students to take refuge in a place where the Dharma exists all the time,” Stockwell said. “The moment you step in the door you feel welcome, and it brings me back immediately to mindfulness and compassion, where wounds are left open so that we can experience what healing actually feels like.”

Connecting to the college, Yellow Springs
Engaging in community outreach is an important function of the Dharma Center, according to Appell, who believes the Dharma should be available to everyone. There is no conversion necessary to practice meditation, and having a practice can be just as valuable for an active Catholic, Muslim or Jew as it is for a Buddhist, she said.

Community engagement and stability for the center were the main reasons the board felt it was important to try to purchase the house it had been renting since 1993. With the help of Jane Baker, who owned the building and wanted to keep the price affordable, the center was able to raise enough money to buy the house in 2003 and even add a library that has grown to several hundred books, periodicals and CDs for loan.

The center functions largely on donations from its members and also receives rent from its residents and from the residents of the independent apartment that is attached to the building.

The Dharma Center’s unique connection to Antioch also helps tie the center to the community and invigorates the center by attracting students who have just returned from Asia and by bringing ordained teachers to Yellow Springs who are associated with the students and the college.

The center has kept its mission simple and modest, which has allowed the community to sustain it, Simon said. Without goals per se and no handbook to work from, the Dharma Center board is faced with decisions all the time with how to proceed with the center and serve the needs of the community.

Without an intentional vision for what the center will become, Pryor, for one, is interested in seeing what the future for the center brings, he said. In the meantime, the members will continue to lead their own practice of meditating, reading and discussing to advance their understanding of what it means to be mindful and work toward becoming calm, kind and clear.

“There are many spiritual places in the community, and this one is here for those who want to practice being in the moment and allowing their loving kindness to come to the surface,” Pryor said.

Wanicek feels the same about the accessibility of the Dharma, explaining it through a quote from Thich Nhat Hanh, the well-known Vietnamese Buddhist monk.

“Anyone can practice as long as they have faith that it’s possible to improve the mind,” she said, adding the paraphrased quote, “The miracle isn’t walking on water, the miracle is walking on the earth.”

For more information on the Dharma Center, visit www.ysdharma.org.

Contact: lheaton@ysnews.com