Zen Buddhism, like all schools of Buddhism, concerns itself with the human condition. Its purpose is to directly relieve suffering, angst and confusion via clear insight and radical transformation.
This is not psychological transformation, existing in the realm of belief, personal story, or self-concept, but rather a transformation in the very functioning of mind and lived experience itself. Such insight, when properly integrated, will express in emotional and psychological health and maturity. The path and its specific practices, however, are not emotion-centric or psychologized.
Buddhism describes suffering as caused by confusion about the nature of the self. It maps out clearly both the nature of this confusion and the practice path to resolve it. You don’t need any prior knowledge of this before joining.
A defining feature of Zen is that it focuses from the very beginning on meditation practice and embodiment - you learn as you go. The purpose of practice is transformational insight, and Rinzai Zen, in particular, emphasizes clear and direct insight experience, termed kensho. Meditation practices will ease the mind, but this is secondary to experientially knowing what this mind actually is. Rinzai Zen, as with other types of Zen uses classical zazen meditation techniques, breathing practices, and focuses on embodiment. However, Rinzai Zen also uses the koan system (in the traditionally demanding way), and thus emphasizes working one-on-one with a teacher.
In addition to this, the community culture and teaching at Tomyoji value emotional maturity and integrity. We recognize that we all enter practice due to some kind of “need to know.” Feelings of angst, confusion, frustration, and separation are what cause us all to seek a form of practice in the beginning. This is natural! What is meant, then, is that in this kind of practice it is critical that no one is allowed to engage in spiritual bypassing, ego-aggrandizement, unclean boundaries, or passive-aggressive behavior. This holds for the teacher, as well as the student.
