Invitation to Deep Sangha Work

Mary Ellen Seien Roshi and Charlotte Jigen Sensei 

A Year-Long Inquiry into Poisons, Core Fear, and Sangha Awakening

This offering is a form of sangha work: a shared inquiry into how we meet one another as practitioners, within sangha, family, friendship, and work.

Much of awakening practice happens alone on the cushion, or within the private student–teacher relationship. Rarely do we inquire together into our habitual patterns, core fears, and reactivity with a shared intention of awakening as a community.

The Arc of the Year: Three Sequential Series

This offering unfolds over three series across the year.

Each series consists of five modules, building progressively from individual pattern recognition to collective realization of the Three Treasures.

Participants commit to one workshop at a time, while understanding the larger arc.

Series I: The Five Poisons

Seeing the Patterns Clearly

We begin by working directly with the Five Poisons:

Greed, Anger, Ignorance, Pride, and Jealousy

In this work, the poisons are not treated as personal flaws or moral failures. They are understood as protective reactions that arise when something vulnerable is touched.

They are conditioned responses meant to guard what feels most at risk, and they are also the very gateways to liberation.

Across five modules, we explore:

• How the poisons show up in real relationshipsHow reactivity is sustained interpersonally, not just internally
• How to meet these patterns openly and impersonally
• How awareness loosens identification without fixing or suppressing
• How practice deepens when the inquiry is shared

Series II: Core Fear and Core Contraction

What the Poisons Protect

In the second series, we move beneath the poisons to the core fear and core contraction that give rise to them.

Here, reactivity is no longer treated as something to manage, but as something to listen to.

Across five modules, we explore:

• The primary fear each poison is guarding
• The somatic and relational shape of contraction
• How fear organizes identity and behavior
• How contraction relaxes through awareness rather than effort
• How contact with core fear opens genuine empowerment

This phase is where liberation becomes personal, embodied, and precise.

Series III: Sangha Awakening to Itself

Realizing the Three Treasures Together

The third series turns explicitly toward collective awakening.

Rather than treating Buddha, Dharma, and Sangha as concepts, we explore how the Three Treasures are realized in the midst of relationship, including reactivity, misunderstanding, and difference.

Across five modules, we inquire:

• 

  How Buddha nature expresses collectively, not just individually
  

• How Dharma becomes alive through shared investigation
  

• How Sangha itself becomes the field of awakening
  

• How ignorance sustains separation, and how it dissolves
  

• How practicing together reduces reactivity in sangha, family, and work

This is not idealized community.

It is awakening in the middle of things.

A Different Kind of Inquiry

This is not therapy

It is an inquiry rooted in:

• Shared human experience
  

• Curiosity and compassion
  

• Awareness without pathologizing
  

• A reframing from or melting of the separate inner and outer life

It is also an experiment:

What happens when a sangha commits to waking up together?

Who This Is For?

This offering is for zen practitioners who feel called to explore this territory with:

• Honesty

• Steadiness
  

• Emotional and relational maturity
  

• Respect for both psychological depth and awakening practice
  

Because of the nature of the work, participation is limited to 10 people.