By Chigan Roland Jaeckel Roshi
Another year has ended, and we are happy to present our 2024 Annual Report. The report provides an overview of our activities and accomplishments in 2024. It recounts our aspirations and illustrates the impact of your kindness, generosity, time, and material contributions. While it is impressive to enumerate and quantify, I am writing these words to remind us that developing wisdom and compassion is not a quantitative undertaking. This practice is not about accumulating merit or good deeds but cultivating the qualities of presence, clarity, openness, and loving-kindness.
Over two and a half millennia ago, an Indian prince was born into a station of material and spiritual privilege: Siddhartha Gautama. Growing up motherless, reared by a loving and compassionate aunt, he grew into a father and husband. Unfulfilled and determined to fathom what lies behind this human existence, he set out to practice as a homeless yogi and an ascetic. He ended up meditating under a tree and — solely through his own efforts — awakening. Like Siddhartha, the heart of our Rinzai Zen practice is driven by this innate longing for completion, the wish for liberation from a fragmented and self-centered existence. We long to overcome what causes us to suffer, inflict suffering, and devastate the world with acts of unspeakable violence.
In today’s twenty-first-century society and culture, we find ourselves inundated with constant competition for our attention. Our economy rewards those who are best at capturing the consumer’s attention. A second, equally powerful force in our highly unequal and deeply divided societal landscape is the deliberate sowing of fear and discontent. When selling products, services, news, and ideology, the end often justifies means that are driven by greed, anger, and delusion. All too often, even when genuinely seeking solutions, human beings are blinded by skillfully offered affirmations or lofty promises that fall short of what they advertise.
In this attention-driven world, we are deeply grateful for your attention to this practice and the Zen Studies Society. Beyond the numbers and achievements, I am even happier to say that 2024 was exciting and successful, thanks to your effort, contributions, and presence. This world needs you, your compassion, and your wisdom. Let us continue cultivating these treasures together.
