One of the cornerstones of traditional Zen training is the three-month practice period, which in Soto Zen is called ango, or “peaceful dwelling.” The idea of ango goes back to the earliest days of the monastic community in India, when monks and nuns would cease wandering and settle in one place for the rainy season. A Zen practice period, in a monastic setting, is a time of rigorous training, often under harsh physical conditions, with long hours for zazen (sitting meditation), short hours for sleep, formal meals taken in the zendo (meditation hall), and a structured schedule for the rest of the day comprising periods for work, liturgy, study, rest, and personal needs. In North America, this sort of strict and traditional training period is offered at such places as California’s Mount Baldy Zen Center and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, but not very many others. Most Zen groups have adapted the form of the three-month practice period to the needs and demands of life in their communities.

In residential city centers, practice periods tend to be far more flexible. When I was at the Zen Center of Los Angeles in the 1970s and 1980s, for example, students’ expectations varied, as did their commitments. More accommodations were made, of course, for those with families or outside jobs than for those who were full-time trainees or on staff, especially those who were ordained. The schedule was much less demanding than at Tassajara, for example, but we placed a lot of emphasis on participation in sesshin (a Zen meditation retreat). At the end of each month, a weeklong sesshin was conducted, and fulltime ango participants were expected to attend the entire sesshin, while part-time participants might join at the midpoint if they could not sit the full week as well.

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At nonresidential communities, the practice period form is often maintained, but here still greater flexibility is required. Often it is an individual matter: each person makes a commitment that is suited to his or her life. This might mean sitting every morning or participating in an all-day sitting each month. It might mean attending the weekly dharma talk and sitting one sesshin. It’s flexible, because life outside a structured community has to be.

Zen communities in the West are working with the form of the three-month practice period in a variety of ways. Sometimes the style is a rigorously monastic structure in which activities and expectations are clearly defined; sometimes the style is geared to the demands of the life of a layperson and one must rely on one’s inner resources to stay on course. But what ties these approaches to ango together is the commitment to focus for three months on deepening one’s practice.

In the Spring 2007 issue of Tricycle, we invited readers to participate in a monthlong meditation program we called “Commit to Sit”—so successful it inspired a book of meditation practices being published in March. The program was based on the practice of Vipassana (insight) meditation under the guidance of Joseph Goldstein and Sharon Salzberg. Since then, we have wanted to offer readers another practice experience, this time in the Zen tradition, but like any sequel, this new chapter posed certain challenges. Chief among these was finding a format that would be true to the distinctive character of Zen practice. In time, the idea of an ango—itself one of the basic structures of Zen training—presented itself.

The ango we invite you to join is modeled on those offered at many nonresidential practice centers. Our 90-day Challenge is just that—challenging. But our intention is not to overwhelm you; it’s to guide you through a period of dedicated practice. Do your best each day and let your zazen soak into your life. If this practice period must be “about” something, let it be about consistency. Bodhidharma, the legendary First Great Chan (Chinese Zen) Ancestor, is said to have described Zen in this famous four-line stanza:

A special transmission outside the scriptures,
Not depending on words and letters;
Directly pointing to the mind,
Seeing into one’s true nature and attaining Buddhahood.

This “direct pointing” is a characteristic that colors all aspects of the tradition. It has to do with the way meditation is taught. Compared with other Buddhist meditation traditions, Zen sitting instructions are bare-bones guidance: One is told what to do, told how it is done, and then told to go and do it.

But if Zen is spare in instruction, it is extremely rich in its own body of teachings, which may be regarded as a distinct literary tradition within Buddhism. This is why we’ve chosen to study a text—the Genjokoan (Actualizing the Fundamental Point), a short, poetic masterpiece by the thirteenth-century Zen master Eihei Dogen—as a key component of the Tricycle ango.

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