practice discussion
In the Soto Zen tradition. Practice for everyday life.
As a lay-entrusted teacher in the Soto Zen lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, JMP founder Meikyo Chelsea True offers something called Practice Discussion. This is an opportunity to explore how Zen practice is meeting your actual life — not an idealized version of it.
This might look like:
Establishing or deepening a zazen/meditation practice
How Buddhist teachings meet questions of justice, identity, care, and belonging
The ways practice can become rigid, isolating, or disconnected from lived reality
Finding a sustainable relationship with sangha and spiritual practice
What it means to practice in a body, culture, family, and in the world
A people-centered Buddhism
Zen practice does not belong only in monasteries, temples, or formal meditation halls. It can be practiced wherever people are trying to live with awareness, integrity, tenderness, and courage.
Meikyo is interested in the Buddhism that emerges in real relationships and real communities: among people caring for one another, navigating oppression, tending to the earth, raising children, making art, doing difficult work, and trying again after harm.
Practice Discussion is a place to bring your whole life. You do not need to separate spiritual practice from the questions that matter most to you. Meikyo’s Zen is a warm, embodied, and socially engaged practice.
Meikyo’s teaching
Meikyo’s teaching is rooted in the practice of zazen, liberatory values, and bringing the teachings into the ordinary circumstances of our lives. She has supported family practice at San Francisco Zen Center for nearly twenty years.
For Meikyo, all Buddhist practice is — and has always been — family practice as each of us emerges from another person’s body. In this way, family practice is synonomous with ancestors practice as we carry the memory of our ancestors in our bones.
Meikyo is not a priest. She is authorized to teach and support Zen students as a lay-person. This distinction matters. Her work is grounded in a form of folk Buddhism: a Buddhism practiced with and for the people, in homes, workplaces, families, communities, and the many conditions of daily life.
Central to Meikyo’s teaching is the work of healing our families and our ancestors through lifetimes.
Practice Discussion vs Dokusan
In Soto Zen, dokusan is a formal private interview with an ordained priest—within the structure of a Zen practice period or temple schedule. It may involve formal entry, bows, brief questioning, and focused attention to practice, including koan or teaching material.
Practice Discussion is different.
As a lay teacher, Meikyo offers a less formal and more spacious conversation about practice and daily life. You may meet online or in person, outside of a traditional zendo setting. There is no expectation that you already know Zen etiquette, have an established meditation practice, or understand the forms of formal teacher interviews.
Practice Discussion does not replace dokusan or the guidance of an ordained priest. When those forms of support are needed, Meikyo can help you find or connect with appropriate ordained teachers and sanghas.
Studying the precepts
The Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts are central to Zen practice. They invite us to investigate how we live, how our actions affect others, and how wisdom and compassion can become embodied in ordinary choices.
Meikyo can work with you to study and reflect on the precepts as part of your practice. This might include exploring:
How practice is expressed within family life
The ethical questions arising in your relationships and work
Intergenerational patterns of harm, repair, and responsibility
The relationship between personal conduct and social conditions
Ways of practicing honesty, restraint, generosity, care, and courage
How the precepts can guide—not constrain—a life of greater freedom and connection
Because Meikyo is a lay-entrusted teacher, she does not independently transmit the precepts. If you are interested in receiving the precepts formally, she will collaborate with an ordained Soto Zen priest who is authorized to transmit the precepts. She can support your preparation, study, and ongoing reflection while honoring the role and responsibility of the ordained teacher.
a generosity Model
Practice Discussion is offered through dana — a generosity model similar to gift economy. You are welcome to give the amount that works for your budget. This helps support the continuation of the dharma.
Notes from Meikyo
Begin a conversation
I hope you will feel welcome to reach out, even if you are just Zen-curious. I’m here to support your practice, to help you find a relationship with a sangha, or to explore what it means to practice Buddhism in your everyday life.
only a buddha and a buddha
It is only with the support of my beloved teacher, Hoka Chris Fortin, and our sangha, Dharma Heart Zen, that I stand here today, able to offer support to others. My life and practice is also deeply supported by San Francisco Zen Center, the teachers, families, and people there, who continue to allow my practice to unfold for and with all beings.
Yui butsu yo butsu. Only a Buddha together with a Buddha can fully fathom the ultimate reality of all things. My heart breaks open with gratitude knowing that I have received this support in my lifetime. May it continue endlessly.