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The Wet Mountain Sangha is affiliated with Joan Sutherland's Open Source network.

The trademarks of this koan school include an emphasis on lay practice, and an openness to ideas from surrounding cultural contexts.

Zen practice doesn't require abandoning other religious traditions but rather tends to deepen spriritual insights.

The Open Source: A Little History

The Open Source is a network of individuals and communities in the western United States engaged in Zen practice together. We emphasize collaboration, the development of authentic American expressions of Zen, and the confluence of koans and creativity. Open Source communities include Awakened Life, the home of the Open Source in Santa Fe, New Mexico, The Open Source Project in Northern California, Springs Mountain Sangha in Colorado Springs, CO, Wet Mountain Sangha in Pueblo, CO, and the Desert Rain Group in Tucson, AZ. Open Source teachers include founder Joan Sutherland, Roshi in Santa Fe, and Sarah Bender, Sensei in Colorado Springs.

Though Open Source forms and practices are grounded in the traditions we inherited from East Asia, over the years we’ve evolved ways of practice that are more natural for many Americans. Our intention is to provide an atmosphere that is welcoming, respectful, and deep. Our liturgy was created by Joan Sutherland, John Tarrant, and the late Rich Domingue, and it combines original material with traditional chants set to western rhythms and melodies.

The Open Source is part of the Pacific Zen School, an innovative Western koan school with roots in East Asian traditions. Koan meditation developed in China over 1000 years ago, and the first koans were the records of encounters between early Chan teachers and their students. They discovered that when someone brought one of these stories into her meditation, she could have the same transforming experience that the koan described. The koans were collected into books that are still used today, and they are still stimulating these profound experiences in koan meditators.

In Japan, Zen divided into koan and non-koan schools. The non-koan school taught silent, formless meditation and emphasized a unified life of mindfulness; the koan school emphasized the transformation of consciousness and the relationship between meditation and creativity. The koan tradition would periodically go dormant and then experience a revival. One great reviver was Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769), and most of the koan lines in Japan and the West today descend from him. Living in the country, he taught Zen to monastics and laypeople from all walks of life, and he and his circle organized the koans into a curriculum with accepted answers.

In mid-19th century Japan, an attempt was made to revive the tradition of awakening in non-koan Zen by merging it with the koan school. This led to the establishment of Sanbo Kyodan, a hybrid Soto-Rinzai school that became particularly influential in transmitting koan Zen to the West. In the pioneering generation, Philip Kapleau, Robert Aitken and the Diamond Sangha, Taizan Maezumi, Maurine Stuart, and Eido Shimano all had some connection with Sanbo Kyodan.

The Pacific Zen School is a second generation evolution of this line. It began with the founding of Pacific Zen Institute by John Tarrant and Joan Sutherland in Northern California in the late 1990’s. The Pacific Zen School now includes both PZI and the Open Source. The house style honors the original Chinese koan way while emphasizing the integration of koan inquiry with contemporary lives, explores communal as well as individual koan practice and its relationship to creativity, highlights the contributions of women to the koan tradition, seeks to develop a body of Western koans, and in general is interested in what happens when you trust the koans themselves and the experiences of the people working with them to reveal the way the tradition should evolve.

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Joan Sutherland, the founding teacher of The Open Source, was born in Los Angeles, California in 1954. She received a Master of Arts degree in East Asian Languages from UCLA, where she studied classical Chinese and Japanese, with a focus on Chinese Buddhism, poetry, and Taoism. She began meditating then, and over the years she practiced in the Soto and Tibetan traditions before finding a home in koan Zen. Before becoming a teacher, she worked as a book editor and in the feminist antiviolence and environmental movements; she also apprenticed in archaeomythology with Marija Gimbutas. She did her koan study with John Tarrant, Roshi, who gave her transmission in 1999, making her the first woman teacher in the Americas in her lineage. Together they founded the Pacific Zen Institute in Sonoma County, California. In 2003 she left PZI to found The Open Source Project, and in 2007 she moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico to establish a center for the koan way. She is the holding teacher for the various Open Source communities in California, Colorado, and New Mexico. Her writing appears frequently in Shambhala Sun and Buddhadharma. See her website for more information (http://www.joansutherland.net).

Sarah Bender is the resident Open Source teacher for Springs Mountain Sangha in Colorado Springs, CO. She first practiced Zen in 1979 in Hawai’i and was one of the founding members of Springs Mountain Sangha. She began studying with Joan Sutherland in 1999, became a meditation instructor in 2001, and was named a sensei in 2006. She is also a learning disability specialist in private practice.

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Wet Mountain Sangha is a Colorado Non-profit Corporation. The sangha steering committee (SC) includes the officers of the sangha, practice leaders and interested sangha members. Kate Jarrett is the chair of the Steering Committee. The SC is made up of "streams" that manage the activities of the sangha: Program (Merrilee Barnett, David Cockrell); Zendo; Dorcy Center Programs (Doug Messner, Jan Meserve, Linda Stone); Finance (Linda Stone, David Cockrell); and Communications (Travis Connelly). The SC also coordinates with our teachers concerning activities and direction for the sangha. Anyone associated with the sangha is welcome to attend SC meetings, which are posted in the Schedule portion of the website.

The sangha is entirely dependent on contributions (dana) from members and friends for the financial health of the community. All contributions are devoted entirely to the sangha's operating expenses, which include primarily rent, supplies, and periodic capital investments in durable equipment to support our shared meditation and dharma study practice. In 2010, the sangha is expanding its commitment to the Center for Inner Peace and to our retreats scholarship fund. All contributions of any amount are greatly valued and critical to the survival of the sangha. They may be sent to the sangha treasurer, Linda Stone.

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