Front seat Buddhist

Lay leader day

A month or so ago was my first experience as the chair of our Sunday service. As a lay leader part of our responsibilities to the temple is to be the chair of the service and to guide the path of the service, to introduce the sequence of the service and to lead the meditation aspiration and the meditation compassion.

The chair needs to stand in front of the Hondo at a podium when he or she introduces each segment of the service. In order to stand at the podium in the front the chair obviously needs to sit in a front row. Being the Backseat Buddhist that I am this was a new experience for me.

As many people do I have my favorite seat and my favorite seat is on the backseat on left side aisle of the Hondo. I would say over 90% of my time attending Sunday services my chosen seat has been in the back row on the right side.  Sometimes someone gets to “my seat” before me and then I need to sit elsewhere. I will stay close to the backseat and sit in the second row from the back.

I sit in the backseat so I can be as far away from the incense as possible (remember I wrote about my incense allergies in the first post in this blog). But sitting in the backseat provides many fringe benefits. I get to observe many things. I have a global view of the service and of those attending the service. 

The most obvious observation is that I see where everyone else sits and most Sangha members have their favorite preferred seats and I can tell you where they are.  A Backseat Buddhist can easily identify when there are visitors in the service and also knows when new visitors have temporarily displaced other Sangha members from their favorite seats.  Much like in college when students sit all semester in the same seat where they sat on the first day of class. Then one day a student sits in a different seat, which then bumps all other students into sitting in a different seat.  For some reason the students can handle this shift for that day but by the next class students are back to their first day of class seat. So, when first time visitors come to service some Sangha members may have to make the same transitional shift away from the comfort of  their favorite seats. Actually this simple act of changing seats puts into action a Buddhist ideology of causes and conditions. 

A Backseat Buddhist has a view of the Naijin where he or she can see the hustsodon and all the symbols that represent various aspects of Buddhism.  Sitting in the back seat for me is like looking at a play or a piece of art. I get to see the aesthetic appreciation rather than being too close to see the true essence of my experience.

I digress…. back to the front row

As the chair for the service when I had to sit in the front row in between the various introductions on the service I would make casual observations. To be honest I saw very little.  I could see the sensei who sits on the stage left in the Naijin and I could see the hustsodon.  But I could not see the other Sangha members and I could not see the lay ministers on the stage right of the Naijin and I could not see the global beauty of the Naijin. However, I did have a more detailed view of that which is on the Naijin.  

I could see a few people to the right of me if I turned my body a little.  When I went to the podium in the front to perform the introductions I could then see the entire Sangha facing front. I saw their faces while usually I only see the back of heads.

I did not see much of their faces because introduction times are brief, but when I did see their faces they had kind joyful encouraging expressions. The best time I saw the collective face of the Sangha was at the end of the service when sharing the announcements. Like a good teacher, I tired to make eye contact with as many sections of the Hondo as possible and not just to look at one section. 

I noticed that the left side of the Hondo had a few more Sangha members than on the right side. I was impressed that the Sangha members tend to sit throughout the temple so that not just the back is full or not just the front is full. The Sangha members nicely represent throughout the temple.

Like me, as a Backseat Buddhist, there are right or left middle seat Buddhists, or right or left middle semi front seat Buddhists, and yes, there are other backseat Buddhists. Each Sangha member has his/her reason why they chose to sit where they do.

The aroma of the incense was not as bad as I thought it might be – but I was armed with mints, which helped me.  I also had a modest cold, which might have diffused the incense.

I noticed as a Front Seat Buddhist one needs a good night sleep so he/she does not nod off every now and then.  Someone sitting not far from me had that dreaded experience of the head nodding and almost falling asleep and then doing a quick head jerk to wake up.  I really needed to bite my lip and not laugh a little when watching this person but watching helped to take away a little of the nervousness I had as my first chairperson experience.

The next week after being the chair I returned to being a Backseat on the Aisle Buddhist.  It is not just a comfort level and away from the incense for me in the backseat but it is also a learning and observing experience.  Maybe with time I will become adventurous and move up a row or two and in doing so I will learn new experiences and new aspects of being a Buddhist. But I do not see this adventure in the near future. Remember if I change my seat I will cause the ripple effect of others who may then need to change their seats, and that is a lot of responsibility. 

Maybe in the near future, if you come to service, you just might see me seating is a different seat but not too far from my Backseat.

Namu Amida Butso

BSB

"Ushiro ni suwatta monto"