Episode 26, COVID-19 Pandemic: Dealing With Disruption
Past episodes of our Coronavirus series have explored how the current pandemic has affected monastics and meditators around the world. In today’s show, our seventh in the series, we change gears, shifting our focus from people to sites. In addition, we’re not looking at a single snapshot in time, but rather panning out for a wider perspective, and examining how these sites have adapted policies and protocols in response to the on-going reality of the pandemic. That is the backdrop for our conversation today with three American-based monasteries and meditation centers, each of which has some connection to Burmese traditions.
Looking back over this special Covid series, it is apparent that our episodes have developed in a similar way to what we’ve seen worldwide in response to the virus. For example, when the pandemic first hit, it sent shock waves around the world, forcing everyone to make major life changes in the midst of enormous uncertainty and confusion. Our first episodes reflected that as we spoke to individual monastics and others in Burma about the impact of the virus’s initial onslaught.
Over time, societies and individuals passed through various stages of lockdown, political disarray, waiting for successful vaccine trials, and Covid’s 2nd and even 3rd waves. Our series mirrored that shift as we spoke meditators around the world regarding how they were adapting to life during the long haul of the pandemic.
Another level still in the world’s adaptation to the pandemic has been the upheaval that so many businesses and institutions have had to navigate. Many businesses initially shut down entirely either from their own assessment, or because of government mandates. Over time, they evolved new and proactive ways to live within government guidelines, and be responsive to a concerned public. This is now where our own focus moves.
At first, many meditation centers simply shut down entirely, and monasteries engaged in strict lockdowns. Over time, these restrictions then lifted, either sooner or later, often under some new guideline or other. At the same time, many people remained skittish about attending large indoor gatherings, including meditators, especially if there were no mask requirements. Regardless of a center’s individual circumstances or the current local regulations, teachers, trustees, and administrators realized that this pandemic wasn’t going away any time soon, and that they needed to chart a new way forward in these very uncertain times.
At that point, monasteries and meditation centers began to think hard about options for the dissemination of Dhamma outside a typical course or class format. Teachers also began looking for ways to ensure that the Buddha’s timeless teachings of liberation remained practical and relevant for these challenging times. Each center found its own unique way to adapt and serve its meditator community… and those are the stories we tell today. These conversations examine the internal process that these centers went through during the better part of the year, leaving off with their plans going forward this winter and into 2021.
We first check in with Sean Feit Oakes, an Editor and Community Dharma Leader at Spirit Rock Insight Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. Next up is Ayya Soma, an Italian monastic and co-founder of Empty Cloud Monastery in West Orange, New Jersey. Finally we speak with to Dick Delanoy, an Assistant Teacher at Dhamma Patapa, a vipassana center in Jesup, Georgia, in the tradition of S.N. Goenka.