In this video, Buddhadharma deputy editor Mariana Restrepo talks with Sozan Miglioli, the founding teacher of Zen Sin Fronteras (Zen Without Borders), about his work to create a global Spanish-speaking Zen Buddhist community and make Zen teachings more relevant and accessible to Latinx practitioners. Sozan talks about the inspiration for the project, and its dedication to addressing the unique needs and values of the Latinx Buddhist community. He discusses how Zen practices resonate with and support Latinx practitioners and explores the contributions of the Latinx community to the broader Buddhist landscape.
An edited transcript of this conversation follows.
Mariana Restrepo: Hi, I’m Mariana Restrepo, deputy editor of Buddhadharma. I am joined here today by Sozan Miglioli, who’s originally from Argentina, and he’s the founding teacher of Zen Sin Fronteras, or Zen Without Borders, which is a global Spanish speaking Zen Buddhist community committed to fostering deep personal transformation through Zen practice.
Before dedicating himself to fully to Zen Sin Fronteras, Sozan spent six years serving as vice president and president of the San Francisco Zen Center. Sozan, thank you so much for being here with us today.
Sozan Miglioli: Mariana, it’s a pleasure to be here.
Mariana Restrepo: I’d love to hear more about your journey. Can you tell us about your background and what led you to Zen Buddhism?
Sozan Miglioli: Yeah, well, I started sitting zazen meditation in Argentina, where I lived before coming here, about 20 years ago, more or less. There and then, I was in advertising, so I had founded my advertising company in 1998 and had offices in, in Barcelona, in Spain, in Mexico City, in Argentina.
So I had that kind of life, you know: very stressful advertiser life. Because of that, at one point, I wanted to do something about the stress, about the difficulties I was having, more personally related to lack of connection, maybe, that’s what I’m seeing, you know, when I think back. So I started going to a sitting group of another lineage, a lineage that is in the Deshimaru.
Deshimaru was a teacher from also the Soto Zen school. He traveled from Japan to France and established himself there. That grew and Deshimaru lineage is probably one of the biggest in South America right now. So I started sitting in the Deshimaru lineage, as I was working as an advertiser, and that was true for about 10 years.
Then, in 2013, I got married, again, and my wife and me decided to go to San Francisco as part of our honeymoon. I, I knew about Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and I had read Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, the whole thing. So, I said, you know, I’m going to San Francisco, I want to go and see the San Francisco Zen Center to see what all the fuss is about. So I did. I came to a public program on a Saturday morning. It was very different from what I was doing. Also, of course, Soto school of Zen. Yet the approach was very different to the Deshimaru approach. Mostly what I felt was something that Suzuki Roshi was very keen about, which was this, warm heart to warm heart feeling, a connection that was very close, people talk to you, and there was something that had been happening for 60 years here in the U. S. through the Suzuki Roshi lineage that moved me deeply. So then I went back after my honeymoon and I said, well, is there anything here that resembles this? I couldn’t find it. Talking to teachers there, you know, yeah, it’s, it’s a different approach. I was very connected with this very humane approach.
So every time I came back to Mexico for a meeting or something of my ad agency, I hopped on a plane and came to San Francisco. That was most of 2013 and part of 14. At one point I decided to do a Ango, a practice period, a three month practice period, here at the Beginner’s Mind Temple in the city center in San Francisco.
And that happened in the second half of 2014. So I came here for three months. And I said, okay, so I’m going to go there for three months, deep immersion. I’m going to become Buddha. I’m going to go back to Argentina as Buddha and, you know, transform everything. I came here for three months. I think it was one month in and I said, oh my God, I, I’m so far from Buddha.
I’m so not Buddha. So then in conversations with teachers here, I said, you know what? This is amazing. And, I cannot practice this in my own language, in Spanish, and this approach to practice, I feel, should be available for Spanish speakers. So then what, you know? And as they say, 20 years of therapy doesn’t make you a psychologist.
So I said, if I want to teach, I really need to prepare myself. I need to study. I need to ordain. And at that point in conversations with Paola, with my wife, we said, you know what, I’m leaving my advertising company to people who are working with me, I’ll give them the keys and I’ll go to San Francisco to study at least for a couple of years.
And I did. So, before that, I had a planned trip to Japan for six months because I’m a Way of Tea student, a chado student. So, I went to deepen my studies of tea. My wife is an artist. She went to deepen her art studies there. So, after six months in Japan, I came back and I went to Tassajara, which is a monastery, in Big Sur, of the San Francisco Zen Center.
I spent there a year and a half, more or less, three angos before coming back to the [San Francisco Zen] City Center. So that in a nutshell was what happened. In the beginning of my practice, I did my three angos in Tassjara, came back, I started practicing and working here in the City Center. At one point in 2018, the board of directors asked me if I would be the vice president.
Which I said yes to. And then after three years of that, I was asked if I would be the president, which I said yes to. And that was big . That was a lot of work. The Zen Center, it’s a big entity. It’s like the three big temples, Green Gulch and City Center and Tassajara, 180 residents.
It was a big challenge and a beautiful one. I would do it all over again. And of course I learned a lot. It was a huge dharma gate. Huge dharma gate.
Mariana Restrepo: That sounds like quite a journey. Can you tell us about Zen Sin Fronteras and what was the inspiration behind it, and how it came about?
Sozan Miglioli: Yes, thank you. So that was the main reason I came here to study. I felt that this particular approach or flavor of Zen, Suzuki Roshi lineage, was something that was very, very meaningful to me and that I wanted to share at some point.
And there was no groups of Spanish anywhere in Spain or anywhere in the world. There was a small Spanish group here at City Center in the center of San Francisco called Zen en Español. So I started leading that group. A few of us, it was six, seven of us, we met on Thursday nights.
We meditated, we read something. And before that I was, I was ordained as a priest. So I was doing my whole path to become a teacher. And at that point I started leading Zen in Espanol. It was beautiful, small and beautiful, but then COVID hit. And when that happened, we went online.
And what do you know, when we went online, it just started growing and growing and growing, people from all over the world joining for this. I think I I know media well in the sense that I’ve worked in advertising for many years. I started a podcast called Palabras en el Camino, and that grew a lot and suddenly I was having 250, 000 followers in social media and, and, many people came to Zen Sin Fronteras, to Zen Without Borders because of that as well. At the same time, I was president of the Zen Center, so, you know, I didn’t want to not do it, and at the same time, couldn’t really devote a lot of time to it, because it was mostly on, or absolutely on, my free time. But I started giving a dharma talk every Saturday morning, and we started doing zazen online, and we started doing online intensives. So that started to grow during COVID, just organically.
And honestly, the silver lining of COVID is it really changed the way we relate ourselves in distance. And it completely changed the way we study, schools, colleges, universities. It completely transformed the way we work.
And I’m deeply convinced it did change the way we can practice. And really, people from around the world, like, the critical mass of teachers that can actually speak Spanish is very, very, not there, yet, may be at some point, but there is something about proximity before this that was a key component.
Like, if you don’t have somebody teaching close to your house, at least an hour commute away, which is a lot, you couldn’t practice, right? That completely changed. And the potential felt so real to me that that’s where Zen Without Borders grew, started, right? Because I said, you know, this can and should be available regardless of where you live and what time zone you’re in.
Of course, meeting in person is really important. I feel it’s an “and,” not an “or.” So, I just came back from Argentina. We had a meeting there. I’m going to Spain now in December. We’re going to do a rohatsu sesshin there. So, there is that thing of going deep, in person, once or twice a year, but then the continuity, the seeing each other every week, the groups that we form and people are meeting together. That, different, that’s new, and that’s a huge opportunity.
I’m having a big number of practice discussions, one on one with students. Every week, mostly every day. You know, this morning I had one with someone in Mexico, this afternoon with someone in Spain. It’s mind blowing. It’s mind blowing. So I was very clear with this, that I came here to do this, so when my term as president was coming to an end, I talked here in the Zen Center, said, you know, now is the time, I’ve been here for 10 years in the San Francisco Zen Center, now is the time for this next step.
In which I made Zen Without Borders a 501c3, a non profit corporation in the U. S. And as of June 1st, that was my first day as not as president of the Zen Center, I started devoting myself fully into developing this, that I feel is, can be, and will be deeply transformational. And now I have all my energy put into this.
Of course, resources and development and fundraising is not the same in Hispanic countries, s in the U. S. But still, there’s people in the U. S., both people who are Hispanics in the U. S. that support this, or people who don’t speak Spanish in the U. S. that want to support this. So that’s happening already, and what can I tell you, Mariana? I’m blessed. I’m blessed. I’m so happy that this developed this way. One beautiful thing that happened was, the San Francisco Zen Center really supporting this project, supporting me, supporting this project, supporting Suzuki Roshi’s way of practice, getting close to more people from Spanish speakers around the world.
What kind of core values or interests in the Hispanic or Latinx community do you think that can be addressed through Buddhist practice? And what are any particular Soto Zen practices that you really think resonate with the Latinx community?
Mariana Restrepo: You used to practice a different lineage, but then when you met with this lineage, that really resonated with you. What was it that that really resonated?
Sozan Miglioli: Let’s see, Buddhism in general, Zen as well, it’s about dukkha, right?
About suffering and the cessation of suffering. So that’s kind of universal. There is one thing that I see that’s different in my engagement with Hispanic communities, which is our Christian upbringing. The Catholic thing, it’s much more present than what I see in communities here in the U S mostly, not generalizing, but mostly.
So there’s a lot of that. Most of us, including myself, come from a Catholic upbringing and everything that that entails, right? Not, not judging at all, it’s just different but it does position oneself in a particular way as we approach Buddhism, where there is a nontheistic religion or practice and there’s no God and this and that and then relationship with guilt or not, it’s, it’s very different.
But in the core, we’re talking about suffering, complexity, and the cessation of suffering. So people immediately connect with that.
The Soto school of Zen and the way of meditation that we do, which is shikantaza, right? Just sitting. It doesn’t mean that we, all we do is sit. No, that’s a wrong interpretation. Some people think that’s the case, but it’s not. It means that when you are sitting, all you do is sit. You don’t work with koans.
You don’t work with mantras. You don’t work with sensations of the body, you just sit. It’s a very hard way to sit, you know, just letting go of body and mind. And that’s a challenge for people. Especially coming from people who maybe [prefer] things like mindfulness, or that are more guided…. That’s a challenge.
And yet there is so much space in that, you know, in just sitting and just letting go, letting go. And what’s interesting is, it’s not about subtracting yourself from where you’re at, but it’s more about including more. It’s an expansive meditation. You include more instead of going to a small, small, small center, you know, just disappearing.
It’s inclusive: include, include, include. So that’s very relevant. Having said that, the Suzuki Roshi lineage and the San Francisco Zen Center lineage has developed a lot around interpersonal relationship in practice and the way the relationship between students, between students and teachers, the friendliness, uh, the warmness, that’s all very, very important.
So I see that within that approach, there is a connection that happens that in some more traditional kind of Zen, which is some kind of a more martial kind of Zen, where, you know, that’s a wall, sit facing the wall. Let’s talk in two years if you’re still here.
Mariana Restrepo: Yes, I was gonna say it’s interesting because, Hispanic or Latinx communities are very much community oriented, family oriented.
The aspect of like sharing and doing things as a community, as a family, right? And so some people, when they think of Zen, they might think of what you’re describing as something that is kind of very individualistic, just, staring at the wall. The communal aspect is not very apparent. Can you talk a little more about your mission in the human approach to the Soto Zen practice?
Sozan Miglioli: Absolutely. And I’m not saying this is the only approach, right. I go a lot to a temple here in Japantown Sokoji. And it’s very much like church, you know? There’s this communal aspect and it’s very traditional Soto Zen, right?
But there’s families coming together and all these children. I think a lot of Zen, the way we received it here was a more like the core, stoic, black robes sitting in front of the wall, we don’t talk to each other that much, right? And what I see in these temples, city temples, urban temples, and the way they relate to community, to family, the way the San Francisco Zen Center has worked around that, it’s not about letting go of tradition, you know? But once I heard something that I loved, which is, “tradition is tending the fire, not worshipping the ashes.”
And I really like that. And so tradition is there. And as you say, Latinx, we tend to be very communal, very family oriented. And that’s an aspect that for me, it’s a key dharma gate. It’s who we are and it’s everywhere. Because I talk to people in Spain or Argentina or Uruguay or, or here in the U.S. That aspect, that community aspect, that personal engagement is really alive.
So it needs to be part of our practice, at least for me. And this is something that I bring as a value to Zen Sin Fronteras as a key aspect of our practice.
Mariana Restrepo: So how has Zen Sin Fronteras supported this kind of community with Spanish speaking practitioners?
Sozan Miglioli: When we talk about a virtual community, for me now after COVID, it’s more like this is just a medium for connection, as there are others. And it’s just a community that connects sometimes virtually, sometimes in person, sometimes both. So it’s just tools to connect.
We do-in person meetings, as I’m saying, to get together, to know each other, to deepen our practice, and then we have the availability, the continuity, online. So, it’s just about being connected all the time. And that’s the “without borders” part, right? The Zen Sin Fronteras part.
How can we connect, be connected, all the time? And right now, the way we changed and the way we relate to each other, after COVID, that’s very true., You know, right now on the screen, I cannot see your legs, but it’s big enough for me to see your heart. So, that, that’s really true. And then you get together in person: Oh, look, you’re taller than I thought, or …., but then after that, people connect back online and already know each other and there’s some dynamic there going on.
So, I think it’s about community, and then we have tools to engage and to deepen that community, the online tool being one. And the idea here, or the challenge here, is how to keep being disruptive in this sense, making use of everything that we have right now and all the technology and all the possibility of flying cheap here and there and having the online thing and tools online and an app on the phone that will help you meditate or track your meditations.
I believe in all that. I believe it can be disruptive and I believe it can really, really, really support practice. It’s different. I know. Dogen is probably in his grave saying, what’s going on here? There is a big, big practice opportunity and, and that’s what we’re doing. And that’s how engaging as community, buddha, dharma, sangha, three treasures, three jewels.
The three of them need to be very, very present for this to be true practice.
Mariana Restrepo: Have you found that there’s maybe differences when you’re teaching an American audience versus a Spanish speaking audience, or are there practices that perhaps resonate more with one community than another, and can you share some of those examples?
Sozan Miglioli: There’s a number of things I could say. One is, people in the U.S. have a lot of access, to Zen. It amazes me.
You go anywhere and you pick up a stone and underneath there’s a Zen group, you know, it’s like, they’re everywhere. There’s so many compared to other countries in the world. And there’s so many teachers. That in itself makes a big difference. People know much more about this and that it exists and maybe they went to a group or two.
So usually when I start interacting with people around the world, Hispanics around the world and Spanish speakers, they, they have no idea what this is about. So that’s, that’s an important difference. And, I don’t know how true this is, but I found something online about there being 5 percent of dharma books in Spanish compared to English right so there’s only five books in Spanish for every hundred books in English of the dharma. That in itself it’s a huge difference when you’re talking to different audiences. And then, and specifically in the U.S., I think, I see a bit more pragmatism maybe? You know, that comes from the work culture in the U. S., it comes from maybe the Anglo aspect of things and people being more on the Protestant line or an Anglican line of upbringing, right? Not so much on the catholic part and, that is a difference, you know. Especially when it comes to ritual and people’s upbringing was in Catholicism, you know, it’s like, “this is the body of Christ. It’s doesn’t represent it, this is the body of Christ.” That takes a lot to believe, right, so, you start from there. So, yeah. There’s some differences, and mostly it’s about the religion, that’s the main religion in each country, and in the U. S. in particular, access. People have a lot of access here, which is wonderful. And we want to change that, and that’s what we’re doing right.
Mariana Restrepo: Growing up in Colombia and Catholic and meeting Buddhism, for me, it was like coming from a Catholic background and all these rituals and you go to Mass and there’s all these things happening and there’s singing and chanting and bells and, you know, incense and all the things.
So for me, Tibetan Buddhism was kind of like easier to go into because there were a lot of things that were familiar in a way. And I remember when I started practicing Tibetan Buddhism. I liked all the rituals, I liked all the things, and I used to think, Wow, these people who practice Zen, or these people who go into a Vipassana retreat, and don’t do anything, they just sit there. I can never do that, like, I will go insane if I don’t have something to do. But then things start to shift, and I was like, wow, that must be so liberating to not do, just sit, right? What was your personal experience with that?
Sozan Miglioli: Yeah, well, Zen is very ritualistic. Right? It’s less colorful because, you as know, Zen came from India to China, became Chan in China, very influenced by Taoism and the Tao Te Ching and whatnot.
Then it goes to Japan and becomes Zen. It’s influenced by the Japanese aesthetics. So that’s a lot of what you see. And yet have sometimes this idea of Zen that we imported from Asia, that it’s, Just sitting, we don’t do anything, we’re there in front of a wall, and actually, as I tell you, it’s very communal.
It’s a lot about sitting, and studying, and talking, and learning, highly ritualistic as any other form of Buddhism. And you have all your ceremonies, and you perform weddings, and baptisms, and funerals. So, I think there’s a gap to what Zen is. It is and can be right now here and it is in many places and an idea of Zen of being very closed down and stoic and sitting and nobody’s talking and that, and I don’t see it that way.
That was what moved me when I came here to the Zen Center at San Francisco. I was like, oh, wait a minute. People are eating together and people are laughing together and people are practicing together in a way that’s very alive, very humane, and then I go to Sokoji, the Japanese Soto Zen temple in Japantown, and they’re eating together, and they’re laughing together, and they’re even having a beer together, and I say, whoa, wait a minute.
So this is practice as well. Oh yeah, of course. Okay, but then, when you sit, you sit. Of course. And then when you study, you study, of course. And then we understand Zen not as a book in your bookshelf, but as a bookshelf itself. And that changes everything, because then everything is practice, everything is Zen.
And that’s great, I think.
Mariana Restrepo: Shifting here a little bit again, what do you think the Latinx community can contribute to the larger Buddhist landscape? What are things that as Latinos, we can contribute to Buddhist practice, whether Zen or any lineage? What do we bring to the table?
Sozan Miglioli: Well, you talked about community. You talked about the way we relate to each other, how close we are to each other, how intimate we can get, in a good way. I think that’s really important. The expression of practice of togetherness, expression of practice, of being with others and practicing with others.
It’s a huge thing that I feel we have and we can offer. Not that it’s not happening in other [communities], of course, it’s happening everywhere, but this is a specific thing that I think the Hispanic community has. Which is that warmth, that, that cohesion as a community that people who go to Colombia or Argentina or Spain say, “Oh, but you know, everybody gets together and they have so much fun and there’s….” Yeah, yeah, not better, not worse, just different.
And in the third treasure, the treasure of sangha, I think there’s a lot that can be learned from that. So I really, I really appreciate that. And there’s a lot to do, right? What you are doing, what I’m doing, all of us who are working towards growing, fostering Buddhism in Hispanic communities.
It’s really young. I feel sometimes like maybe what happened here in the late 60s or, you know, the Beat generation, we’re kind of there. Right. And so there’s a lot to do and that’s fantastic.
Mariana Restrepo: Yes, I mean, it’s like we’re at a point in Latin America. But Buddhism is really exponentially growing. Ten years ago, like you said, you couldn’t find a center within an hour commute, and you didn’t have that opportunity.
And nowadays, not to the extent that it is in the States, but it is growing exponentially and you can find not only a Zen center, but a Tibetan center, a Vipassana center, a Theravada center, you can find the different lineages establishing and adapting and growing in Latin America, which is really great.
And we have a lot of Latino practitioners in the United States, which brings me to my last question, which is, how can Buddhist teachers, Latino or not, and Buddhist communities and sanghas serve and support their Latino practitioners?
What kind of things can they do to foster inclusion and engagement of the Latino practitioners in their communities?
Sozan Miglioli: You know, you used the key word there, which is teachers. Many, many people around the world, in Latino and Hispanic communities, don’t have teachers.
So they self regulate and the one who knows more is the one who’s leading and there’s a reason why there is dharma transmission and everything. So, so I think we need to foster strong communities led by people who actually really prepare themselves for that. Because then if not, what is not necessarily well-balanced and it can, it can be more, um, deceiving than any other thing. So it’s important that there’s more teachers
to foster that, right? To keep, keep making more teaching people, keep studying, keep involving themselves, and they can be lay teachers or priests. They don’t need to be just priests, you know. I’m talking from the Zen part. We have one thing right now, which is I like to call “Google Roshi.”
And, that’s something that’s not small. People are just self-educating themselves in whatever they find when they’re tapping in Google. And that’s a concern. So, as an answer to your question, how can we keep engaging people? We need to keep preparing people to lead.
At every different aspect or level or moment in practice, I think we need to keep creating leaders. Buddhist leaders, Tibetan, Zen, we need to keep creating leaders that can lead others and help others and understand how to relate to dukkha and suffering in a way that fosters awakening. We need to keep doing what we’re doing, and keep providing spaces where people can devote to their practice and keep deepening and some of those becoming leaders to guide others.
I think that’s really important.
Mariana Restrepo: Great. Thank you, Sozan, so much for speaking with us today. It was a pleasure. Please keep us updated with all this stuff with Zen Sin Fronteras. It’s a really wonderful project that I know is doing a lot of good to the Spanish speaking community.
So thank you for your work with that. And thank you for being here with us today.
Sozan Miglioli: Thank you, Mariana. Thank you very much. And thank you for all that you are doing: Buddhadharma, Lion’s Roar, everything that’s happening. That’s a key component of how we keep growing our communities in wealth and in depth.
So thank you so, so much and hopefully talk to you soon.
