Celebrate the winter solstice with sangha friends. After a 35-minute meditation and service, we will gather to entertain each other on this long winter night with instruments, song, favorite poetry new and old, stories and skits. Bring your creativity and share your hidden talents. Bring a treat to share after the entertainment. We offer a […]
The Full Moon Ceremony acknowledges the karma created by our intentional actions, and reminds us to renew our commitment to the ethical conduct expressed as the 16 Bodhisattva Precepts. These are guiding principles for our daily conduct in the world. This ceremony is rooted in a ritual from pre-Buddhist India. To prepare for the ceremony […]
Linda began Zen practice in 1974 at San Francisco Zen Center and currently practices with Reb Anderson at GGF and No Abode. Linda is a translator and scholar of devotional/mystical poetry from North India, especially the 15th century poet Kabir. She taught at Stanford in the Dept. of Religion Studies for 21 years. Her publications […]
Topic: "PRACTICING WITH THE PRECEPTS - We Vow, We Receive, Giving Arises" Experiential exercise will be offered during discussion. Rev. Parāvṛtti Doralee Grindler Katonah serves as Ino, or head of the meditation hall. She studied in the Soto Zen lineage with Sojun Diane Martin, founder and guiding teacher of Udumbara Zen Center in Illinois and […]
On April 14, 1963, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. led a march to a government building in Birmingham, Alabama to protest the city’s ongoing refusal to eliminate segregation, including the denial of the voter rights of Black people. He was arrested during this march and placed in solitary confinement. During this dark time in jail, […]
Reverend Mary Mocine, former abbess of Clear Water Zendo, trained at San Francisco Zen Center, Berkeley Zen Center and Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery. She was priest ordained by Sojun Mel Weitsman in 1994 and received dharma transmission from him in 2005. She also studied with Jikai Myo-ōn Yvonne Rand, former Abbess Zenkei Blanche Hartman and […]
*Zoom link to program Shawn Hampton is originally from Texas. He moved to California in 2020 and began attending VSZS in 2023. He has been involved with Contemplative Christianity for many years and spent 12 years pursuing monastic life, 9 of which were spent with the Carthusian Order in France: a community of solitary hermit […]
Rev. So’on Jim Hare serves as Tanto, or head of practice. He lived in the San Francisco Zen Center community from 1980 to 1984 and was lay ordained by Tenshin Reb Anderson in 1985. He served as Head Student at Green Gulch Farm during the spring 2002 practice period, and was priest ordained by Rev. Myo Lahey in […]
Our Earth Day celebration will begin with sitting meditation, followed by outside walking meditation and observation. Then we will return to the zendo for service to chant the Self-Receiving and Employing Samadhi, which includes these lines: Grass trees and lands which are embraced by this teaching together radiate a great light and endlessly expound the […]
Allison Claire is both a lay-ordained Zen practitioner and a Unitarian Universalist. She has been a peace and justice activist, a lawyer for death row inmates, a longtime federal employee, and the single mother of triplets. Her practice is deeply rooted in the Dharma of the Green World and the principles of engaged Buddhism. *Zoom […]