Photo by Romy Senderos

Photo by Shundo David Haye

Replacing the tatami is one of many planned changes to refurbish our urban temple, and that is why we could use your financial support.

Donations of any size to support the cost of this project would be deeply appreciated. Each new tatami mat costs $200. Please consider sponsoring a tatami or joining with several friends to sponsor one.

NOTE/UPDATE: If you would like to make a donation, please contact Tova Green, the City Center Director, at 415-354-0383 or ccdirector@sfzc.org.

While everyone in our wider sangha is welcome to attend, please bear in mind that space is limited at City Center. Most seats in the Buddha Hall will be reserved for those participating in the ceremonies.

To include both the near and wider sangha in these celebrations, both events will be live video streamed on SFZC’s channel at Livestream.

Stepping Down Ceremony: Saturday, February 11 at 5:00pm PST

Mountain Seat Ceremony: Sunday, February 12 at 3:30pm PST

Ryushin at Mountain Seat 2003

Ryushin Paul Haller became co-abbot of SF Zen Center in 2003, and was named City Center Abbot in 2010 as part of the abbacy restructuring.

Kiku Christina Lehnherr

Kiku Christina Lehnherr served as City Center Tanto 2003-2006 and returns to City Center as she assumes the position of Abbess.

Suzuki Roshi in 1962

From our archives.

Photographer unknown.

Photo by Shundo David Haye

Both events will be held at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center (Zenshinji):

Alumni Celebration Weekend Retreat
April 26-29, 2012
By registration

Great Assembly Anniversary Sesshin
Co-led by Tenshin Reb Anderson & Sojun Mel Weitsman
April 29-May 4, 2012
By application

Registration and applications are now available! Separate registration is required for each event. For more information, please see our Celebrating 50 Years website.

Throughout 2012, San Francisco Zen Center is offering an array of public programs to commemorate fifty years of cultural and spiritual engagement.

These events, including the two at Tassajara, are held in appreciation of the many friends and sangha members who have supported Zen Center since its inception.

Together we look forward to celebrating the founding of SFZC and the authentic practice our compassionate teacher Shunryu Suzuki Roshi brought to the West.

200 Industrial Road #122
San Carlos, CA

Photo by Tom Ingalls

Renshin Bunce, a former resident of Tassajara and City Center, is starting a sitting group on the Peninsula. Renshin was ordained by Blanche Hartman in 2003 and has been training with Myogen Steve Stücky since 1996. She works as a hospice chaplain. Renshin writes:

I am starting a sitting group on Sunday evenings on the Peninsula, and hope you can join me. I suggest that we come together and sit for 40 minutes, then have a 20 minute discussion period – just basic practice, to finish our weekends together.

Contact info: renshin@gmail.com

Chairs will be available, but please bring your own cushions.

Google map

From the archives, this 1989 interview with Laurie and Reb by Dean Rolston gives a poignant glimpse into an earlier era. Published in Zen Center’s print journal Wind Bell, it was commissioned by Interview Magazine after Reb quoted Laurie in a public talk and was asked if he would be interested in speaking with her for a story in Interview.

Laurie Anderson & Reb Anderson at Green Gulch Farm in 1989.

DEAN ROLSTON: Once Laurie said that William Burroughs was Buddhist in his use of language. What would a Buddhist use of language be?

REB ANDERSON: I would say it’s using language to set us free from language. . . . It’s not so much that we use language to set ourselves free, because that would just be motivated by a desire to be free, but rather that by understanding how language is working, we recognize its unbound character.

LAURIE ANDERSON: On the one hand there’s spoken language, and on the other there’s the printed word, and in the middle there’s music — which is kind of like the chanting we did this morning. Language is a terrible trick. People think that just because they know the name, they know the thing.

. . .

RA: In fact, you never really remember the past: you’re just now making up what you “call” the past.

DR: Isn’t there some verifiable correlation between what happened in the past and, say, what’s recorded on film?

RA: To me that’s just group psychosis. Some people may have been at the event and not remember a thing that’s on the film. I feel that all history, including its documentation, is just totally concocted.

LA: Of course it’s concocted. People may read about it happening, but that’s not what really happened.

—”Language and Communication: An Interview with Abbot Reb Anderson and Poet-Artist Laurie Anderson,” by Dean Rolston, Wind Bell vol 23 no 1 (Spring 1989) [Download PDF]

The interview was conducted in the library at Green Gulch Farm and transcribed at Andy Warhol’s Factory studios. Rolston, described in POZ magazine as a former “high-powered Wall Street attorney, art world maven and part-time Zen student,” had left New York to spend his final years living mostly in Muir Beach, and practiced at Green Gulch Farm. He died of complications of AIDS in 1994.

Due to a change of editors, the piece didn’t appear in Interview. But Laurie continued to visit Green Gulch several times in the late ’80s and early ’90s.

For information on the upcoming public conversation with Reb and Laurie, and to purchase tickets, see Anderson & Anderson in Conversation.

Thursday, March 15, 7:00pm

Benefiting the Restoration of Green Gulch Farm’s Beloved Hope Cottage

142 Throckmorton Avenue
Mill Valley, CA 94942

Join us for an amazing evening as performance artist, composer and musician Laurie Anderson sits down with San Francisco Zen Center Senior Dharma Teacher Tenshin Reb Anderson to discuss a little Zen, a little art, a little life, and the inspiration that is Hope Cottage.

Hope Cottage is a much beloved place of refuge and retreat at Green Gulch Farm and it is in desperate need of repair. This evening is a benefit to raise funds for a new roof as well as other renovations.

Tickets will be available online and through EventBrite, and go on sale January 23.

For a 1989 interview with Reb and Laurie from the Zen Center archives, see Wind Bell Interview with Laurie Anderson and Reb Anderson.

Three dozen monks are currently participating in the 89th ango of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. Ango, or Practice Period, is an intense time of meditation, study, and mindful work.

Photo by Shundo David Haye

The sangha (community) is currently studying Dogen’s Mountains and Waters Sutra with Abiding Abbess Eijun Linda Cutts. The Abbess said in an inspiring Dharma talk in early January that it was an appropriate sutra (sacred text) given Tassajara’s rugged, wild environment. She encouraged us all to explore our relationship with nature by taking hikes and maintaining mindfulness as we move through the valley, taking care of daily tasks.

The group of monks has faced below freezing weather nearly each morning of 2012. Their bodies clad in black and their minds insulated by the Dharma (Buddhist teachings), the monks awoke to a low of 19 degrees on a recent January morning. Fortunately, the only things the frigid temperature burst were delusions arising in the zendo (meditation hall) and pipes in the upper barn.

On the beautiful evening of January 17, Erin “Bright Pearl” Merk entered the zendo as the shuso (head monk, who shares the Abbess’ seat in a training position). She took her seat with the encouragement of the Abbess, the sangha, the Buddhas and ancestors, and the stars shining in the night.

As in the sutra, the peaceful abiding at Tassajara flows on like a river and stands like a mountain.