The Director of Development must be able to lead a comprehensive Annual Giving effort that raises approximately $600,000 a year in annual support, including individual major gifts, membership, foundation support, mail appeals, special events and planned giving. This effort will be executed by the Director of Annual Giving, with a goal to grow from $600,000 in contributions currently to $1 million by 2015, and at least $1.5 million by 2018. The Director of Development will be responsible for the major gifts and planned giving components of Annual Giving, leading board and volunteer solicitors and holding a portfolio of donors and prospects as a lead cultivator-solicitor.

The Director of Development will also direct the third and final two-year phase of a $17 million capital campaign with a $2 million goal to complete the campaign. The Director of Development must be able to effectively work with campaign leadership and fundraising counsel.

Excerpt from “Why the Wheel Turns Three Times” in the Summer 2012 issue of Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly.

Tenshin Reb Anderson, former abbot of SF Zen Center and currently resident Senior Dharma Teacher, lives at Green Gulch Farm and teaches at all three SFZC locations. He is author of Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains: Dharma Talks on Zen Meditation and Being Upright: Zen Meditation and the Bodhisattva Precepts, both also published by Rodmell Press.

The mission of Beyond Measure School for Contemplative Care is to foster awakening, dignity, and harmony in the twilight years of life through engagement with contemplative practices. Beyond Measure is a collaboration between Jennifer Block, the former Education Director at Zen Hospice Project, and the San Francisco Zen Center.

Ultimately, this program will inform the Zen-inspired senior living community currently being developed by SFZC and Northern California Presbyterian Homes and Services. This community will be a Continuing Care Retirement Community and will be open to all.  “The Zen-inspired Senior Living Community we are developing has at its heart this contemplative care practice.  All people will be trained in how to care for each other in this non- dual way.  Without this training at its heart, it would just be a collection of beautiful building,” said Susan O’Connell, SFZC Vice President and associate director of Care Beyond Measure.

The school offers an upcoming June workshop (The Circle of Caregiver, Receiver, & Gift with special guest Dr. Grace Dammann) at Green Gulch Farm and, beginning in the fall, a yearlong certificate training, which engages individual, family, and professional caregivers in contemplative practices and care methods through 11 months of coursework.

Jennifer Block

In anticipation of these events, we sat down with Jennifer Block to find out more about the school, its mission, and the revolutionary partnership between Buddhist teachings and caregiving.

What was the inspiration behind the school for contemplative care?

Many years ago, SFZC discovered a natural connection with the compassion and wisdom they’d been cultivating on the cushion that could be immediately applied for caring for people who were sick. That was an incredible discovery which was not entirely surprising since the Buddha became the Buddha because of his encounters with aging, sickness, and dying. This was kind of what got him out of the palace and onto the spiritual path.

How did you find yourself on this path as an educator and caregiver?

Spiritual practice and service were the early roots for me. I joined Zen Hospice as a volunteer in 1998, where I specialized in end of life care. I trained with Frank Ostaseski and started teaching a course in Buddhist spiritual care at the Sati Center with Gil Frohnsdal and Paul Haller. Buddhists, through mindfulness practice, have a lot of skill in dealing with a great deal of suffering without jumping into solutions. We tend to give people a little more space to be where they are before we jump into anything. One of the most common complaints from people is that the medical system is dehumanized, and Buddhists can bring a lot of presence in a way that people feel encouraged, strengthened, even healed.

How is this school different than your other projects?

From Zen Hospice, I know how much people from all walks of life need training in reclaiming their own innate capacity to care for each other and how professionals crave non-clinical or a different model of care based on mutual benefit. We begin with our own relationship with death, grief, and loss before we talk about how to care for somebody else. So this is a very different starting point, and that’s what this training is about.

What is it about the Buddhist teachings that lend themselves to this work?

Mindfulness strengthens one’s ability to be with pain or lessens one’s fear of pain. Life is painful, the Buddha taught, but how we respond to the pain, how we hold the pain, can lessen it in the long run and also awaken us to our natural inherent good heart and equanimous mind. This is about a direct experience of whatever is happening. Of coming closer to it and not turning away. Because we live in a death denying society, this is a significant invitation. I’ve found it’s an opportunity for people that they need or are craving since institutionalization of care has disconnected us from some of our inherent abilities.

Why are we so accustomed to avoiding talking about death, dying, and grief?

Many of us are living outside our original communities – so we can feel like strangers to each other. A lot of mourners feel very isolated because people are nice but don’t know how to be present. They don’t come towards, they turn away. The Bodhisattva move is toward suffering, not away. In that moment, how can I move towards? How can I do that which feels like a reach but not an imposition?

Can you give an example of how to approach someone in mourning in a mindful way?

The question, “How are you doing?” can be perceived as evaluative. Compare that to “What’s it like for you today?” That says, I remember your loss, you’ve been on my mind, what’s your day like today? That frees the person to say, “I had a bad morning.” “What’s it like now” is a different question than, “How is it going?” After a training, people go home and hug their partners and say “I’m sorry, that doesn’t matter”… It reawakens us. That’s the gift of playing close attention – we wake up to the connection, the love, our place in the world, and what matters.

It’s about trying to be with the experience of death and not adding anything else. To help the person feel encouraged, guided, and access their own intuition. Our Zen training helps us put the medical inside a larger container of a humanist or relational view. I think meditative practice, the study of the way things are, helps us see the truth and remove some of this delusion. You have so much more choice when you’re not in the flow of the medical process.

The most important thing is to have a relationship to hold the grief process. And that’s what the Zen teachings do so beautifully, create a container to hold the changes and the loss of hope. That’s all we’re working on all the time, to say, “It’s like this,” without a lot of strife and discord. That’s the way to stay with the experience and not turn away. This person needs support in being met and seen where she is right now. So, everybody needs this training. Whether they come for a lecture, a day, or eight times over the course of a year, we’re building skill, we’re strengthening our capacity for contemplative practice.

Who might benefit from the courses taught by the school?

This is health care, not just end of life care. For instance, someone could come because they work in mental health services, cares for a disabled child, or cares for a parent with Alzheimer’s. They can be a professional or civilian. The skills, theory, and learning process are pretty much the same. Professionals have something to learn from civilians and vice versa, so that mix will be a wonderful factor, creating the feeling that we’re all in this together. We’ll be building relationships and opening this door as wide as we can make it. And it works because we all have this thing in common. We’re on our way to our deaths and we care about each other and it is our nature is to be connected.  We are fulfilling our craving for community.

—

The first phase of Beyond Measure is a daylong workshop and a yearlong training launching in the fall. To find out more, contact Jennifer, attend an introductory workshop, and read more on the Beyond Measure website.

It’s no secret. Haiku are not only one of the world’s briefest and most universal literary forms of the 21st century—haiku are also pure Zen. Haiku are nuggets of creative, present-moment, natural awareness. In this special day we’ll map the basics, take a relaxed haiku walk (ginko) around the splendid grounds of Green Gulch, and share what we encounter, written and unwritten.

Daigan Lueck in the GGF zendo by Alison Bank

Daigan Lueck, a Zen Buddhist priest, poet, and painter, has been a long-time resident practitioner at all three SF Zen Center locations. He now lives at Green Gulch Farm with his wife, Arlene Lueck. He was ordained in 1990 by Mel Weitsman, who gave him the name Daigan (Great Vow) Tatsudo (To Accomplish). He was shuso at Tassajara in 1994 and received Dharma transmission from Zoketsu Norman Fischer in 1999.

Gary Gach, a Buddhist teacher, writer, and poet, is recipient of a number of fellowships and grants, and is a speaker at keynotes, workshops, and panels. He teaches Buddhism at Stanford Continued Studies. His Public Personal Home Page includes links that cover his many interests, including the haiku corner on the Tricycle web site.

Summer Grasses: How-To Haiku

Photo from Jacqueline Mohanna.

This event was part of the 2012 Zen Center 50 celebration.

In celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge, Greens Restaurant will host a special dinner featuring a seasonal menu prepared by Executive Chef Annie Somerville.

Greens Restaurant is nestled on the western point of Fort Mason with the best seats in town for the forthcoming fireworks display, set to start at 9:30pm on the evening of Sunday, May 27. With Greens Restaurant’s sweeping views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Marina and Marin Headlands, there’s no better place to be on this historic night in San Francisco; fireworks will be set off from a barge under the bridge and atop the bridge itself.

The dinner will include two seatings: 5:30-6:45pm, will have an a la carte dinner menu prior to the fireworks display, perfect for those who plan to walk down to the Marina after dinner to watch the show (early seating does not include viewing of fireworks, and will be limited to two hours from the time of reservation). The latter seating will begin at 7:30 through 9pm with a 4-course prix fixe menu for $75 (beverages, tax and gratuity not included) and viewing of the fireworks. Reservations are required directly through Greens (415.771.6222, from 10am until 9pm daily), no Open Table reservations will be accepted. Please note, Greens will be closed to the public on Saturday evening, May 26 and Sunday, May 27 for brunch.

Pat S. Kilduff, Director of Marketing and External Affairs at the Fort Mason Center, enlisted the culinary excellence of Annie Somerville and Greens Pastry Chef Sandi Sumaylo to design and distribute an exclusive Commemorative 75th Anniversary Cookie in honor of the 75th Anniversary of the Golden Gate Bridge. The cookie was released on Mothers’ Day, May 13, at brunch and “Greens to Go.” Kilduff comments, “Annie Somerville and the staff of Greens Restaurant have been offering the best ‘food with a view’ of the Golden Gate Bridge for more than 30 years. Who better to offer a special cookie on the occasion of the 75th anniversary of the bridge.” The shortbread cookie is rich in butter flavor with a hint of Madagascar vanilla. Its frosting is made with royal icing, and the detailing of the bridge is presented with the iconic international orange color.

Pathways to Gratefulness is set forth to awaken the practice of gratefulness as attendees explore and engage through live conversation, music, and movement with renowned presenters from a variety of perspectives. The distinct group of invited guests includes celebrated poet David Whyte, cultural anthropologist and award-winning author Angeles Arrien, physicist Fritjof Capra, and entrepreneur and author Chip Conley, who will share dialogue, ideas and inspiration with additional standout speakers and panelists, including Anthony Chavez, Barrett Ersek, Dr. James Gordon, Chungliang Al Huang, Michael Lerner, PhD, Toni Powell, Dr. Brenda Wade, and Dr. Philip Watkins. Video presentations will be shown featuring Zoketsu Norman Fischer, W. S. Merwin, and Joan Halifax. Dr. Brenda Wade will emcee the event, and San Jose Taiko will conduct a live performance. The lead sponsor for Pathways to Gratefulness is Herst Wellness. Interviews and photos are available upon request.

Pathways to Gratefulness will encourage practices that support reconnection with one’s true potential and the evolution of being an increasingly connected, aware being. The event strives to provide a space for self-discovery and rejuvenation through a greater manifestation of the spirit of gratefulness in each of us. It also serves as a fundraiser to support the international outreach efforts of the non-profit organization, A Network for Grateful Living, which through its website (pathways.gratefulness.org) offers free resources, as well as workshops, retreats, and local groups that teach people how to cultivate gratefulness. ANG*L aims to establish a spiral of learning, practice, and sharing that opens out into real-life action and service to society.

Teah Strozer, guiding teacher at the Brooklyn Zen Center and a practice leader at SFZC, will be coming to City Center to lead three weeks of study, mindful work, and zazen during the annual Summer Retreat (July 14 – August 4). This annual, intensive period of practice, which will explore the concept of time, will end with a 5-day sesshin.

Photo by Shundo David Haye

In an interview from Brooklyn last week, Teah reflected on the value of joining the City Center sangha for this special three-week practice period.

What is unique about this particular event?

“We are trying to encourage everyone who can to take this time to stop and nurture themselves in this way. Because of the intensity and duration of the retreat, participants will have the opportunity to reconnect to zazen in a deeper way than what we can usually do.”

What is the experience like? How is it valuable to our urban practice community?

“What we give our attention to is what grows, and what we spend time doing is what we value. It’s why Christina [Lehnherr, City Center Abbess] is so clear about supporting everyone who can to do this retreat together. This is a chance to deepen our practice together as a sangha. People are always coming and going in the City, so being able to do a retreat together will help build intimacy.”

What is the value of stepping out of our busy city lives to participate in this kind of retreat?

“If we are serious about our own freedom from karmic, conditioned, habit mind, we can live intimately connected with and open to other living beings. In this way, we can respond with some kind of sanity to this hurting world. We need to make a choice to stop the wild seeking and grasping outside and look inside to a still, quiet place. It is from this place that we can respond with a hand held out to bring others along. Everything benefits from our practice. The point is to stop, sit, and look, receiving what we deeply already are.”

Teah recently led a spring practice period at the Brooklyn Zen Center which was also focused on the topic of time. One of her students, Ruth Ozeki, had this to say:  “It may be true that there’s no such thing as time, but try telling that to a New Yorker [or a San Franciscan, for that matter]. I think we must be especially talented at making big problems out of this particular mental construct, so Teah’s teachings about time during this practice period have been really helpful, practical, and…timely. Her retreats are powerful, both for the intimacy she calls forth from the group, but most of all because of the presence, insight and skill she brings to face-to-face individual meetings. She’s gathered together a wide range of study material for discussion and contemplation, but she grounds the exploration in a down-to-earth practice of this moment that will stay with us forever.”

Teah Strozer

Brooklyn Zen Center co-founder Greg Snyder also had some thoughts to share about time, the theme of study at both SFZC and BZC: “In my experience, these teachings point to the way we construct linear time. Whether it be framed as memory or expectation, the course believed to run from past to future is born in our ongoing comparisons of present experience to thought. Once this is seen clearly, a critical piece of the architecture of self comes unhinged. Without the illusion of linear time as the backbone of the self’s perceived permanence, the truth of life as this one, ever-changing, effervescent moment is illuminated. But our society has convinced us that virtually nothing is more important than tying ourselves to the clock and it’s ever-anxious cousin, the to-do list. Seeing time for what it is requires stillness and bravery – a willingness to fall off a ledge into now. So we sit, we study and we observe as the dharma unfolds. What joy!”

We hope you are able to join the City Center sangha for a joyful investigation of the illusion of time and the only moment we know – this present miracle of a moment – during the Summer Retreat. More information, including how to apply, is available on our website: City Center Summer Retreat.

by Tova Green

Shinji Eshima, bassist and composer, is the guiding spirit behind the June 4 concert called Resounding Compassion, in celebration of Zen Center’s 50th anniversary. I first met Shinji in 2011, when I joined a group of Zen students to chant at performances of the ballet RAkU for which he composed the music.

Shinji agreed to an interview for Sangha News Weekly, in which we discussed his Buddhist family, the sources and nature of his inspiration as a composer, and his deep commitment to peace.

Tova: You once mentioned that your grandmother was a Buddhist. Can you tell me about the role of Buddhism in your life?

Shinji: I was raised in a Buddhist family. My grandparents came to the United States as Buddhist missionaries. They founded a church and a children’s center for the children of farmers in Guadalupe, near Santa Barbara. They later moved to Berkeley, where my grandmother, Shinobu Matsuura, started the Berkeley Buddhist Temple and was the first ordained female Buddhist minister. My grandmother and my uncle Kanmon Imamura, founded the Buddhist Study Center in Berkeley, where Alan Watts, Gary Snyder and Jack Kerouac were students. Because my grandfather was a minister [and thus a community leader] he was interned in Tule Lake during World War II and separated from his wife and children, who were in another internment camp. He died soon after the war. Two of my uncles were Bishops in the Buddhist Church, one in Hawaii and the other in Canada.

Tova: What was your relationship with your grandmother like?

Shinji: I grew up in Berkeley. My grandmother taught Japanese and calligraphy. I remember hearing temple bells. My grandmother had an obutsudan (altar) and would offer rice and chant. I helped her make pickles.

Tova: When did music become part of your life?

Shinji: My mother was born in Hiroshima and came to the United States with her parents when she was three. She played piano and encouraged me to study the piano. I won a piano competition as a kid but had a memory lapse in a performance which was very embarrassing. I switched to playing bass in high school, partly because I wouldn’t have to memorize as many notes and because a bass player was needed for the school orchestra. I wrote an essay about my “mistake” and how it turned out to be beneficial which got me into Stanford.  After I graduated I followed a girlfriend to New York and ended up at Juilliard.

Tova: What about composing?

Shinji: I’ve always been composing because it makes me happy, first on the piano when I was a kid. My first major success was the music I composed last year for the ballet RAkU. This music was based on a piece I wrote for the 50th anniversary of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki which was performed in Grace Cathedral in 1995.

Tova: You compose so beautifully for each of the instruments in the orchestra in RAkU. How did you learn to do that?

Shinji: I’ve played in orchestras for 32 years. My teachers are everyone I’m surrounded by.  I’ve played all the greatest music in the world. That helps me when I’m composing.

Tova: Where does your inspiration for composing come from?

Shinji: When I play the bass I feel the vibrations of it, feel the music. It’s like the voice deep inside you when you chant. When you connect with the resonance, that’s inspiration. Inspiration connects you with something that’s true and something beautiful. This can be expressed by any modality – music, poetry, dance. Things can get in the way – distractions, desires – of realizing what’s true, but it’s there. When you create music or art and others appreciate it, it’s the same experience. It “rings true.” It’s a language that expresses the meaning of life. The best word is compassion. When it makes you feel so open, it’s vulnerability and strength at the same time. Then you are open to another person’s feelings. So ultimately it’s love.

Tova: The same kind of opening can happen in Zen mediation; and it can create a spaciousness that allows us to connect with others, including those we might initially dislike or disagree with.

Shinji: Music is about connection, connecting the dots. In music one note by itself is meaningless. When you connect the dots vertically you have harmony; when you connect them horizontally you have melody. The relationship between the dots is what makes music.

Tova: An orchestra is like that as well. It takes all the instruments playing together to bring a symphony to life.

Shinji: And an opera can involve 500 people – the orchestra, chorus, soloists, people working backstage… And then there’s the audience, and bowing and applause. When the performers bow at the end of a piece they are bowing to the inner goodness of the people who appreciate their music. It goes both ways.

Tova: At Zen Center we bow to one another a lot, a way of expressing respect and connection. To return to the theme of the anniversary concert, Resounding Compassion, can you tell me why you were drawn to having a bell made by Al Farrow for this event?

Shinji: Al Farrow has made sculptures out of bullets and artillery shells for over 40 years. I think he’s the Picasso of our time, a parallel to “Guernica.” Bullets are sometimes used in the name of religion. Al Farrow creates sculptures of cathedrals, synagogues and mosques out of bullets. I remember a haiku about a bell clearing the air. I thought there should be a bell in this concert, a bell made of bullets to give the bullets a new purpose. We don’t have to be violent; everyone knows it. Compassion is more powerful than hatred.

Tova: During World War II Suzuki Roshi had to give the temple bells of Rinso-in, his temple in Japan, to the Japanese navy to be melted down for ship propellers. I’ve read that this was heart-breaking for him; he especially loved the big old bell and thought of it as part of the soul of Rinso-in.

Shinji: And now we are doing the opposite, turning weapons into bells.

Alumni also took advantage of the opportunity for talking, reminiscing and performing for one another at a lively skit night.  Although many participants did not coincide during their time as Zen Center students, through a common love of practice and Tassajara, they were soon like old friends.

Their time at Tassajara closed with a ceremony at the Suzuki Roshi memorial and included a procession through the new Torii/Gate, which was built during this year’s work period. Torii are commonly associated with Shinto shrines in Japan, marking the entry to sacred space, but also have been adopted by Buddhist temples. Our new Tassajara Torii/Gate, which marks the way to the site of Suzuki Roshi’s ashes, is a feature that, according to SFZC Abbot Myogen Steve Stücky, “accents the transition and deepens the experience of taking the path.”

After the procession through the gate up the memorial, Abbot Steve led a ceremony in honor of Suzuki Roshi, during which he spoke a few words of gratitude. They appear in their entirety below. For more photos of the weekend, visit the Alumni Facebook page.

Photo by Judith Keenan

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“What does it mean to Transmit the Light? to be a “Vessel of the Dharma?”
Shogaku Shunryu Suzuki, Daiosho!!! You know that the dharma needs a human form.
Your aspiration to truly live the Great Way arose early as a boy in Japan,
With a vow to leave home and train as an apprentice monk at age twelve.
Your path of practice and study opened you to deep insights – dharma understanding that
Was challenged and matured by temple responsibilities as a young priest,
And tempered by family needs, by tragic loss, by war.
You accepted the sometimes harsh realities of life
as opportunities to care for those around you
and to study and prepare for unknown dharma gates –
a potential future mission for dharma teaching in another culture.

When causes and conditions ripened, you were ready,
you responded with courage, leaving home again,
this time flying from your native land, friends, and family
Arriving in San Francisco to serve as priest tending the needs of the traditional
Japanese-American congregation of the Soto Zen Temple, Sokoji.

And here, in the spring of 1959 you resolved to turn over a new leaf.
You responded to Americans who asked about Zen by inviting them
to come and taste the dharma – to the actual experience of zen practice.
Saying: “I sit zazen at 5:45 each morning. Please join me”

Through your quiet dedicated effort, your willingness to meet whomever appeared;
You planted the flag of dharma in American soil.
A new sangha emerged and 50 years ago, San Francisco Zen Center was born.
A few years later, you founded the first Zen Monastery in the West right here, in the mountains of the Ventana Wilderness at Tassajara, where we now gather to honor your life and your legacy.

In December 1971, your twelve years here ended. In that precious time
You offered the precepts to many students, you ordained priests,
And trained a successor. You created a new vernacular of Zen teachings
Some of which are now a modern classic of zen: the book
Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. You established Beginner’s Mind Temple in San Francisco and Zen Mind Temple here at Tassajara.

In your quiet humble way, you brought us what is most essential:
confidence that the mind and heart of Buddha dwell right here in us,
in the practice of zazen, in our dharma study, in our sangha practice together.
In giving yourself to us, you gave us the freedom to be ourselves –
In the truest deepest sense. This is the transmission of Light!
This is what it means to be a “Vessel of the Dharma”!
The benefit of your generosity to us cannot be measured–
And our gratitude knows no bounds.

(Zenshinji 4.29.12 mgs)