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A Quiet, Yet Powerful Force Is a Zen Master Arriving at the Airport

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A Quiet, Yet Powerful Force Is a Zen Master Arriving at the Airport a quiet, yet powerful force is a zen master arriving at the airport The First in a Series of White Papers on the Future of the San Francisco Zen Center By Robert Thomas, San Francisco Zen Center President, November 20, 2009 Dear Good Friend of Zen Center, I am writing you now to begin an important conversation about the future of the San Francisco Zen Center. As one of the largest Buddhist communities outside Asia, the Zen Center — Tassajara, City Center, and Green Gulch Farm — now approaches its 48th year, deeply committed to finding vital ways of offering the centuries-old practice of Zen Buddhism in the midst of a complicated and fast-changing world. In doing so, our community faces daunting challenges and timely opportunities, which I would like to begin to discuss with you today. This letter is the first in a series of six “white papers” that I will be writing and sending to you over the course of the coming year. In these papers I hope to offer you: a) a picture of where the San Francisco Zen Center is today; b) a roadmap for where we are going over the course of the coming years, plus how we think we’ll get there; and c) a sense of why we see this effort at this time to be urgent and significant, not just for Zen Center, but for the greater community. The contents of this first introductory paper are presented here in four sections: 1. The beginning: everything changed 2. A true story: a quiet, yet powerful force for good 3. Looking forward: understanding our fundamental needs 4. How to participate: an invitation to join the conversation With this series of white papers I will explore the context for necessary change, development, and investment. I will share with you our thinking and our plans to purposefully meet the challenges and opportunities we face as a community and as an organization making its best effort to fulfill the promise of a profoundly important mission: “…to embody, express, and make accessible the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha…” I look forward to your joining me in what I hope will be a meaningful, creative, and provocative exploration of the future of the San Francisco Zen Center and Zen Buddhist practice here in the 21st century. SAN FRANCISCO ZEN CENTER 1 the beginning: everything changed To begin, we need to take a step back. Almost forty years to the day after the arrival of a Zen Master at a U.S. airport, I overheard this remark in the same U.S. airport. A 60-ish American man looked around at the crowd of people and with a boastful satisfaction in his voice said to a young Asian woman: “You have to understand, it didn’t used to be like this — in America everything changed in the 1960s.” This is true. Everything did change in the America of the 1960s. A larger-than-usual generation of people came of age in a post-war climate of opportunity. Many of them idealistically set their sights on questioning the status quo, opening up to new possibilities, and working to make the world a wiser, more just place for everyone. For some people, the landscape-altering changes of the 1960s, however we may view them today, included one very significant, and sometimes easily overlooked, event: Twenty-five centuries after the Buddha, the practice of the monastic Buddhist community, or “sangha,” took root in America. The 1960s were a time when many people in the West would discover the profound truth and beauty of Asia’s great spiritual traditions. They heard and read about “the dharma,” “enlightenment,” and the Buddha’s “four noble truths.” They travelled to the East, met spiritual guides and teachers, and found groups of like-minded explorers. In 1959 a Japanese Zen priest by the name of Shunryu Suzuki arrived in San Francisco. Soon, a few people began to sit together. In 1967 a Zen Buddhist monastery was established at the end of Tassajara Road, deep in a rugged mountain wilderness near the Big Sur coast. In 1969 an urban Zen temple emerged at the epicenter of a “flower-powered” San Francisco. A community of American Zen practitioners, stirred by the guiding presence and teachings of a Zen Master, had started something new: a Zen Center. Without any real plan or roadmap and few significant resources to speak of, the disparate gang of way-seekers was setting itself up as a Buddhist community. They had the trust of their teacher and eventually his assistant priests who would arrive from Japan, Rev. Dainin Katagiri and Rev. Kobun Chino, as they endeavored to take up the deepest questions we as human beings can ask ourselves. These questions are familiar to us all: How will I make the best use of this precious opportunity, my life? How will I find my true home, my community of like- minded friends? How will I learn what I need to understand, grow, gain confidence, and realize the full potential of my being? How will I find a path to live in deep harmony with all beings, help those in need, and become a positive force for a better world? SAN FRANCISCO ZEN CENTER 2 As if a pebble had been dropped into the still waters of a deep pond, the ripples of the Zen Center community naturally spread, widening outward, one ring, one person at a time, face to face and warm hand to warm hand. For the next five decades, people from all walks of life would sit down together, pay attention to their breath, watch their mind, learn to chant, ring bells, bow with palms together, offer incense, study sutras. They would bake bread, repair pipes, move rocks, soak in hot baths, plant trees, shave their hair, tend gardens, chop vegetables, laugh and cry together, harvest fields of greens, talk to large crowds. They would plane wood, build buildings, pay bills, attend classes, ask questions, raise children, and sit with the addicted, the dying, and the incarcerated. They would turn compost, explore sameness and differences, sew Buddha’s robe, make beds, forgive each other, take walks to the ocean, clean toilets, translate esoteric texts, write books, boil water, and serve many cups of tea. They would do all of this and more with an intention to cultivate “beginner’s mind” and a sincere vow to practice together and be of benefit to all beings. And, of course, they would make their fair share of mistakes along the way. In retelling this story, I recognize that it is incomplete and without acknowledgment for many important individuals. However, my intention is to appreciate all of those who have made and continue to make such a story possible. It is because of the innumerable efforts and contributions of countless people over many years, including you, that the San Francisco Zen Center community stands here today, carrying on Suzuki Roshi’s way and sharing the traditional practice and teachings of Zen Buddhism with others. a true story: a quiet, yet powerful force for good The unlikely story of the arrival of a Japanese priest and the eventual flowering of a major cultural institution we call the San Francisco Zen Center is important to tell because it is a true story. It is a real-life story with real people. It is an inspiring story of dignity, love, patience, beauty, humility, perseverance, integrity, and personal vow. It is also a story that continues to evolve, unfolding in new ways in each moment. We look around today and see the word “Zen” showing up across our consumer-driven culture in many ways that have little or nothing to do with anything approximating Buddhist practice. But this hardly diminishes the fact that in the five decades since the founding of the San Francisco Zen Center many of the practices, principles, and tenets of Buddhism are now commonplace, woven into the fabric of contemporary mainstream culture. Fostered by the spread of Zen Center teachers and those of other Buddhist schools and lineages, the practice of meditation and mindfulness now informs the lives of doctors, therapists, management consultants, students, athletes, coaches, songwriters, teachers, parents, and countless others. I recently heard a story about a woman with terminal cancer who recently came to Green Gulch Farm. Her son brought her there for a two-day stay, and though she was not a Buddhist practitioner, she SAN FRANCISCO ZEN CENTER 3 immediately declared, "I totally get the zazen thing." She then settled into a very peaceful place, resting among the large trees and the coastal air, with the support of the practicing community, while the events of her life and a picture of the end of her life gradually came into clear focus. She left Green Gulch ready to face the remaining days of her life in a way that she would not have been able to without that experience. She died two months later as, according to her son, a calm and composed, "flag-waving Buddhist!" This is only one of countless stories that could be told of people who have come to Zen Center and Buddhist practice and somehow have found their lives changed forever. But despite all of the lives that have been changed and the good that has been done, it is fair to ask, “Where has all of this gotten us?” For, even with pronouncements that everything changed in the 1960s, we can see that the suffering of the world hasn’t changed. There are still far too many people who go hungry, get sick, and die because they can’t get the care or help they need.
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