Category Archives: News

Recent Dharma Transmission

Buddhas Rejoice

On Thursday, September 30 Kosei Nyokai Laurie Senauke completed Dharma Transmission with her teacher Steve Weintraub. The closing week of ceremonies for Laurie and Ken Sawyer took place at Back Porch Zendo in Sebastopol, where Steve was assisted by David Weinberg. Great congratulations to all.

Honoring the Buddha’s Robe

In Kesa Kudoku /The Virtue of the Robe, Dogen Zenji writes of first hearing the robe chant in China.

At that time, there arose in me a feeling I have never before experienced. My body was overwhelmed with joy. Tears of gratitude secretly fell and soaked my lapels… Seeing this done here, before my very eyes, I was overjoyed.

During Aspects of Practice we will begin again to chant and open our robes at the start of each day. Since we are beginning anew after many months of pandemic, it is a good moment to revise the English verse, offering a more accurate translation, in line with the verses used at most Soto Zen centers in the West, including SFZC.

The is how we offer the chant daily. The doan will sound a “clunk” on the bell 5 minutes after the start of 6:00am and 7:35am weekday zazen. Roughly 2 minutes after that ring the usual 3 bells.

Saturdays, while we are still in the digital world, the doan will sound the clunk at 8:45, the start of zazen. Hearing this sound, place your rakusu securely on your head (for okesa, remove from envelope and place on head). Put your hands in gassho and complete the chant. Then unfold the robe and put it on. Even if you do not have a physical robe, go into gassho during the chant, honoring the invisible robe each of us wears.

If you first put on your robe later in the day, chant the verses on your own before sitting zazen.

Great robe of liberation
Field far beyond form & emptiness
Wearing the Tathagata’s teaching

Saving all beings

Dai sai ge da pu ku
mus
ō fuku den e
hi bu nyo rai kyo
kō do shoshu jo

Great robe of liberation
Field far beyond form & emptiness
Wearing the Tathagata’s teaching

Saving all beings

Wednesday Night Drop-in Sitting and Study Group 2021

The Wednesday Drop-in group is a weekly event now on Zoom that goes from 7:00 to 8:30 PM. It includes a 30 minute period of zazen meditation,  and an hour of reading and discussion. The group particularly welcomes newcomers to Zen Buddhist practice and/or new to Berkeley Zen Center. It also provides an opportunity for practitioners to sit and study together on an ongoing basis. We meet every Wednesday except for the five-day Spring Practice Period sesshin(retreat) in June, the annual seven-day Buddha’s Enlightenment sesshin in December and during the two-week interim period during the December holidays. We also maintain a google group to share reading materials we are studying, announce other BZC events and issues related to logistics. The groups is facilitated by a BZC Priest, Ikushin Gerry Oliva. Gerry can be contacted at gryoliva@gmail.com for further information.

Coming-of-Age Group Forming

BZC will be offering a Coming-of-Age pro­gram for 7th and 8th grade youth. Participants will study basic Buddhist teachings, mindful­ness, precepts, and communication skills, and explore ways to celebrate their journey toward adulthood.
The program will meet monthly for two hours on Sundays from September through June. For more information, please contact Marie Hopper (marie_hopper@sbcglobal.net).

BZC Welcomes New Residents

Between mid-May and mid-June, BZC welcomed five new residents: Heiko Lake and Joe Buckner moved into 1933½ Russell, Yoni Ackerman and Bri McGuire moved into 1933A Russell, and Preston Evers moved into 1929A Russell (shared with Helen Cheng). We are excited to begin again together, and to work together to assist BZC leadership in reopening plans. All are fully vaccinated and the first in-person resident meeting was held on June 8.

Update on Reopening Plans

We found that we are changed by our year of practicing remotely. The task now is to shape our practice place and program to include this new reality, while returning to our warm-hand-to-warm-hand way. We have been wrestling with many questions: Is convenience an important priority? How much do we believe in person-to-person practice? How much do we accommodate people who are at a distance? We concluded that the tension is just there: deciding the heart of practice is our practice and the way we relate is our priority.
In one of our recent planning meetings, Hozan articulated a vision of practice at BZC that acknowledges our in-person practice as sound and necessary: the ground for being able to offer something more widely. Likewise, sangha members practicing in-person are inspired by having people attend from far away places, like India and Germany. Hozan writes:

Part of the vision I have, which is coming clear to me, is having a more open front and accessibility to BZC; understanding that we are connected to the larger community and to the world. In-person practice and being open are not in contradiction to one another: one is the ground for the other. We are not looking to be expansionist; we have never advertised in any Buddhist magazines and that’s fine. Rather, we are looking to be open.

Planning for reopening may be the most complex aspect of the pandemic experience to date. In addition to wrestling with our vision of practice under these new circumstances, there are the complexities of: working out the details of the schedule; establishing an Internet infrastructure that is stable and reliable with­out being overly expensive; upgrading our audio-visual equipment; assessing the ventila­tion needs of the zendo and the community room; working on adequate sanitary processes in the kitchen; and, working out what require­ments we ask of those who attend in person. All of these are being addressed under the realities determined by Covid and its variants, the details of which change week by week.
The current plan, which has been discussed by both the Board and the Practice Committee, is that people physically on the grounds of BZC must be fully vaccinated. We will develop a means of verifying vaccination so that this need only happen once. We will add outdoor capacity for those who wish to distance, orwho don’t have a vaccination card to show when they arrive.
For the “soft” opening, now slated to start August 1, we will take out half of the zabutons from the zendo for distancing, and permit chanting with masks. Some sewing has resumed in the community room among those vaccinated.
Beyond this first stage, we will evaluate the ventilation capacity of our communal spaces, understanding that it is not only Covid, but fire season and other viruses that we need to think about. We have purchased a set of air-monitoring devices, which are now set up in the zendo and the community room to get a picture of the air quality under varying circumstances. The Buildings and Grounds Committee has been working on obtaining a mechanical engineer’s assessment of what the various solutions might be to both spaces. (This ad hoc committee consists of Rob Lyons, Hozan, Gerry Oliva, Ron Nestor, Ellen Webb, Laurie Senauke, Mary Beth Lamb, Ken Powel­son, Cheryl Gordon, and Mary Duryee.)
The recent end-of-Practice-Period sesshin included an experiment in both in-person and Zoom practice. New and old residents, all of them fully vaccinated, sat in the zendo. The Shosan and closing ceremonies were also accomplished with both zendo and Zoom participants. This was quite successful and moving to everyone: for Zoom participants to see the zendo in use and for zendo participants to be supported by more than thirty people online, including our members from India and other remote locations. A lot of work on our Internet infrastructure preceded and enabled this exper­i­ment. (The ad hoc committee that worked on this consisted of Rob Lyons, Dean Bradley, Gary Artim, Laurie Senauke, Hozan, Charlie Wilson, Carol Paul, and Mary Duryee.)

We are taking a step-by-step approach, figuring out the next thing, gathering infor­mation and experience, which then becomes the guide to the next step. Meanwhile, we are feeling grateful that we have buildings to come home to, and the tremendous support of the sangha. Thank you to all who are working on this next chapter.

BZC Sangha Weighs in on Reopening

Participants may remember filling out a questionnaire about BZC practice after Covid—asking how you felt about participating online, in-person, or a hybrid of both, once we reopen. We were gratified to hear from 82 sangha members, and your responses are shaping our planning for the coming months. This is a snapshot of what we learned:
A large proportion of the sangha (84%) expect to continue practicing on Zoom “at least some­times.” The reasons vary: ten percent of our sangha live too far away to attend in person; ten percent are still concerned about Covid, regardless of precautions, or are unable to get vaccinated; a whopping 55% indicated that the convenience of being able to practice at home was a significant factor. They listed a variety of reasons: not having to deal with traffic; greater ease in tending family; not having to find parking or to make frequent long commutes. Of those who wish to continue participating on Zoom, most preferred the 7:30 a.m. and 5:40 p.m. weekday times.
As for in-person practice, 45% preferred a 6:00 a.m. time, while 24% preferred our previous 5:40 a.m. time. A surprising number preferred the afternoon 5:40 p.m. time (61%).

We asked what activities you thought should be both on Zoom and in person. In every category, the answer “both” was by far the largest:  Saturday program (93%); way-seeking mind talks (85%); all-sangha meetings (82%); daily service (76%); classes (88%); and sesshins (66%). In contrast, the next largest categories of responses came from those wishing for activities to be in-person only:  daily service (22%) and sesshins (30%).
There were also numerous comments and thoughts, which we have been digesting.  Typical among them were: “I am so grateful that BZC is exploring hybrid approaches”; “Online zendo has made it so much easier for those of us with disabilities and other chronic conditions to participate”; and “Thank you for sending out this poll! I understand that some activities in the list above may be more difficult to live-stream than others, but we very much appreciate the greater geographical reach of BZC during the pandemic and feel that these people should be able to continue to partici­pate, if they so desire.”
Thanks to the work of the committee dealing with these issues: Gerry Oliva, Hozan,  Ron Nestor, Ellen Webb, Laurie Senauke, and Mary Duryee.

BZC Country Jail Pen Pal Program

We’d like to invite you to join the BZC County Jail Pen Pal Program, a new project emerging out of the BZC anti-racism committee, initiated by Preston Evers, Penelope Thompson, and Laurie Senauke.
The BZC County Jail Pen Pal Program will connect BZC participants with incarcerated people in the Alameda county jail who are looking for friendship. The program will also provide a network of support, a listening ear, and a sounding board for BZC participants.
The main purpose of the correspondence will be to build bonds with our incarcerated community members, offer emotional/spiritual support, and learn about life inside the county jail. While pen pal relationships with incarcerated people can be beautiful and illuminating, they can also be upsetting and confusing, as jails and prisons are concentrated sites of oppression, deprivation, and trauma, so BZC participants will regularly meet as a group to process their experiences and seek guidance from one another. Though not a requirement for participation, BZC members will also have the opportunity to join an ecosystem of individuals and organizations advocating on behalf of loved ones incarcerated in Santa Rita. The project will have its own P.O. Box for receiving letters.
See details here: County Jail Pen Pal Program for more information about the Program. If you’re interested in joining this project or have any questions, contact Preston at prestonevers13@gmail.com.

Visit with Reverend Ryoko Osa

Early in our period of quarantine, Abbot Hozan and I received an invitation from Reverend Ryoko Osa to visit her Jodo Shin Buddhist Temple at 1524 Oregon Street in Berkeley. The temple was built in 1926 to serve the Japanese immigrant community, and continues to do so.

The temple is affiliated with the prominent Higashi Honganji Temple in Kyoto. Reverend Osa, a warm, lively, and articulate teacher, trained in Kyoto and in Los Angeles before she became the Minister of the Berkeley temple.

The Jodo Shin tradition is lay-oriented; its core practice is chanting the name of Amida Buddha and seeing how Dharma is revealed in everyday life. Services on Sundays are in English, with a short talk in Japanese. During the Covid pandemic, services and classes have been held via a Facebook link (available on their website).

As a young woman, Reverend Osa was deeply interested in Buddhism. She wanted to come to the United States to practice. The three of us had a lively conversation about mutual acquaintances and practices in each of our traditions. She was delighted with our zendo and grounds and plans to return.

The temple community is predominantly Japanese-American, with some Chinese-Americans and Caucasians. Members have understandably been concerned about violence against Asian-Americans and are being mindfully cautious about safeguarding themselves.