From our temple who has long been a refuge and celebration space for the LGBTQ+ community bowing deeply to our differences and need to have equality, Happy Pride! The Hartford Street Zen Center, temple name Issan-ji, mountain name Myō shū zan in 1981 as a space acquired for a Gay Buddhist club on the day of Buddha’s enlightenment, inaugurated the new zendo in the basement, and the Hartford Street Zen Center began to form to serve its community including our allies.
Issan-ji was in the middle, beginning in the 1980s, of a health crisis that swept through and devastated the Castro district community. In 1987 the group opened the Maitri Hospice for those dying of AIDS. And now we have so many years later carried through a pandemic and began reopening our doors again to the community that continues to make our place in our society, one breath at a time.
Please find a safe and joy-filled way to celebrate this time in recognition of where we have been and where we are going, carrying the love of those we lost on our continued interconnected existence. May your life be filled with love and great joy tempered in equanimity regardless of your identity and any societal label you accept or decline, embracing the way with body, speech and mind.
Happiest LGBTQ+ Pride to you as we carry forward this ancient, vital, necessary and still very relevant way.
