Hartford Street Zen Center | Issan-ji temple
A Sōtō Zen temple for the LGBTQ+ community, friends and allies in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood
Please join us next Saturday for a Special Dharma talk by a Japanese visitor and missionary: Toku-ha Fukyoshi (with assistance of a translator).
We will have our normal Saturday program starting at 6:30am, then the talk at 10:15, and the ever-popular tea and cookies will follow. All are welcome to join us for any portion or all of the morning offerings!
Women’s Sangha — an open group for women every Tuesday at 7:00pm
Join us this Tuesday, September 24th, for thirty minute meditation and a short Dharma talk led by our guest teacher Dana Kojun Hull. Visit our Facebook page for more details on Kojun and her work. Beginners welcome.
Oct 1: Lien Shutt
Oct 8: Konin Cardenas
Oct 15: TBA
Oct 22: Jana Drakka
Once again, Hartford Street Zen Center has been chosen as one of the organizations to benefit from the proceeds of the fair. More volunteers means more proceeds. Be a cheerleader for HSZC and volunteer for a four hour shift, doing anything from safety, to production assistant, to staffing the gates. Give the gift of your time. Flexible shifts and all volunteers will receive a gift bag from Whole Foods Company. Registration is simple and easy on eventbrite. Volunteer today. For questions contact the volunteer coordinator at terrikota@gmail.com
Hartford Street is pleased to announce and invite you to a morning with a compassionate trailblazer in the rebuilding of a lineage of ordained bhikkhunis, Ayya Santacitta. Stemming originally from the Thai Forest Theravada tradition of Buddhism; the Nuns of Aloka Vihara are very well respected and frequently booked speakers/Dharma (Dhamma) teachers. They reside currently in a Vihara near Ocean Beach in San Francisco practicing with a vibrant and dedicated Sangha and are working on the intention to found a training monastery for bhikkhunis in a rural setting on the West Coast.
Ayya Santacitta was born in Austria and has practiced meditation since 1988. Her first teacher was Ajahn Buddhadasa, who sparked her interest in Buddhist monastic life. She has trained as a nun in both the East and West since 1993, primarily in the lineage of Ajahn Chah. Since 2002, however she also integrates Dzogchen teachings into her practice.
Ayya Santacitta is co-founder of Aloka Vihara, a training monastery for women in San Francisco, where she has lived since 2009. In 2011, she received bhikkhuni ordination with Ayya Tathaaloka Theri as preceptor. She offers teachings at the vihara, as well as in the wider Bay Area and occasionally other parts of the US, sharing her experience in community as a means for cultivating the heart and opening the mind.
Please join us for this wonderful event and feel free to read more about the Sisters on their website and watch this very touching video about their work & lives! Because the Nuns as part of their precepts must eat their final main meal of the day by noon Some of our Sangha will formally be offering a meal dana during our simultaneous offerings of tea and cookies.
Every Saturday we offer early morning zazen (seated meditation), a brief drop-in meditation instruction at 8:30 am. And again zazen at 9:25 am. We wrap up with a dharma talk at 10:15 am followed by tea and cookies.
Please join us any Saturday and we hope to see you often and for this special Saturday event!
The Hartford Street Zen Center Sangha Council will occur this Saturday 12:30pm: We’ve formed council as a forum to continue to talk of, and discuss with each other – and with the sangha at large – issues, concerns, questions and conflicts which have been challenging – downright hard to talk about or never seem to have an appropriate time we are all together to discuss. We’ll use a practice model of working with each other with the most skillful speech we can access. This is a great opportunity also for those who haven’t been around lately to reengage and be a part of the present and future Hartford Street!
Our next meeting will be on Saturday 12:30pm to 2:30pm, August 17, 2013 for 120 minutes (with a break included).
We’re continuing this format that is flexible enough for a diversity of needs. This session will be facilitated by Beata Chapman, a long time member and Board president of the Santa Cruz Zen Center. She is knowledgeable about many aspects of zen communities. The scaffold we’ll be working from is based on the Council process developed by the Ojai Foundation.
You do not need to have an ‘issue’ or overt concern to attend. Council is sangha building, connection and healing. All are welcome!
If you have questions regarding this, call Peter Goetz at 510.595.1281. If you’d like a copy of the Ojai Foundation guidelines for Council process, email Peter at goetzpj@aol.com
At around 11am after our normal Saturday program and Dharma talk we will have our annual observance to commemorate the life and life’s work of Rev. John King, a loved and missed member of our Sangha. Please join us to remember and celebrate this wonderful human life and you can even hear one of his talks at HSZC by clicking here.
We hope you can join us!
