We’re pleased to announce that there will be an informal tea with Rev. Zentatsu at Hartford Street tomorrow afternoon, Wednesday 22 August, at 4 p.m. Due to Rev. Zentatsu’s busy schedule during this West Coast trip, our time together will be limited, so everyone who wishes to attend is urged to arrive promptly. For those unfamiliar with him, Rev. Zentatsu is the first American Dharma heir of Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, and is also the Honshi (root teacher) of Issan-ji’s own founder, the late Rev. Issan Dorsey, and of our late Abbot Rev. Zenshin Philip Whalen.
NEW Saturday Sangha Check-In Time
Starting this coming Saturday and continuing for at least the next few weeks, we will gather as a sangha after tea-and-cookies time around 11:45 (or later if the dharma talk goes longer) to discuss how things are going with the temple and how people feel about the community and their place in it. This is sort of like a mini-council in which one person speaks at a time and we maintain a mindful and compassionate atmosphere so everyone feels comfortable speaking their mind.
The next few weeks will be a trial run to see if we want to make this a permanent fixture in the schedule, so please come and contribute if you can!
Save the Date – OCTOBER 7, 2012 – Castro Street Fair!
11 August 2012 (at 12 noon) – In Memoriam
A Taste of Zen: Brown Bag Retreat, 4 August
Sangha Council Meeting – 28 July, 12:30PM
The Hartford Street Zen Center Sangha is continuing its Council group. 
We’ve formed council with the intention and hope of building a forum to continue to talk of and discuss with each other – and with the sangha at large – for issues, concerns, questions and conflicts which have been challenging – or downright hard to talk about. 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!
A Taste of Zen: Brown Bag Retreat, 4 August
We’re planning on a longer retreat day on the first Saturday of August (Aug. 4). We’ll start at 9:25 a.m. and be finished by 5 p.m. To reduce the necessary preparations and planning, each participant may bring a brown-bag lunch, which we’ll take together in silence around midday. There’ll be a Dharma talk as usual at 10:15 a.m., plus the monthly Full-Moon Bodhisattva ceremony. The day will conclude with a guided loving-kindness meditation, followed by the monthly memorial service for founding Abbot Issan Dorsey. We’ll need to know how many participants we’ll have, so please sign up ahead-of-time, either by email to hszc108@yahoo.com, or a phone message left at (415) 863-2507. Everyone is welcome to participate, and we can accommodate practitioners at all levels of experience. Click here to see the day’s schedule!
Please note: Date changes on a future event!
The Council will be moved to July 28th. Thank you.