Hartford Street Zen Center | Issan-ji temple
A Sōtō Zen temple for the LGBTQ+ community, friends and allies in San Francisco's Castro neighborhood
City Center Director Rev. Tova Green talks about her history engaging in causes for peace and social justice and explains the relationship of inner peace to world peace. She then discusses the current undertaking of the San Francisco Zen Center to foster greater diversity in the sangha and increase awareness of the effects of white privilege.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | RSS
This coming Saturday, we’ll have a 40-minute period of zazen beginning at 8:30am, in place of the Saturday early morning schedule (see link) which ordinarily 
begins at 6:30am. While there won’t be the 8:30 a.m. instruction period that day, the 9:25 a.m. period of sitting and the 10:15 a.m. Dharma talk will take place as usual. Following the Dharma talk, we’ll celebrate the monthly Full-Moon Bodhisattva ceremony. Every one is welcome to attend, of whatever level of practice experience. Don’t miss this occasion to anchor your weekend firmly in body-and-mind study of the Buddha Way.
Please come and join us this Saturday for a Dharma talk by Tova Green. Priest-ordained by Green Gulch Farm Abbess Jiko Linda-Ruth Cutts, Tova presently lives at Beginner’s Mind Temple at 300 Page St. and is a former director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. Zazen will precede as always at 9:25, then the talk at 10:15, and the ever-popular tea and cookies will follow. All are welcome.
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!
Our next meeting will be on Saturday afternoon, August 25th at 12:30pm. We’ll be meeting for 120 minutes.
We’re continuing to build a format that will be flexible enough for a diversity of needs. The group has been built and previously 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. We now will facilitate using internal resources as of this meeting. 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 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
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.
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!
