Zoketsu Norman Fischer
Zoketsu Norman Fischer is an American poet, writer, and Sōtō, Soto Zen priest, teaching and practicing in the lineage of Shunryū Suzuki, Shunryu Suzuki. He is a Dharma heir of Mel Weitsman, Sojun Mel Weitsman, from whom he received Dharma transmission in 1988. Fischer served as co-abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center from 1995–2000, after which he founded the Everyday Zen Foundation in 2000, a network of Buddhist practice group and related projects in Canada, the United States and Mexico. Fischer has published more than twenty-five books of poetry and non-fiction, as well as numerous poems, essays and articles in Buddhist magazines and poetry journals. Early life and education Norman Fischer was born to a American Jews, Jewish family in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1946, and was raised in Pittston, Pennsylvania. As a child he attended services with his parents at a Conservative synagogue. He received a B.A. from Colgate University, where he studied religion, philosophy, an ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania
Wilkes-Barre ( or ) is a city in the U.S. state of Pennsylvania and the county seat of Luzerne County, Pennsylvania, Luzerne County. Located at the center of the Wyoming Valley in Northeastern Pennsylvania, it had a population of 44,328 in the 2020 census. It is the second-largest city, after Scranton, Pennsylvania, Scranton, in the Scranton–Wilkes-Barre–Hazleton, PA Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a population of 563,631 as of the 2010 United States census, 2010 census and is the fourth-largest metropolitan area in Pennsylvania after the Delaware Valley, Greater Pittsburgh, and the Lehigh Valley with an urban population of 401,884. Scranton/Wilkes-Barre is the cultural and economic center of a region called Northeastern Pennsylvania, which is home to over 1.3 million residents. Wilkes-Barre and the surrounding Wyoming Valley are framed by the Pocono Mountains to the east, the Endless Mountains to the north and west, and the Lehigh Valley to the south. The Susqu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Synagogue
A synagogue, ', 'house of assembly', or ', "house of prayer"; Yiddish: ''shul'', Ladino: or ' (from synagogue); or ', "community". sometimes referred to as shul, and interchangeably used with the word temple, is a Jewish house of worship. Synagogues have a place for prayer (the main sanctuary and sometimes smaller chapels), where Jews attend religious Services or special ceremonies (including Weddings, Bar Mitzvahs or Bat Mitzvahs, Confirmations, choir performances, or even children's plays), have rooms for study, social hall(s), administrative and charitable offices, classrooms for religious school and Hebrew school, sometimes Jewish preschools, and often have many places to sit and congregate; display commemorative, historic, or modern artwork throughout; and sometimes have items of some Jewish historical significance or history about the Synagogue itself, on display. Synagogues are consecrated spaces used for the purpose of Jewish prayer, study, assembly, and r ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Chade-Meng Tan
Chade-Meng Tan (), known informally as Meng, is an author, philanthropist, motivator, and former software engineer. He was previously employed at Google and greeted celebrities who visited the Google campus. He retired from Google as its "Jolly Good Fellow" at the age of 45. He co-founded the Search Inside Yourself Leadership Institute, along with Marc Lesser, and is co-chair of One Billion Acts of Peace, which was nominated eight times for the Nobel Peace Prize. He is also an adjunct professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy in the National University of Singapore, and a graduate from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Career Meng was Google employee number 107 and his job title was " Jolly Good Fellow". He joined Google in 2000 after working for five years at Kent Ridge Digital Laboratories in Singapore. At Google, he worked for eight years in engineering on projects such as mobile search and search quality. Tan earned his eccentric Google title after s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Zen Hospice Project
San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC), is a network of affiliated Sōtō Zen practice and retreat centers in the San Francisco Bay area, comprising City Center or Beginner's Mind Temple, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. The sangha was incorporated by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and a group of his American students in 1962. Today SFZC is the largest Sōtō organization in the West. History On May 23, 1959, Shunryu Suzuki (then age 55) came from Japan to San Francisco to serve as head priest of Sokoji—a Soto Zen temple then located at 1881 Bush Street in Japantown. He was joined by his wife Mitsu (also from Japan) in 1961. Sokoji—founded by Hosen Isobe in 1934—had been housed in a former Jewish synagogue that is now Kokoro Assisted Living. Upon Suzuki's arrival at Sokoji, the congregation was composed entirely of members of the Japanese-American population. Unlike his predecessors, Suzuki was a fluent speaker of English who actually wanted to come to the Uni ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Peter Levitt
Peter Levitt (born September 2, 1946 in New York City) is a poet and translator. He is also the founder and teacher of the Salt Spring Zen Circle, in the Soto Zen lineage of Shunryu Suzuki-Roshi. Background He has taught poetry, writing and creativity workshops and seminars around the world, including at the C. G. Jung Institute of Los Angeles, Naropa Institute ''Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics'', and as a faculty member in poetry and translation for the MFA Writers Program at Antioch University. He emigrated to Canada in 2000 and became a citizen shortly thereafter. He is an instructor in the University of British Columbia Creative Writing Optional Residency MFA Program. He was in the anthology and film, ''Poets Against the War''. He was at the 2009 Montreal Zen Poetry Festival. He lives with his wife, poet Shirley Graham, and their son, Tai, on one of the Gulf Islands in British Columbia. Awards * 1989 Lannan Foundation Literary Award in Poetry * 2004 Canada Counc ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Blanche Hartman
Zenkei Blanche Hartman (née Gelders; 1926 – May 13, 2016) was a Soto Zen teacher practicing in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki. From 1996 to 2002 she served two terms as co-abbess of the San Francisco Zen Center. She was the first woman to assume such a leadership position at the center. A member of the American Zen Teachers Association, Blanche was especially known for her expertise in the ancient ritual of sewing a kesa. Hartman became known for her attention to issues women face; she and her late husband Lou Hartman had four children, eight grandchildren, and a number of great-grandchildren. Biography Blanche Hartman was born in Birmingham, Alabama to non-practicing Jewish parents, Joseph Gelders and Esther Frank in 1926. Educated in the Catholic school system in the early 1930s—and impressed with the religiosity and faith of one teacher—in 1943 she moved to California, where her father served in the military. After taking up biochemistry and chemistry at the University ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dharma Transmission
In Chan Buddhism, Chan and Zen Buddhism, dharma transmission is a custom in which a person is established as a "successor in an unbroken Lineage (Buddhism), lineage of teachers and disciples, a spiritual 'bloodline' (''kechimyaku'') theoretically traced back to the Gautama Buddha, Buddha himself."Haskel, 2 The dharma lineage reflects the importance of family-structures in ancient China, and forms a symbolic and ritual recreation of this system for the monastical "family". In Rinzai school, Rinzai-Zen, ''inka shōmei'' is ideally "the formal recognition of Zen's deepest realisation", but practically it is being used for the transmission of the "true lineage" of the masters (''shike'') of the training halls. There are only about fifty to eighty of such ''inka shōmei''-bearers in Japan. In Sōtō, Sōtō-Zen, dharma transmission is referred to as ''shiho'', and further training is required to become an oshō. History The notion and practice of Dharma Transmission developed ea ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Marin County, California
Marin County is a County (United States), county located in the northwestern part of the San Francisco Bay Area of the U.S. state of California. As of the 2020 United States Census, 2020 census, the population was 262,231. Its county seat and largest city is San Rafael, California, San Rafael. Marin County is across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and is included in the San Francisco–Oakland–Berkeley, CA Metropolitan Statistical Area. Marin County's natural sites include the Muir Woods Sequoia sempervirens, redwood forest, the Marin Headlands, Stinson Beach, CA, Stinson Beach, the Point Reyes National Seashore, and Mount Tamalpais. As of 2019, Marin County had the sixth highest income per capita of all U.S. counties, at $141,735. The county is governed by the Marin County Board of Supervisors. The Marin County Civic Center was designed by Frank Lloyd Wright and draws thousands of visitors a year to guided tours of its arch and Atrium (architecture), atrium desig ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Green Gulch Farm Zen Center
Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, or Sōryu-ji (蒼龍寺 '' Green Dragon Temple'') is a Soto Zen practice center located near Muir Beach, California, that practices in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki. In addition to its Zen training program, the center also manages an organic farm and gardens. Founded in 1972 by the San Francisco Zen Center and Zentatsu Richard Baker, the site is located on in a valley seventeen miles (27 km) north of San FranciscoMcCormick, 45 and offers a variety of workshops and classes throughout the year. The land is an inholding of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area and has much wildlife within its borders. In addition to meditation retreats, offerings include classes and workshops on the Japanese tea ceremony and gardening.Cooper, 233 While Green Gulch Farm has a residential monastery and retreat center, guest house, and conference center,Ricci, 14-15 it has also become recognized as a place where organic farmers can come to learn the tools of their tr ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Zentatsu Richard Baker
Richard Dudley Baker (born March 30, 1936) is an American Soto Zen master (or roshi), the founder and guiding teacher of Dharma Sangha—which consists of Crestone Mountain Zen Center located in Crestone, Colorado and the ''Buddhistisches Studienzentrum'' (Johanneshof) in Germany's Black Forest. As the American Dharma heir to Shunryu Suzuki, Baker assumed abbotship of the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC) shortly before Suzuki's death in 1971. He remained abbot there until 1984, the year he resigned his position after it was disclosed in the previous year that he and the wife of one of SFZC's benefactors had been having an ongoing affair. Despite the controversy connected with his resignation, Baker was instrumental in helping the San Francisco Zen Center to become one of the most successful Zen institutions in the United States. Early life and practice Richard Baker was born in Biddeford, Maine, on March 30, 1936, the son of Harold Baker and Elisabeth Dudley. Because his family m ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Big Sur
Big Sur () is a rugged and mountainous section of the Central Coast of California between Carmel and San Simeon, where the Santa Lucia Mountains rise abruptly from the Pacific Ocean. It is frequently praised for its dramatic scenery. Big Sur has been called the "longest and most scenic stretch of undeveloped coastline in the contiguous United States", a sublime "national treasure that demands extraordinary procedures to protect it from development", and "one of the most beautiful coastlines anywhere in the world, an isolated stretch of road, mythic in reputation". The views, redwood forests, hiking, beaches, and other recreational opportunities have made Big Sur a popular destination for visitors from across the world. With 4.5 to 7 million visitors annually, it is among the top tourist destinations in the United States, comparable to Yosemite National Park, but with considerably fewer services, parking, roads, and related infrastructure. The region is often confused with an u ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Tassajara Zen Mountain Center
The Tassajara Zen Mountain Center is the oldest Buddhism in Japan, Japanese Buddhist Sōtō Zen monastery in the United States. It is on the border of the Ventana Wilderness and within the Los Padres National Forest, southeast of Carmel-by-the-Sea, California. The Center is only accessible over high Chews Ridge via a narrow, steep, one-lane dirt road from Jamesburg, California, Jamesburg. During the winter months the Center can be inaccessible due to snow and rain. Practitioners live and study on site. From Memorial Day to Labor Day, the Center is open to day and overnight guests. The Tassajara Hot Springs, natural hot springs have been developed into Japanese-style baths. A steam bath is built over a hot spring in Tassajara Creek. The Center is the first Zen monastery established outside Asia. History The name is a corruption of ''Tasajera'', a Spanish-American word derived from an indigenous Esselen language, Esselen word, which means ‘place where meat is hung to dry.’" ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |