The Hartford Street Zen Center, temple name Issan-ji (literally 'One Mountain Temple'), is a
Soto Zen Soto may refer to:
Geography
*Soto (Aller), parish in Asturias, Spain
* Soto (Las Regueras), parish in Asturias, Spain
* Soto, Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles
*Soto, Russia, a rural locality (a ''selo'') in Megino-Kangalassky District of the Sakha ...
practice-center located in the
Castro district
The Castro District, commonly referred to as the Castro, is a neighborhood in Eureka Valley in San Francisco. The Castro was one of the first gay neighborhoods in the United States. Having transformed from a working-class neighborhood throug ...
of
San Francisco
San Francisco (; Spanish for " Saint Francis"), officially the City and County of San Francisco, is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Northern California. The city proper is the fourth most populous in California and 17th ...
.
History
Issan Dorsey (a former drug-addict and
drag queen
A drag queen is a person, usually male, who uses drag clothing and makeup to imitate and often exaggerate female gender signifiers and gender roles for entertainment purposes. Historically, drag queens have usually been gay men, and part of ...
) brought the center from its early beginnings as The Gay Buddhist Club of 1980 to the modern-day Hartford Street Zen Center (HSZC), becoming Abbot there in 1989. In 1987 the group had opened the Maitri Hospice for those dying of
AIDS, to which Dorsey himself succumbed in 1990. It was the first Buddhist hospice of its kind in the
United States
The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territori ...
. For a time the center leased a building next door to house the sick, eventually offering nine hospice-beds for persons ''in extremis'' . The second Abbot was Kijun Steve Allen, who departed after a difficult tenure of one year. In 1991 famed Beat-era poet
Zenshin Philip Whalen assumed the abbacy, until ill health obliged him to retire in 1996; he died in 2002. By 1997 the hospice had outgrown the Hartford Street location and was moved to a new, custom-designed facility at Church and Duboce Streets in San Francisco with space for fifteen residents. Meanwhile, practice continued at Issan-ji under the guidance of Rev. Ottmar Engel, who served as Practice-Leader until health-concerns necessitated his return to his native Germany in 2001. After an interregnum, during which the Board of Directors, assisted by Rev. John King, took care of things at Hartford Street, Rev. Myo Denis Lahey, who was completing a tenure as Prior (''Tanto'') at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in Carmel Valley, California, was invited to be Practice-Leader, and as of October 2013 was installed as HSZC's current Abbot.
See also
*
Buddhism in the United States
*
Buddhism and sexual orientation
The relationship between Buddhism and sexual orientation varies by tradition and teacher. According to some scholars, early Buddhism appears to have placed no special stigma on homosexual relations, since the subject was not mentioned.James Willia ...
*
San Francisco Zen Center
*
Timeline of Zen Buddhism in the United States
Below is a timeline of important events regarding Zen Buddhism in the United States. Dates with "?" are approximate.
Events
Early history
* 1893: Soyen Shaku comes to the United States to lecture at the World Parliament of Religions held in ...
References
External links
Hartford Street Zen CenterMaitri Hospice
{{coord, 37.76155, N, 122.43376, W
Buddhist temples in San Francisco
Castro District, San Francisco
Zen Center
Zen centers in California