Modern Pilgrimage Part Five: Zen Center of Los Angeles

In this five-part series guest blogger and filmmaker JL Aronson writes about his Fall 2012 pilgrimage to Buddhist centers in California and beyond. Follow his journey as he meditates his way through the West. Find out more about JL here. See more photos from JL's pilgrimage here. Happy reading! - Madeline

ZEN CENTER OF LOS ANGELES

Los Angeles Zen Center

Founded in 1967 by Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi Roshi, Zen Center is located on a quiet stretch of LA's Koreatown neighborhood, occupying several houses and buildings on back-to-back blocks.

Photo by JL Aronson

LA is a funny place to those casually acquainted with it. On the surface, it seems like an oil spill of a city, populated by slick, sunglassed people, each trying to be convincing at one role or another. It sounds deeply in need of Dharma, of something to help break the spell of delusion. Of course, the local view is far more complicated. Los Angeles is exceedingly diverse and many of its inhabitants are drawn from all around the world. There are those looking for a sense of connection to the communities they’ve lost, or searching for answers to questions no one thought to ask before electricity, and those looking to peel back their own layers so as to face the wages of life less clumsily. They say in India there are as many Gods as there are people. In LA, they do it a little differently. There, the Gods are all schizophrenic self-help deities and there’s one for every personality. But that doesn’t mean you can’t find a little truth if you leave your proverbial cameras rolling.

Zen Center of Los Angeles, Zendo Building (left), Sangha House (right)
Photo by JL Aronson

It was a different town in 1956, but not too different. That year, a 25-year-old, fresh-faced monk named Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi arrived from Japan with little English or any notion of what he was getting into. Maezumi had come from a prominent Buddhist family and his father, a distinguished temple priest, had found the young Hakuyu to be an eager student of the tradition. He was trained, not only in his father’s Soto lineage but by another renowned teacher in the Rinzai lineage.  He’d been sent to America to assist at a Zenshuji Soto Mission in LA’s Little Tokyo, a downtown neighborhood where Japanese had been settling since the beginning of the century. The mission served as a cultural center for immigrants and American-born Japanese but it wasn’t big on meditation or any of the other practices that were usually left to monks.  American Angelenos didn’t know or care much for such distinctions. What they did know in the late fifties and early sixties was that beatniks were into Buddhism—particularly Zen—and beatniks were cool. After a few of them came around to inquire within at the Soto Mission, Maezumi happily agreed to start offering them classes in zazen. 
This development didn’t sit well with the establishment in Little Tokyo. I imagine that memories of forced relocation and internment were still fresh at that time and few wanted whatever trouble might come from dungareed and unshaven hipsters coming around to cultivate their awareness. Awareness of what? What would they tell their politically-connected parents and older siblings who worked at banks? Thank you very much and no thank you.
As a more recent immigrant, Maezumi didn’t see things this way. He saw an opportunity to share what he’d inherited, both spiritually and culturally. In 1967, with the encouragement and support of his growing number of Western students, the Zen Center of Los Angeles was born.

Zen Center of Los Angeles
Photo by JL Aronson

When I visited the Zen Center in early November, it was possible to declare that the heyday was not recent. Maezumi Roshi attracted hundreds of students at the height of his popularity as a teacher. Of the practitioners he trained, a number of them received Dharma transmission and went on to found highly influential second-generation temples throughout the United States, many of which flourish to this day. ZCLA continues to attract a steady group of people seeking an antidote to agitation or a blueprint for curing the blues. But it’s a smaller group than was there before, and it struck me that a majority of those in the community had remained from earlier times. Where were the young? Had Southern California tuned out and turned off its mystic mind?

Hungry Ghost/ Day of the Dead Altar at Zen Center of Los Angeles
Photo by JL Aronson

The complex of houses and apartment buildings that comprise ZCLA are a testament to the spirit that was very much alive in the seventies. At that time, the larger culture was retreating from the previous decade’s excesses and seeking more practical comforts. In order to meet a growing demand for the Dharma, the Zen Center came to occupy a stretch of two side streets in LA’s Koreatown. The backs of several houses were joined together by a series of courtyards and small gardens where much of the community life takes place. Two small apartment buildings were converted to house up to 150 residents, some of them as families. Though most of the residents have always been free to pursue their own careers by day, the Center had become a humming, wide-eyed village with an urban skyline. And like other city centers, a rural retreat facility and monastic training center was developed. Yokoji Zen Mountain Center, located in the San Jacinto range of Southern California came to serve a similar role as Tassajara, Green Gulch, Great Vow, City of 10,000 Buddhas or any number of other monasteries with a metropolitan presence. 

Zen Center of Los Angeles
Photo by JL Aronson

  In the early eighties, both San Francisco Zen Center and ZCLA were shaken by unrelated scandals involving the misuse of money, sex, and alcohol. To many, Buddhism had seemed like an exotic alternative to the dominant culture of hypocrisy and corruption, including other religious institutions. Though some left, disillusioned, the groups as a whole survived with safeguards against such things happening again. Informed by wisdom from the East, it was Western democratic principles of transparency and oversight that allowed these and other centers to move forward and evolve, assuring that generations to come could benefit from teachings of that most incorruptible of men, the one known as Shakyamuni Buddha. 
Maezumi Roshi died in 1995 while visiting family back home in Japan. His long time student, Wendy Egyoku Nakao, took over as head teacher and abbot in 1999. While I was visiting, I got to experience some of the soft, joyful, inviting touch that seems to characterize the Zen Center under Roshi Wendy’s stewardship. The Mexican Day of the Dead had just taken place and many parts of Los Angeles were still celebrating with multicultural pride. At this time of year, when Halloween is also celebrated, many Buddhists hold Hungry Ghost ceremonies to honor the unfulfilled dead and potential we each have for greed or generosity. For the first time, ZCLA decided to mix all three. Participants were invited to attend dressed as either a dead ancestor, or just a dead person. In other regions, this might have been met with shrugs, however, this being Hollywood, people are always ready go in character. For those without a trunk full of costumes, props and face paint were offered.

Hungry Ghost/ Day of the Dead Festivities at Zen Center of Los Angeles
Photo by JL Aronson

Each morning begins at Buddhist practice centers with a liturgy ceremony and this particular Sunday was no different, except that participants seemed to have walked off the set of a zombie movie. Following the service, the 30 or so undead on hand proceeded to the central courtyard. Altars had been set up, festooned with old photos of the departed, friends and family members of those of us still walking, still awake. Simple instruments and noisemakers were handed out. And then, one at a time, each of us stepped forward into the center of the circle we’d formed, and invoked the name of an ancestor, at which point the rest of us shook our shakers, tambourines and hand drums for a few seconds of un-silence. It was absurdist, reverent, irreverent, and fun.

Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao and a visitor on Day of the Dead at Zen Center of Los Angeles
Photo by JL Aronson

Roshi Wendy herself wore a pink boa and a face-painted skeletal mask. After the ceremony, she greeted me and my friends warmly, offering regards for the sangha family back at my own practice center in New York. Expecting this to be a family event, I’d brought with me a couple local friends who’d never been to any kind of Buddhist center before, along with their two young children; as it turned out, the only children in attendance. 

URL addresses don’t get more descriptive than this: www.zencenter.org

My pilgrimage ended here. A few days later, I drove out to the airport, returned my rental car and boarded a red eye flight back east, prostrating all the way. This wasn’t a comprehensive survey of West Coast Buddhism. Many more highly respected practice centers would have made it onto a longer itinerary. Some of them would have been Vipassana-style, some in the Tibetan tradition, and one of them certainly would have been Vietnamese. That said, a few places that I visited but didn’t get to mention in this chronicle were the Berkeley Zen Center, the Santa Cruz Zen Center, the Zen Community of Arcata, CA and—in Portland, Oregon—Dharma Rain Zen Center. I could imagine myself spending lots more time in any one of the temples I was fortunate enough to get acquainted with. But for now, I’m back to staying present in the places I call home. 

Do some of your own explorations starting right here, right now. Each of the links provided bring you to a treasury of info about how to get there and what’s happening throughout the year. Or research a practice center, monastery or temple closer to you. Most people hem and haw, not sure which tradition is right for them. Many of the websites associated with these centers feature free recordings of talks by the teachers, along with links to books and articles. But there’s nothing wrong with just diving in. And in fact, that’s the only true method there is.

Click here to explore the Modern Pilgrimage series.

Modern Pilgrimage Part Four: Sagely City of 10,000 Buddhas

In this five-part series guest blogger and filmmaker JL Aronson writes about his Fall 2012 pilgrimage to Buddhist centers in California and beyond. Follow his journey as he meditates his way through the West. Find out more about JL here. See more photos from JL's pilgrimage here. Happy reading! - Madeline

SAGELY CITY OF TEN THOUSAND BUDDHAS

Ukiah, CA

Main Gate, City of 10,000 Buddhas, Ukiah, CA
Photo by JL Aronson

Ok, back to China.
The general principles that define “Zen” and distinguish it from other forms of Buddhism were synthesized in medieval China and dispersed to faraway lands. Vietnam, Korea and—obviously—Japan all developed rich Zen permutations. The fact that the Japanese derivation is mostly widely known in Western countries is in large measure attributable to the early work of people liked Shunryu Suzuki, Taizan Maezumi (more on him in a bit) and the scholar D.T. Suzuki. Only one Chinese Buddhist teacher came west at that time and had any lasting impact. His name was Hsuan Hua and he had the good sense to pay a visit to Hong Kong in 1949. China was about to fall into the vortex that lifted many millions out of poverty, but not before starving many of those millions to death and effectively criminalizing their religions. Before embarking on the one-way trip out of his homeland, Hsuan Hua had received the seal of the ancestors from old Master Hsu Yun, then approaching 110 years. (He’d live another ten more after that. Really.) 

Hsuan Hua
photo credit http://www.buddhadharma.com/contact_us.html

The transmission he received from Hsu Yun gave Master Hua the kind of credibility that inspires faith. His intimate familiarity with the texts of the tradition also lended a required authority, first for the Chinese followers that encountered him in Hong Kong and elsewhere and who looked for signs of cultural continuity amid bad news on the main land. He came to San Francisco in 1962, and before long found students and donors. In the spiritual firmament of the time, a number of American seekers found their way to Hsuan Hua. Alas, the Japanese style was not for everyone.
In 1974, Master Hua purchased a shuttered mental institution on 488 acres of Mendocino County, a couple hours north of San Francisco. From this was born the first Chinese Buddhist monastery outside of Asia. However, that designation only begins to describe the Sagely City of Ten Thousand Buddhas. In addition to training facilities for scores of monks and nuns, the City also encompasses a private elementary and junior high school (like Catholic school but with Bodhisattva chanting services in place of mass), a large garden, a vegetarian restaurant, Dharma Realm Buddhist College (currently working on establishing full accreditation), and a retreat center for visiting lay practitioners.

Peacock and Main Buddha Hall at City of 10,000 Buddhas, Ukiah, CA
Photo by JL Aronson

Master Hua died in 1995 but his syncretic yet orthodox approach lives on.  His teachings give nearly equal merit to all five historic branches of Chinese Buddhism, including the esoteric and devotional approaches that were largely dispensed with by Japanese innovators. He also felt it was important to unify the Mahayana schools (which include Zen and Tibetan Buddhism) with the Theravadan schools of Southeast Asia. Though no one would confuse the practices that take place at the City of 10k Buddhas as anything other than Chinese Bodhisattva-centric, Hsuan Hua instituted a policy for all ordained monastics of only taking one meal a day, an austerity long-associated with Southeast Asian Buddhism. A number of his Western followers seem to have scattered since the Master’s passing, but his community in the backwoods of Ukiah, surrounded by wine and marijuana growers, continues to devote itself to wholehearted practice, assuring that Chinese Buddhism will still have a toehold in the Western most part of the West for years to come.

Visit the City online at www.cttbusa.org

Click here for the next installment in the series Modern Pilgrimage - The Zen Center of Los Angeles!

Modern Pilgrimage Part Three: Great Vow Zen Monastery

In this five-part series guest blogger and filmmaker JL Aronson writes about his Fall 2012 pilgrimage to Buddhist centers in California and beyond. Follow his journey as he meditates his way through the West. Find out more about JL here. See more photos from JL's pilgrimage here. Happy reading! - Madeline

GREAT VOW ZEN MONASTERY

Clatskanie, Oregon

Photo by JL Aronson

High up above the farms dotting Washington and Oregon’s common border lies a former elementary school where quiet, order and diligence reign supreme. On most days. Facing civic consolidation, the school was sold off a dozen years ago to the Zen Community of Oregon. The ZCO had been based out of Portland, led by acclaimed author and Zen teacher Jan Chozen Bays. And although one’s first impression upon arrival at Great Vow might reflect his or her own reaction to primary scholastic institutions, the charms of this unique facility can make you forget its origins in short order.

Stupa at Great Vow Monastary, OR
Photo by JL Aronson

   I arrived via bus from Portland to Kelso, WA, then a public shuttle bus from Kelso to Clatskanie, Oregon where I was picked up by one of the monastery residents in front of the town’s supermarket; a three-hour journey. One can drive directly from Portland and get there in under two hours. 

Jizo Garden at Great Vow Monastary, OR
Photo by JL Aronson

Chozen Roshi shares abbot duties with her husband Hogen Bays and both are wonderfully skilled teachers. They also have several resident priests who lead retreats and assist in overseeing the operations. I’d heard Chozen speak once or twice in New York and was moved by her gentleness and directness. She’d studied alongside John Daido Loori (one of my teachers) in the 1970s at the Zen Center of Los Angeles and kept close ties with him until his passing in 2009. I knew that the two had at least as much in common as they were distinct and I was eager to see how this manifested in their respective monasteries. Suffice to say, Great Vow is suffused with a Northwest penchant for openness and experimentation and—dare I say—a more female quality than your standard Zen operation. Chozen was trained as a pediatric physician and her affection for children and those in need permeates her books and the buildings and grounds alike. One way this manifests is with the peppered presence of Jizo Bodhisattva figures scattered throughout the buildings and grounds, most visibly in the Jizo Garden. Jizo is the non-historical persona representing a Buddhist vow to protect women, children and travelers, and his garden occupies a swath of woods behind this monastery that is also dedicated to lost loved ones. If something can be both moving and creepy at the same time, that describes my feeling in first finding myself in the forest surrounded by dozens of 18-inch high devotional figurines, nearly identical in cast but each garbed in their own fashion.

Zendo at Great Vow Monastery, OR
Photo by JL Aronson

Great Vow is a young monastery and it also attracts a lot of young folk from the city who come to stay for a few weeks, a few months, or a few years. And although I quickly overcame the suspicion that school buses would be arriving any moment with hostile children looking to take back their school from the Zennies, the environment does feel like a safe harbor where a certain kind of learning can take place. 
Great Vow holds regular meditation intensives throughout the year as well as retreats on topics such as mindful eating (also the subject of one of Chozen Roshi’s books) and Zen arts.

Find out more about the Monastery and Heart of Wisdom Temple in Portland by visiting www.zendust.org

Click here for the next installment of Modern Pilgrimage: SAGELY CITY OF TEN THOUSAND BUDDHAS, Ukiah, CA!

Jizo Garden, Great Vow Monastery, OR
Photo by JL Aronson

Jizo Boddhisattva,  is the protector of women, children and travelers. Bodhisattvas embody the awakened mind's compassion for all beings. At Great Vow Monastery, OR

Modern Pilgrimage Part Two: Green Gulch Farm

In this five-part series guest blogger and filmmaker JL Aronson writes about his Fall 2012 pilgrimage to Buddhist centers in California and beyond. Follow his journey as he meditates his way through the West. Find out more about JL here. See more photos from JL's pilgrimage here. Happy reading! - Madeline

GREEN GULCH FARM, Muir Beach, CA

Green Gulch - on May 5, 2012 people worldwide took photos demonstrating the impact or impending impact of climate change in their location and posted them online at 350.org or climatedots.org.
You can see all the dots on this flickr channel.

Green Gulch, a fully certified organic farm and fully functioning Buddhist retreat center all in one, is a half-hour drive from San Francisco’s City Center. I’d heard about Green Gulch 20 years ago when I was first moving to California and it sounded too good to be true. I must have not wanted that appraisal to be tested because it took me until this trip back west to visit the place for myself. Thankfully, with all those years of hype planted like a potential mine field, I was not disappointed.

Bay Area denizens are blessed not only with an enviable food culture, year round fair weather, and relatively low unemployment, but also a multitude of choices in getting away from it all. However, when it’s the Dharma they seek, there’s few places more accessible or picture perfect than Green Gulch Farm. A gulch is a steep sided ravine or canyon and the one where Suzuki Roshi’s students sought to expand his vision for a third residential retreat center had me thinking about “The Land of the Lost,” that 1970s TV show about an undiscovered valley still flowering in the Jurassic age. To get to the Farm, one crosses the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco, and then takes a windy, mountainous road down from Mill Valley, almost to the shoreline. When I arrived one Friday afternoon, fog was hanging on the escarpment of eucalyptus such that the boundaries between what came before and what I was driving down into could not be taken lightly. If the Coast Miwok people who inhabited Marin County before the Mission period wanted to escape notice for a while, I imagine this would have been an ideal spot.

The Wheelwright Center at Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center, Marin County, CA
Photo by JL Aronson

The first rush of cognitive dissonance comes when the visitor notices that all the buildings, and the landscape even, seem torn from a 17^th century Japanese hand scroll. In fact, the overall feeling is that some hyper-traditional Zen temple has been airlifted from Kyoto Prefecture. That attention to imported aesthetics hews closely to the American Zen practice of maintaining the historic forms, even as the teachings are communicated in an American vernacular. It’s a way of honoring the culture that gave birth to Zen—after 13^th century Buddhist monks brought it from China to Japan—as well as a constant reminder of the distinction between formal Buddhist practice and everyday Buddhist practice. So, while some people may balk at the chanting of unfamiliar words in liturgy services that blend English, Japanese and transliterations of ancient Sanskrit, it’s worth noting that many of those words would be unfamiliar to a Japanese or Indian person, as well. And while the clergy may sometimes wear robes that seem preciously anachronistic and foreign, they would have been foreign to people at the time of their design, too. The point is not simply to mimic a culture seen as holier than our own, but to take us out of our familiar territory and the habitual thinking that comes with the familiar, casual mind. Zen folk may not live in that rarified, formal circumstance 24/7, but the services and sitting meditation that take place in the meditation hall function in part as mindfulness practice. When one summons all their attention in a setting designed for heightened attention, it’s more likely they’ll be able to employ that same kind of awareness while interacting with others, working at the office or, as is the case for many people at Green Gulch, working in the fields.

Tools of Cultivation at Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center, Marin County, CA
Photo by JL Aronson

As the story goes, the San Francisco Zen Center didn’t set out to run an organic farm because they were passionate about self-sufficiency—although this, too, is a classically Zen Buddhist theme. A wealthy benefactor who owned the land was willing to sell it to the group for a pittance so long as it would be maintained as an open site where the public could learn about agricultural practices. Most of the Zen students didn’t know much about farming at the time but it was the early 1970s and the back-to-the-land movement was in full swing so plenty of people were willing to give it a try. 

Thirty years later, the farm flourishes on about 10 acres of the 115-acre property. Its high quality produce, herbs and flowers are sold to local farmers markets and select stores and restaurants. Additionally, yearly farm apprenticeships are offered to individuals interested in obtaining hands-on experience on a working organic farm. The farm interns participate in the spiritual and community life of the Zen Center but not to the same degree as other temple residents who come to Green Gulch expressly for the Buddhist training.

Main zendo altar at Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center, Marin County, CA
Photo by JL Aronson

The zendo is one of the only surviving buildings on the property from before its change of ownership. However, you’d never know it. What was once a hay barn at the edge of the fields has been transformed into a gleaming, if rustic, epicenter of GGF’s spiritual life. Cloud Hall, as it is now known, is connected to a cozy dormitory wing, where many of the short and long term residents have their own rooms. (Bathrooms are shared.) Other residents are housed in a variety of structures spread across the property, from a high design condo-like building with eight unique apartments, to Mongolian-style yurts. Green Gulch has always welcomed families to live on the premises, and a number of people over the years have raised their kids in this lively, contemplative, serene, Northern California / Asian environment. When I visited, I only saw one couple making a go of this but I’m sure the number varies.

Guesthouse at Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center, Marin County, CA
Photo by JL Aronson

Another standout structure at Green Gulf is the Lindisfarne Guest House, where I stayed during the two nights I was there. The Guest House boasts about 16 rooms (some singles, some doubles), a wood burning stove, a kitchen, and all sorts of amenities to make you think you were at a spa in the Japanese countryside. The entire building was constructed using age-old timber framing techniques without the use of nails or screws. Also of note is the traditional teahouse and garden where retreat participants can learn the art of the tea ceremony.

The yoga retreat I participated in was held in this yurt, cozy with a wood burning stove, bathroom and kitchen. For more on the retreat and its teachers visit www.samanthaostergaard.com/retreats.html
Photo by JL Aronson

The retreat I was there for, however, included neither tea nor gardening. Do-on Robert Thomas and Samantha Ostergaard co-lead a weekend retreat called “Zen Mind, Yoga Body,” emphasizing restorative practices and yogic postures that support prolonged periods of sitting meditation (“zazen”). Robert is the President of Zen Center and oversees its three branches, leaving spiritual direction to the more localized abbots. He is also an ordained priest in the lineage and I appreciated his wealth of knowledge about West Coast Dharma as well as his skillful conduction of the retreat when Samantha wasn’t leading us through postures and poses. 

First floor of the guesthouse at Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center, Marin County, CA
Photo by JL Aronson

A brief 10-minute walk beyond the farm lays Muir Beach, one of the loveliest, perhaps, in the county.

Find more information about Green Gulch and getting there by visiting www.sfzc.org/ggf

Click here for the next installment of Modern Pilgrimage: Great Vow Monastery in Oregon!

Toolshed Altar, Green Gulch Farm and Zen Center, Marin County, CA
Photo by JL Aronson

Muir Beach, near Green Gulch, Marin County, CA
Photo by JL Aronson

Modern Pilgrimage Part One: Setting Out (I Left My Heart Sutra in San Francisco)

In this five-part series guest blogger and filmmaker JL Aronson writes about his Fall 2012 pilgrimage to Buddhist centers in California and beyond. Follow his journey as he meditates his way through the West. Find out more about JL here. See more photos from JL's pilgrimage here. Happy reading! - Madeline

Meal Procession, City of 10,000 Buddhas, Ukiah, CA
Photo by JL Aronson

In 1883, approaching an average man’s middle age, the great Chinese Buddhist Master Hsu Yun (Empty Cloud) embarked on what would be his most elaborate and lengthy pilgrimage. In honor of his deceased parents, the accomplished monk traveled thousands of miles on foot, prostrating every few steps, crisscrossing China, Southeast Asia, and even visiting Llasa, high up on the Tibetan plateau. Of course, no trip could last so long and meander so far on filial piety alone. At 43, Hsu Yun must have blended his earnest gratitude with a healthy dose of curiosity. After all, there were no travel blogs, no Tumblr pages, not even a Rough Guide to aid one in imaging what lay beyond the horizon. And as a Buddhist practitioner with great faith and great determination, Hsu Yun would have wanted to experience the precious, liberating Buddha-dharma (teachings of the Buddha) with as many backdrops as possible.

Venerable Master Hsu Yun (1840-1960)

And so it was that I, too, set out on a pilgrimage of sorts this past autumn. Some key differences that bare mentioning: First, I am not an unencumbered Buddhist monk and so, whereas Hsu Yun wandered for years on his journey, I had to limit my own travel plans to several weeks. Secondly, Empty Cloud bravely risked blizzards, rains, bandits and his own body’s limitations by insisting on walking throughout the pilgrimage. I choose modes of transportation not yet available to the 19^th century Chinaman. And while Hsu Yun meandered throughout many parts of the Asian landmass, east of the Himalayas, I limited my trip to that enchanting and spiritually rife region of my own landmass: California (plus a couple stops in Oregon).

I’m an East Coaster by birth and upbringing, although I lived in Northern California for four fascinating years during and just after attending university there. I loved California and the Northwest, and considered staying after college, but New York City, the Sun of my suburban satellite youth, was beckoning me with its dynamism, directness and specificity. I was never able to shake the feeling that left coast people, their culture and their cities, harbored a vague and uncertain core, unknowable to outsiders; perhaps even unknowable to themselves. It seemed like a place where people made things up as they went along, and adulthood was an always-open question. Of course, this was one of the things that attracted me about the West Coast in the first place. The positive side was that anything felt possible and everything was worth exploring. I’d done my own shape shifting in the cauldron of those years, swapping musical tastes, hair styles, hair colors, intoxicant preferences and college majors with gusto. Once satisfied with that process, and confident enough with the results to start applying for real jobs, I said goodbye to all that and headed back East.

One thing I didn’t invest enough time in exploring while I was on the West Coast, however, was religion. It was on my list of things to do, and I would try meditating on my own from time to time, but somehow really exploring this matter kept getting bumped by other distractions. I’d always been fascinated by faith and did poke my head in a few Californian doors, but never with a Buddha behind them. This was curious because, although I’d grown up Jewish, I’d been introduced to Buddhist philosophy and meditation when I was still in my teens and it resonated with me more than anything else I’d encountered. I was vaguely aware that the Dharma lurked just around the corner but I lacked whatever motivation was needed to even crack open a phone book to find out exactly where. 

Nevertheless, when I was in my mid-twenties, while living in New York and starting up my career as a documentary filmmaker, a series of events led me to my first meditation retreat. And then another. And another. Slowly but surely, Buddhist practice became a significant part of my life. I was almost equally bewitched by the different styles and methodologies offered by various schools of Buddhism as I was by the calming and centering effects of the meditation itself. And as I became more familiar with the history of Buddhism’s emergence in the West—and particularly that of Zen, the school that I gravitated towards—I started taking note of how many epicenters for that development were in my old stomping grounds. 

For starters, there was San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC), easily the most famous and arguably the most influential source of Buddhist practice in America. Zen Center is located in the heart of San Francisco on Page and Laguna Streets, mere blocks from busy Market Street. It was founded in 1962 by Shunryu Suzuki and his students as the first Buddhist practice center in the United States, specifically for Westerners. Suzuki Roshi (the term roshi being an honorific for a revered teacher, usually an abbot) was also the author of Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, a classic of contemporary Buddhist literature and one of the first books I was handed at that tender age so many years ago. I felt I owed a debt to this man, if for that early introduction alone.

Portrait of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi at San Francisco Zen Center
Photo by JL Aronson

Suzuki Roshi died of cancer in 1973, just two years after publication of his groundbreaking book. However, to give you a sense of the guy’s influence, consider the following: while still alive, Suzuki oversaw the establishment of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, near Big Sur, and planted the seeds for Green Gulch Farm in Marin County, among other satellite centers. Tassajara was founded as the first Zen monastery outside of Asia and continues to train generations of earnest students throughout the year. A minority of those students actually become fully ordained monks or, priests, as they’re known in Suzuki’s lineage, but everyone who chooses to live there for either a few months or a number of years, follows the demanding monastic schedule. In the warmer months, Tassajara is open for shorter retreats. Weekenders can also take advantage of the site’s natural hot springs and numerous cabins for a Buddhist spa-like getaway. Once early-September arrives, however, the high mountain passes leading into Tassajara can be treacherous and the place closes to visitors. From then until some time in April, no one gets in or out, emergencies excepted.

Unfortunately, my pilgrimage did not coincide with Tassajara’s “guest season” so I was unable to see it with my own eyes. I did, however, manage to spend time at Green Gulch and Zen Center itself, so allow me to begin where it all began.

Hosshin-ji (Beginner’s Mind Temple) San Francisco Zen Center - 

300 Page Street, San Francisco, CA, designed by Julia Morgan, c. 1920

Photo by JL Aronson

SAN FRANCISCO ZEN CENTER

Zen Center’s flagship is a 1922 beaux arts complex perfectly suited to its task. The building was designed by famed architect Julia Morgan for the Jewish Emanu-El Sisterhood of San Francisco, which used the site much in the same manner as a YWCA of that period: offering young women who were both unmarried and Jewish a residence with community and spiritual life in a possibly unfamiliar city.  The Zen Center functions in a parallel sense, albeit with fewer demographic restrictions. A photo exhibition, coinciding with the 50^th anniversary of SFZC, was mounted in the Center’s ample dining room and hallway showing time-bending images of the building’s Sisterhood years and news articles from the time that described the life there. 

Buddha Hall: Dharma talks and some services take place in the Buddha Hall at San Francisco Zen Center

Photo by JL Aronson

I’m a sucker for side-by-side comparisons that allow you to feel the past’s presence and, studying these pictures, I had a visceral sense of how the space had been preserved and transformed over time. The large study room, right off the main entrance, had been a place of armchairs and bookshelves where the women of yesteryear might have shared conversation and enjoyed the fireplace on crisp Fall evenings. It now functions as the Buddha Hall, where all formal talks are given and many services take place on a sea of tatami mats. Though some folding chairs lined the perimeter of the room, it was sparsely furnished save several statues and an altar by the hearth. Downstairs, on the basement floor, there had originally been a compact gymnasium with a built in stage, doubling as an event space for the Sisterhood. During World War II, Jewish servicemen stationed in the Bay Area or docked in its ports, came to the Sisterhood building on Saturday nights for dance socials. Suzuki Roshi turned this into the zendo where, in Soto Zen style, practitioners face a wall during meditation, turning their attention inward to the workings of the mind, allowing all internal and external distractions to fall away (or at least be rendered innocuous), one after another. Dividers were placed in the floor to add additional wall space—a modification that allows for a greater capacity in the zendo and also results in a limited functionality. For instance, depending on whether it’s time for sitting, or a talk by one of the teachers, retreat participants proceed up and down the stairs between the zendo and the Buddha Hall.

San Francisco Zen Center Zendo
Photo by JL Aronson

The best way to encounter Zen Center is to first visit on a Saturday morning. They offer an introduction for those new to the Center and/or to Zen, starting at 8:40am. You will not be alone. I was amazed to see several dozen people show up for the introduction and was told that they get on average 50 or 60 new faces every time. San Francisco is a city of seekers and over-worked wage earners. The seekers are always open and curious, while the workers are told to get with the program and mellow out. At Zen Center, they’re all invited to drop any expectations and goals and just be present with what is. 

At 10am, a Dharma talk is given in which one of a number of the officially sanctioned teachers in Suzuki’s lineage espouses his or her interpretation and understanding of Buddhist wisdom. After this—weather permitting—everyone gathers for tea and cookies in the open-air courtyard that overlooks Laguna Street. Though the photos on the walls had given me a taste of mid-century life at 300 Page, speaking with a few of the long term Zen Center practitioners gave me an invaluable glimpse of what its been like to practice there over the past few extraordinary decades.

Learn more on their website.

One of the hallmarks and pleasures of SFZC practice is having options between the three grand practice centers. Each is quite distinct in their geography and emphasis while sharing a common overall style, liturgy, and even teachers. I found that the priests and many of the students all make the rounds from time to time. Even local practitioners living full, lay lives might do weekend meditation retreats at either the City Center, Tassajara or Green Gulch, depending on what’s being offered. 

Click here for Modern Pilgrimage Part Two - Green Gulch, Marin!

Plugging into the Mainframe in Big Sur

A trip to Big Sur recharges your life force. The natural world anywhere is capable of refreshing one’s spirit, but visiting Big Sur is like plugging into the main frame for a super charge. Henry Miller wrote, “At dawn, Big Sur’s majesty is almost painful to behold. That same prehistoric look, the look of always, Nature smiling at herself in the mirror of eternity…” in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. Big Sur is not a town, but a 90-mile length of California coast.  Entering Big Sur on Highway One, nature’s raw beauty humbles and inspires, subtly shifting your consciousness and welcoming you to this special place.

Foggy Sea
Photo by Madeline Horn

Big Sur enchants; a magic land of blue waves, cliffs, condors, artists, waterfalls, and redwoods. Naturally, when my mom invited me to join her on a two-night trip to Big Sur last week I jumped at the chance. Music was the reason for the trip, as it often is for my mother. Esalen Institute was celebrating its 50^th anniversary with a daylong public celebration with hot springs, barbeque lunch, and a Joan Baez concert. Mom spent time with Joan Baez at her home and at love-ins as a youth intern for her Institute for the Study of Nonviolence in high school, so she was especially excited to see her play this show forty years later. The same evening, Steve Earle played a concert at the Henry Miller Library. Mom, with characteristic enthusiasm purchased tickets for both events.  

View from the Side of the Road, Big Sur
Photo by Madeline Horn

Camping
We rented a tent cabin at Fernwood Resort, a privately owned campground on the river with a restaurant, bar, and store. Fernwood’s musician owner books bands on weekends and throws music festivals, including one coming up October 26-28, 2012 with The Devil Makes Three. In the past I have stayed at Pfeiffer Big Sur State Park, which is more family-oriented with an awesome swimming hole and incredible hikes. Fernwood is rowdier, but a bit more convenient, since you can eat at their restaurant if you are too lazy or busy (like we were this time around) to cook your own food. It’s also easier to get a reservation at Fernwood. 

Concert at Esalen Institute
Photo by Madeline Horn

Cocktails and Dining
Our first night in Big Sur we had a drink on Nepenthe’s patio, overlooking ocean, cliffs, and bald mountains. On the tails of a heat wave, the hot night air made it too uncomfortable to sit inside the restaurant - rare weather for this part of the earth. We giggled when the staff lit the fireplace on the patio because, even after dark, the fire felt oppressively warm. In the morning we breakfasted on stuffed raspberry French toast and eggs benedict at Deetjen’s Big Sur Inn amongst black and white photographs, fresh flowers, and custom-made chandeliers and lamps in the form of antlers, sprites and maidens. Our bellies filled, we were prepared for our Esalen adventure.

Succulent Display at Esalen
Photo by Madeline Horn

Esalen
Esalen Institute is like no other place on the planet. The earth provides hot springs flowing from ocean cliffs, waterfalls, condors, sea otters, and redwoods. Esalen’s visionaries enhance the stunning natural setting with fruit, vegetable, flower, and succulent gardens, stone hot tubs, cabins, sculpture, rambling paths, woodwork, and shrines. Michael Murphy and Dick Price founded Esalen in 1962 as a personal spiritual retreat and a place where intellectuals could explore consciousness and healing practices. There are two sides to Esalen, first the Esalen Center for Theory and Research, a think tank that investigates the scientifically unexplainable, and second, the Esalen Institute, offering workshops in music and dance, massage, writing, relationships, psychology, yoga, sustainability, economics, healing, and more. 

Esalen Hot Springs (on the left)
Photo by Madeline Horn 

For their 50^th anniversary celebration they set up a stage on a lawn overlooking the sea and fed guests a bbq lunch. The hot springs were open to all. As soon as we arrived, we hightailed it to the baths and soaked perched in the middle of the cliff overlooking an open bay. We met a charming 90-year-old naked man in the tubs who looked a lot better than many of the naked sexagenarian men we encountered. When I turned away from the crowds and stared at the ocean, immersed in the hot mineral water, I felt impossibly lucky to be in such a transcendent place. 

Succulents at Esalen
Photo by Madeline Horn

Wandering the grounds later I found a home perched in the gully of a waterfall. The house’s windows were mere feet from the water flowing straight down towards the ocean. On the other side of the waterfall sat a round meditation hut with windows facing the sea. Warm mineral waters escaped the cliff here, and gathered in a large metal bowl sculpture that also caught floating leaves. The mineral water has a slight sulfur smell, but nothing can compete with the smell of the ocean that permeates the entire property. Magical touches like hand carved benches, sculptures, and artistic metal work enhance Esalen’s natural beauty. 

Food Garden at Esalen
Photo by Madeline Horn

Joan Baez sang like an angel onstage, sending the silver-haired crowd into a state of bliss. She thanked her 99 and a half year-old mother, who sat in the crowd. Baez has been connected to Esalen for more than 50 years. She lived on the property before Esalen was founded, when it was an old hotel and hot springs owned by founder Michael Murphy’s family. Once she finished her set my mom and I drove ten miles north in the setting sun, up Highway One to the Henry Miller Library to see Steve Earle play in the redwoods.

Even the locks are artistic at Esalen
Photo by Madeline Horn

Henry Miller Library
Henry Miller wrote about Big Sur, where he lived for many years, “This is the face of the earth as the Creator intended it to look,” in Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch. Performances at the Henry Miller Memorial Library take place outside in the redwood grove in front of the library itself. The Library is a non-profit cultural center dedicated to championing Henry Miller’s artistic legacy. The library hosts concerts, films and art shows. For the concert, spot lights colored the redwoods surrounding the stage, while candles and strings of white lights lit the grove. Steve Earle took the stage late, but he made up for it with an entertaining two-hour set. To bring our day full circle, he sang a song that he had written for Joan Baez, which she had performed earlier at Esalen. I wasn’t familiar with Earle before the show, but the concert made me a fan. He’s a gifted songwriter and speaks to the crowd like an old friend in his Texas twang. 

Waterfall Meditation Hut, Esalen
Photo by Madeline Horn

Breakfast and State Parks
On my third day in Big Sur I woke up alone. My mom had to leave our tent cabin at 4:45am to tow a submarine into Monterey Bay. I ventured to Nepenthe’s breakfast spot, Café Kevah, for the fantastic view. Breakfast was pricey for a restaurant without table service, but the meal was delicious, potatoes, eggs, and bacon all cooked perfectly. After eating I set off to find Pfeiffer Beach, which is on an unmarked road. The directions to the beach I had picked up at Deetjen’s Inn led me down a one lane 15mph road through the redwoods and past ramshackle forest homes to a completely unexpected freshly painted State Parks kiosk, where an employee demanded $5 cash or check to enter the beach. I cursed myself for spending my last cash on a glass of wine at the Steve Earle show the night before and tried to sweet talk my way in but the man would not budge! I had to turn around and drive out. I gave up on Pfeiffer Beach and headed to Andrew Molera State Park for a hike. 

Meditation Hut, Esalen
Photo by Madeline Horn

Andrew Molera State Park is a former ranch reaching from the mountains to the sea. I hiked to the ocean on a two-mile loop through the old creamery meadow. The sun came out as I reached the beach, brightening the blue of the ocean by a few shades. I found a driftwood cross draped with kelp, taller than me, next to a substantial driftwood fort, destined to be washed away by the tide. Hiking back to the parking lot I gazed at the wheat colored Santa Lucia Mountains and dramatically bald grey stone Pico Blanco, towering over the landscape. I wished I had time to hike in the redwoods, but responsibilities at home beckoned, so I drove dutifully north on Highway One, my spirit refreshed after just two days in Big Sur. I had soaked in natural mineral baths overlooking the sea, spotted countless birds of prey flying overhead, and listened to great music. Nature put on a final show for me on the drive, as the bright sun highlighted the midnight blue, ultramarine, and topaz tones of the ocean, punctuated by white craggy rocks. I struggled to keep my eyes on the curving road as I pushed north on this enchanted coast.

Pink Redwoods at Henry Miller Library
Photo by Madeline Horn

Santa Lucia Mountains, Andrew Molera State Park
Photo by Madeline Horn

Beach cross, Andrew Molera State Park
Photo by Madeline Horn

Beach, Andrew Molera State Park
Photo by Madeline Horn

View from Highway One, Big Sur
Photo by Madeline Horn

Fiery Ice Plant, Big Sur ( I didn't alter this photo! The colors were this bright)
Photo by Madeline Horn

Self-portrait at Esalen
Photo by Madeline Horn

http://www.fernwoodbigsur.com/index.html
http://www.nepenthebigsur.com
http://www.deetjens.com
http://www.esalen.org
www.henrymiller.org