

Today I’m off on a whirlwind run up to San Francisco for a meeting of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association board.

We’re being hosted by San Francisco Zen Center‘s City Center. While over the years I’ve been on campus a number of times this will be the first time I’ve slept there.

I actually began my Zen life receiving instruction in zazen at the SFZC in 1967, although the center was at that time still housed at Bush street in Japantown. I sat at the Berkeley zendo for the next near two years. The San Francisco community relocated to what is now called the City Center on Page Street in 1969 the same year I became Roshi Jiyu Kennett’s student and my journey took me in new directions.

Today half the country, if they find the words “Zen center” tripping off their tongues, probably mean the San Francisco Zen Center’s City Center. It is one of those minor centers of the universe. Important to pretty much anyone in the United States and probably the entire west who practice Zen. A whole lot of what we do who practice Zen in the West started there.

So, for me, while going mostly to do the work of the SZBA, it is also something of a pilgrimage.