Sangha members have repeatedly expressed value for this group as a uniquely safe spiritual and personal space in their lives.

Learn more about some of our BIPOC members and the work our community is doing to celebrate Black Zen.

How do we lean into our “yes” without abandoning our “no”? 

Meet Michael Dotson!

There is nowhere to get to that is more important than the present moment.

Meet Rev. Korin LaJoy!

How can we use mindfulness, as either members of an oppressed community or allies, to actively stand up against systems of oppression?

This place has been kept alive by the selfless service of steady practitioners. I hope to keep coming home to the heart of Hokyoji again and again so that I may feel the slight awakening of my own heart.

I’ve come to know Zen as intimacy. Going deep to really see, understand, feel, listen – and to do that in relationship with myself and sangha. 

Meet Jake E. Nagasawa!

Most aspects of my life are improved by Not Knowing, and I have a hunch that this might be true for the planet as a whole.

By touching on many different ways of understanding this thing called whiteness, my hope is that each and every person in the room can pick up, sit with, chew on, and keep asking questions about those seeds that resonate with them the most. This is lifelong work.

Tidiness leads me to calm myself. When I see objects strewn all over the counter, my mind goes off in ten directions.

 I was alone in the kitchen, preparing food with love and joy, cooking for Sangha members who had been, and are, teachers to me. The sun shone through the window, leaves shimmering, the faintest hint of incense, and there I was, slowly cutting that carrot. 

The way to spread healing is presented in EEAAO as two-fold: we must learn to drop our false stories of self enough to discover what someone else really needs, and we must then do what is in our own (limited, conditioned) power to begin to offer it to them. 

The story many of us have heard is that Shakyamuni left in the middle of the night without letting Yasodara and their newborn son know; that he abandoned them.

Meet Davu Seru!

I can look at the money I earn and how I use it. I can respect that using it to take care of myself is part of right livelihood too.

It’s a moving testament to the power of music, and to the making of music as a Bodhisattva act. 

Meet Valentine Cadieux!

Someone from long ago left this cookbook at the center, and I found it when reorganizing the kitchen…

The combination of steady rigor and cryptic philosophy seemed to really inspire some people, but for those of us that are marginalized in any way, or even simply hard on ourselves, that mode of practice can really reinscribe harm.

I am beyond happy that a woman finally was placed in this position of honor and deeply humbled that the woman was me.

For me, the work in our Zen kitchen was a deep opportunity to collaborate with others and call upon “don’t know mind,” all while strengthening my understanding of giver, receiver and gift.

Meet Board Member Felicia Sy!

Rather than seeing mindfulness practice as an addition to our self-improvement list, I hope we can set an intention, keep it close, and let it ripen and flower.