19.6.07

F I R S TP R E V570NEXTLAST

Seated Meditation, Civic Center
In San Francisco, if your friend says he's going to temple you can't be sure if he's Jewish, Mormon or Buddhist. Founded in 1962 by Japanese Soto Zen priest, Shunryu Suzuki-roshi and a group of his students, the San Francisco Zen Center is the largest Zen temple and practice organization outside of Japan. Soto is the largest Zen sect in Japan and stresses meditation as a means of completely eliminating the mind and body and arriving at enlightenment and pure existence.

The SFZC has over a thousand members and 150 residents. The organization has grown to three locations of practice; the Beginner's Mind Temple in the heart of San Francisco, the Green Gulch Farm in Marin County, and the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center near Big Sur. Beyond the practice of mediation, the SFZC also addresses issues through its work with the homeless, the prison population, the sick and dying, ecological and environmental education, renewable energy, and other social concerns.
[ MAP H-13 ]


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