Zen center

And it's a little bit to, kind of in a chronological way.

So yesterday I brought myself up to when I learned about San Francisco Zen Center.

And so I went there, um, to first to...

I was, I think I was hitchhiking into Northern California and to hook up with, to meet up with, um, a college friend.

And, uh, stayed at her house, and went over to San Francisco Zen Center a couple of times, maybe over a weekend.

And, uh, got a sense of, uh, what was there, what was possible.

And I remember receiving, um, Zen meditation instructions early in the morning, and staying for the Dharma talk, and, and hearing the Abbot there for the first time.

And my friend and I had this beautiful, like a little kind of hobbit hut with a loft with a bed, and right on the edge of a beautiful, um, grove of cedar trees.

Did we miss anybody? No? Got everybody? All right.

So who remembers everyone's name? Anyone? I always get plagued because here at Zen Center, I introduce myself to all of you as Michael, and then, you know, 10% of you remember it, and then you come back and you see me, and then I'm like, oh.

I know that I know them.

I've seen them before.

I know you.

So please don't take it personally.

I probably end up meeting 50 to 100 new people a week here at Zen Center.

But I'm really, it's always great to come back and sometimes in the room I learn people's names better by having people say it to me three or four times, you know.

I'm actually not sure when that chili recipe was written.

It could even predate greens and go back to the San Francisco Zen Center.

Okay, hold on.

You're going to have to explain this.

Zen as in mental peace?

Buddhism, yeah.

What's the connection between the restaurant and the San Francisco Zen Center?

The Zen Center actually opened greens in 1979.

This Dharma Talk was recorded live at the Austin Zen Center in Austin, Texas.

If you enjoy these talks and wish to support the Temple and its offerings, please visit austinzencenter.org.

Thank you for listening.

there are a number of people in this room wearing priest robes when we When we take that vow, we're saying yes to helping.

And what I'm seeing here is how the help is spreading.

It's really, and I've known about Austin Zen Center.

I've known many of the stories around Austin Zen Center since before it began.

I'm going to see.

Because of life, this is the way that I am.

The way that life had affected me by the time I came to Buddhism, and in fact, the reason that I came to Zen Center, uh, twenty-five years ago was because the way that life had affected me was that I had become an addict.

I was a drug addict and an alcoholic.

And after getting into recovery and immersing myself in several years of Vipassana practice, I started coming to Zen Center in the city, which is where I live now.

And I was coming there because there was a meeting on Monday nights for people in recovery who were interested in meditation, and it still happens seven thirty on Mondays.

And I didn't like Zen Center very much at all.

I didn't like the statues, the bowing, the bells, the robes, the downward glancing.

I didn't...

I moved to Corvallis.

So I had already gotten involved at Dharmarain Zen Center and ended up making a lot of weekend trips to come stay at the Zen Center and practice for the weekend and go back, which was not great for the marriage.

Anyway.

So I'm going to show some pictures.

I was telling my teacher just a week ago about the possibility that we might buy a house.

And it would be John and I buying it.

and the zen center would pay the mortgage and you know what should we do this and whatever and she was like she and kyogen qualified it was ridiculous she said that two monks fresh from the abbey who have almost no income would qualify for a mortgage but they did so they bought that house and the sangha paid the mortgage and eventually the sangha owned it anyway uh the carlson's lived in the attic it was a nice attic but it was you know but it was a private apartment on the top floor and then zendo uh beneath and offices and meeting rooms on the second floor And so that's the door that I knocked on.

Like, hello.