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2023 Branching Streams Gathering Debrief

Please read the full report summarizing the 2023 Branching Streams Gathering, hosted by Santa Cruz Zen Center with the support of Ocean Gate Zen Center and Monterey Bay Zen Center. The gathering was held at Villa Maria del Mar, a conference center overlooking the ocean in Santa Cruz, from September 18 – 21, 2023.


Participants in the 2023 Branching Streams Conference proposing sessions on Day 2.
Participants share updates from individual sanghas in 2 minute updates we called “Sangha Shorts.”
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Newsette 1-9-2024

We continue to include Hozan Alan Senauke in our well-being ceremonies, as do many Branching Streams sanghas. For updates from Hozan’s family, or to leave messages of support, you can visit his Caring Bridge page at: www.caringbridge.org/visit/alanhozansenauke.

This Newsette includes an event that occurred on New Year’s Day in Washington, DC, two book recommendations, a request from a Branching Streams teacher, and news of three wider community offerings that may be of interest.

On New Year’s Day a two hundred sixty-six-year-old temple bell was installed at the National Arboretum in Washington DC. The installation ceremony included the chanting of the Enmei Jukku Kannon Gyo by eight members of All Beings Zen Sangha and guiding teacher Inryu Ponce-Barger shared some words. A local TV station televised the event. Here is the link. An inscription on the bell began with these words: “One strike permeates all things.”

Recent books about beloved teachers:

Seeing One Thing Through: The Zen Life And Teachings Of Sojun Mel Weitsman, with an introduction by Hozan Alan Senauke and a forward by Norman Fischer.

Seeing One Thing Through begins with a series of autobiographical memories and reflections going back to Sojun’s boyhood in Southern California, his coming of age as an artist and a seeker in the vibrant San Francisco of the 1950s, and his first meeting with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. The larger portion of the book is a collection of Sojun’s edited talks, his articulation of “ordinary mind,” and his strong belief that Zen as a way of life is available to all. 

Remembering Myogen Steve Stucky by Renshin Bunce

Renshin, the guiding teacher of Beginner’s Mind Zen in Eureka, CA, writes: “In the years since the death of my teacher, I’ve noticed that I repeatedly tell the same handful of stories about him. Also, when I’m around San Francisco Zen Center, students approach me to tell me their stories, to tell me how touched they were by him… Now, in the hope of sharing some part of him with Zen students in the future, I offer this book. The first part is my memories, the second is a collection of stories from friends and family, the third is a collection of his teachings in the three months between his diagnosis and death, and the fourth is his obituary. May it serve to benefit the awakening of all beings.”

Advice requested by a leader of a Branching Streams sangha. He would like to accept donations from sangha members and would like to open a bank account in his Sangha’s name, without becoming a 501(c)3. If you have experience in receiving donations in this way, please let me know and I will connect you and the sangha leader via email.

Community offerings that may interest you:

Dr. Paula Arai will be offering a program, Bowing to Lotuses Blooming in the Mud, Gratitude as an Agent for Change on Sunday January 14 from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The program will be in person at the Institute for Buddhist Studies in Berkeley CA and online. Registration is still open, and a flyer is attached. This program launches the Soto Zen Buddhist Association’s monthly, year-long series Celebrating the Voices of Women in Buddhism; Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow, planned by the SZBA DEIA committee.

Before the ‘May We Gather’ pilgrimage in March (in Antioch, CA), May We Gather has partnered with the Asian Pacific American Religions Research Initiative, Tricycle Magazine, and an amazing group of panelists to have an online three-part series beginning Wednesday 1/24.

The series is entitled Resilience, Recovery, Repair.

Rev. Lien Shutt is offering a twelve-week online course, The Dharma of Being Antiracist, starting February 6.   The teaching team includes Crystal Johnson, who led the Branching Streams-sponsored Unpacking Whiteness series in 2020. The course will follow the outline of Lien’s new book, Home Is Here: Practicing Antiracism With The Engaged Eightfold Path, where she teaches the practices of the Eightfold Path as a means for healing from the trauma of race and racism. The course is open to all and will alternate between teaching sessions and small affinity group sessions, with readings and exercises in between. You can click here for more information, teacher bios, and to apply. 

May the words on the bell ring true for all of us: One strike/one sound/one breath permeates all things.

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Newsette 1-3-2024

This Newsette is my New Year’s greeting to you and a tribute to Hozan Alan Senauke.

On New Year’s Eve I joined the Berkeley Zen Center Sangha for zazen and a wellbeing service for BZC’s beloved Abbot Hozan Alan.

Hozan is critically ill, in the ICU at Kaiser in Oakland after cardiac arrest last Thursday. His family has set up a Caring Bridge page at: www.caringbridge.org/visit/alanhozansenauke. You can find daily updates about his condition there and leave messages of support.

I visited Hozan on December 30with my friend Mushim Ikeda. Both of us have known Hozan since the early 90’s, when he was the director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. Hozan has been my mentor and friend ever since.

In the waiting room we visited with members of Hozan’s immediate family, his wife Laurie, daughter Silvie, and son Alex, who filled us in on Hozan’s condition.

Mushim and I sat at Alan’s bedside for a while, mostly in silence. Before we left, Mushim recited Santideva’s prayer, the Dalai Lama’s favorite prayer (see below). Friends who had visited before us wrote on the whiteboard in Hozan’s room, to share with his medical team, “Don’t be fooled by appearances – this man has a brilliant mind and a vast heart…Work: Saving all beings. Hobbies: Entertaining all beings (if you don’t know Hozan, he is a musician).”

On January 2, Silvie posted these words from Laurie: “Yesterday I [came upon] a wonderful quote from Joanna Macy that I wanted to share. Just reading that last sentence I can tell I’m in Hozanland. Please join me there.

“This is a dark time, filled with suffering and uncertainty. Like living cells in a larger body, it is natural that we feel the trauma of our world. So don’t be afraid of the anguish you feel, or the anger or fear, because these responses arise from the depth of your caring and the truth of your interconnectedness with all beings.

“Action isn’t a burden to be hoisted up and lugged around on our shoulders. It is something thing we are. The work we have to do can be seen as a kind of coming alive. More than some moral imperative, it’s an awakening to our true nature, a releasing of our gifts.” 

As we begin the New Year, some of us setting intentions for our practice and our lives, I am adopting a practice I learned of from one of my students – to find a word that I’d like to live with and grow into in the coming year. Mine is Spaciousness.

The Dalai Lama said his favorite prayer is this verse by Santideva:

                     For as long as space exists

                     And sentient beings endure,

May I too remain,

To dispel the misery of the world.