Norman tends to get a different kind of question, and one that he fielded on this recent August evening at Tassajara was quite typical. I would rather people think I was telling a joke, than that I was insulting them, regardless of what the truth of the matter might be. This answer usually provokes laughter, to my great relief. The chaotic pulse of Jewish spiritual practice in general and of Jewish spiritual angst in particular seems to me to be closer to the experience of actually being alive, and, therefore, more useful to me as a spiritual practice. Life, on the other hand, does not make much sense at all. The only problem I perceive in Buddhism, I tell them, is that it makes perfect sense. And finally, invariably, I am reduced to telling the truth. Well then tell us if you find something lacking in Buddhism anyway, they insist, irrespective of your feelings for Judaism. When I try to wriggle out of the question by pointing out that I took up Judaism because I felt positively drawn to it and not because I had found some fault in Buddhism, they never buy it. I am invariably asked by the monks what lack I found in Buddhism that caused me to abandon my ten year of practice at the Zen Center to take up Judaism. They are held in the evening, and most of the Zen students, resort guests and retreatants attend, quite possibly for lack of an alternative.īut the questions remain remarkably similar from year to year. Nowadays, these events are quite formal and well attended. They were held in the afternoon and attended only by a few of the Tassajara monks, and sometimes, by a few of our retreatants as well, largely, I think out of curiosity. At first these meetings were very small and quite informal. We have been holding such workshops at Tassajara ever since, and every time we do, it has been our custom to meet with the Zen students of Tassajara to explain our project to them and to give them a chance to ask us some questions. That was the locus of the very first week-long workshop we ever held. It was a fruitful exploration and eventually led to our establishing a meditation center together - Makor Or in San Francisco.īut it began at Tassajara in the early 90’s. We did day long workshops, we did week long workshops we held classes, and gave talks, and in all of these settings we did straightforward Jewish spiritual practice - prayer, Torah study and Shabbat - in combination with the kind of meditation we had learned as Zen students. Shortly thereafter, reunited and still motivated by our mutual passion for both meditation and Judaism, Norman and I embarked on an exploration of what Judaism and Buddhist Meditation might have to say to each other about spiritual practice. I, on the other hand, became interested in Judaism, went off to study for the rabbinate at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, and in 1991, returned to San Francisco as the rabbi of a large Conservative congregation there. Norman continued in his Zen practice, eventually receiving transmission as a Zen master and becoming the Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center, a large institution which includes a city center in San Francisco, a residential farm in Marin County and the Tassajara monastery itself. During the 1970’s, Norman and I both lived at Tassajara as monks, but as the 70’s gave way to the 80’s, our paths began to diverge. Between Labor Day and Memorial Day, the monks of Tassajara are sequestered off from the rest of the world to do their rather rigorous practice, but during the summer months, Tassajara supports itself by operating as a resort, staffed by these same monks. On a recent August evening, Zoketsu Norman Fischer and I addressed an audience of Zen monks and summer guests at the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, a Buddhist monastery high in the Los Padres Mountains of central California.
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