I was born at home at the San Francisco Zen Center, and moved to the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center monastery, deep in the Ventana wilderness, when I was 6 months old.
I lived at Tassajara with my mom until I was 5 years old & within Zen Center, formally, until I was 7 years old, when we moved two miles up the road & my mom went back to school to become a teacher. I stayed intimately connected with Tassajara throughout my teen years, spending good parts of the summers I was 11, 12 & 13 living with my best friend’s family in the Tassajara valley. I spent almost my entire summers at Tassajara when I was 15 & 16. And when I left UCSC after one year I went to live at Tassajara, for the first time as an adult, for the better part of 3 years.
I learned to walk in the Tassajara valley, I learned to swim at the bathhouse, I learned to cook in the Tassajara kitchen. Later, the menarche ceremony for me & my best friend was held in a yurt at Tassajara, I had slightly creepy interactions with older male students, created full moon ceremonies on rocks in the midst of the Tassajara creek, fell in love & had my heart broken in the Tassajara valley.
I have spent countless hours in the Tassajara zendo – sitting zazen (meditation), serving or eating formal meals during practice period, chanting, bowing, or celebrating Buddha’s birthday, Buddha’s enlightenment, or Segaki – both as a child & as an adult.
In my early 20’s my then-boyfriend, who I met at Tassajara, accused me of not being a Buddhist, but being a Tassajara-ist. I don’t think he was wrong!
When I heard the news that the Tassajara zendo had burned last week, I felt impacted, but not as much as I would have thought I would be. I felt sad. I feel sad now. And shocked. And so relieved & grateful that the rest of Tassajara was spared (through the incredible efforts of the community & local fire crew!) But, in emailing with a friend about the fire, I realized that, for me, the heart of Tassajara is the kitchen, not the Zendo. And I feel more connected to the river, the granite rocks of The Narrows, the bathhouse, and the old-growth wisteria than I do to the zendo.
I have profound memories throughout my life in this zendo – which was built the year I was born, after another fire took the original Tassajara zendo. I also have memories in every inch of the Tassajara valley. Experiences that are etched in my soul. No part of my being is not shaped by that land, by the darkness of those skies (which had no electricity in my childhood), by the smells of the sulphur waters & sycamore leaves crunching underfoot.
I hear that the densho bell may survive this fire. If I close my eyes I can hear the sound of that bell ringing through the valley – either calling me to evening service, or bringing the relief of the end of (very early) morning meditation.
I do not discount the energy of literally tens of thousands of people meditating in this zendo over 48 years, or the profound benefits I received through being raised in a community drawn together for the explicit purpose of practicing zazen (in a zendo) together. The outpouring of grief has been huge. So many people touched by a shared experience of a place.
Perhaps the next time I go to Tassajara I will find I am more deeply impacted by actually seeing the vacancy, the missing of something that has existed for my whole life, gone.
Over the years I have watched so many things that seemed permanent at Tassajara change – forms & structures & rules & practices – while other pieces hold a base of familiar hum. I have let go of so many things that once seemed ‘mine’ in the way that children claim things, and become a stranger in my own home, while the land itself – the waters, the rocks, the mountains, the yucca, the yerba santa – always welcomed me back.
As Kate Wolf sang “I’ve walked these mountains in the rain and learned to love the wind;
I’ve been up before the sunrise to watch the day begin.”
It’s apropos that I might end with a song, because I also spent countless hours singing at Tassajara – down creek in the afternoons, at skit nights over the years, and hanging out of car windows on the long drive over the mountain.
So Much Love as we all meet the impermanence of life with as much honesty & grace as we can.
