About this event:
Location and schedule:
Meet the Panelists: Reverend Gyokuden Steph Blank began Zen practice in Minnesota and sewed her first lay rakusu with Tomoe Katagiri in 2001. Her practice brought her to San Francisco Zen Center in 2004, where she continued the practice of sewing Buddha's robe with Zenkei Blanche Hartman. Steph was ordained as a Zen priest in 2010 by Tenshin Reb Anderson and became Sewing Teacher at Green Gulch in 2016. When not in the sewing room Steph can be encountered in her most beloved dharma position - Mother of two school-aged children. Dr. Grace Dammann, a physician who was honored by the Dalai Lama for her extraordinary work with AIDS patients, was a resident of Green Gulch Farm for many decades. Her life was changed when she experienced a head-on collision on the Golden Gate Bridge. After 48 days in a coma, Grace miraculously awoke. Once the thrill and euphoria of survival had passed, the hard, painful work of rehabilitation and caregiving began for Grace and her caregivers. Today, Grace runs the Pain Clinic at Laguna Honda Hospital and Rehabilitation Center from a wheelchair. Reverend Karen DeCotis is a Zen student and teacher who received priest ordination in the Soto Lineage in 2016. She has taught the Bozeman Zen Group for 14 years and practiced at the Berkeley Zen Center and San Francisco Zen Center beginning in 1986. Devoted to service and engaged learning, Karen brings knowledge of and experience with the Buddhist traditions along with a clear-eyed view of human life, suffering and transformation. She is known for her humor and warmth, bringing her intelligence, wit and humility to every teaching opportunity. Susan Moon a writer, editor, and lay Zen teacher. For close to twenty years, she was the editor of Turning Wheel, the award-winning journal of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship. Her books include Alive Until You’re Dead: Notes on the Home Stretch; the memoir This Is Getting Old; the groundbreaking collection, The Hidden Lamp: Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women, with Florence Caplow and What Is Zen? with Norman Fischer. She lives in Berkeley and practices at the Berkeley Zen Center and with the Everyday Zen Sangha. She has also practiced at Green Gulch Farm and Tassajara. For many years she has taught and led Zen retreats in the Bay Area, around the country, and internationally. She’s an enthusiastic grandmother to three school-age grandchildren
