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March 22, 2012

Della Goertz Died on February 5, 2012

Mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, Della was one of Suzuki Roshi’s early students at Sokoji Temple in San Francisco and lived in City Center’s 340 Page Street building for many years.

Della was an important member of the Zen Center community and will be missed.

Please see the announcement of Della’s death and comments on the announcement on the Sangha News blog.You are welcome to post comments in memory of Della here, too.

October 26, 2011

Services for David Coady in Quincy, MA

From The Patriot Ledger in Quincy, Massachusetts:

David J. Coady, 46, of San Francisco, died unexpectedly Thursday, July 21, 2011. . . .

Services will be held at 11 a.m., Saturday, Oct. 29, 2011, at United First Parish Church Unitarian (Church of the Presidents), at 1306 Hancock St., Quincy Center. Revs. Sheldon Bennett and James Ford will co-officiate. Friends of David and of his family are all welcome. http://www.ufpc.org/contactus/directions.html. Donations may be made in David’s name to the San Francisco Zen Center, http://is.gd/lsLWA7.

Read the full obituary: David J. Coady at Legacy.com.

Our heartfelt condolences to David’s family and friends at this time.

August 3, 2011

Abbot Paul Haller: “The Other Side of Loss is Salvation”

In his public dharma talk on Saturday at Beginner’s Mind Temple, Abbot Ryushin Paul Haller addressed what he called the “very delicate process” of healing, as a community and as individuals too. Of responding to the shock of loss:

As those shockwaves reverberate and we feel, start to make contact with our very human response — that sense of loss, that sense of the fabric of life being torn asunder, bent out of shape — how to discover that it’s taking a new shape, it’s reshaping, it’s rediscovering, is a very delicate process.

Part of the fierceness of life is, we can’t put it back together the way it was in those golden days before now. We move forward. We take what we have and we hold it with compassion, with courage, with patience, with wisdom, and, in the holding, something’s reshaped, something’s discovered about how to move forward.

In a way, this is no different from every period of meditation we have sat or we will sit. Our sincere intention is met by the urgent disorder of our life, our mind, our feelings, our memories, our anticipations. They demand attention. We can try to neglect, ignore, resist the world they create. Or we can discover how to meet it, how to be present for it, how in that presence, in that meeting, how to take the next breath, how to be available for what happens now.

Abbot Paul also read from and reflected on a poem by Mary Oliver (In Blackwater Woods): “To live in this world you must be able to do three things: to love what is mortal; to hold it against your bones knowing your own life depends on it; and, when the time comes to let it go, to let it go.”

An audio file of Saturday’s talk, The Other Side of Loss is Salvation, is available for download or listening through the web.

August 1, 2011

Witnessed Cremation Ceremony for David Coady

The Witnessed Cremation Ceremony for David Coady will be held on Tuesday, August 2, at 11:00 am.

Jess C. Spencer Mortuary
21228 Redwood Road, Castro Valley, CA 94546 (map)
Phone: (510) 581-9133

Please arrive by 10:45 am, so we can begin at 11:00 am.

Most people will be standing outside during the ceremony, so please dress accordingly.

Ceremony

An altar will be set up in the doorway to the cremation chamber, which will be open. People will assemble outside, facing the altar and the cremation chamber, with seven people standing in the inner cremation room for the actual cremation.

We expect that people outside will be able to look through the doorway and the altar, and see into the cremation chamber. We will all chant together and be in the same location.

Just before the cremation, the container holding David will be opened so that poems, cards, or sentiments that people might like to offer can be added. These will be gathered up from the group just before the ceremony begins and taken into the inner chamber, and placed with David in the container.

We will chant the Metta Sutta and offer incense. Then, during the cremation, we will chant the Sho Sai Myo.

Chant cards and other articles will be brought from City Center. Flowers will be sent from Green Gulch Farm.

All are welcome.

If you have questions, please call the front office at City Center: 415.863.3136 (Mon – Fri 9:30 am – 12:30pm and 1:30 – 5:00 pm).

August 1, 2011

Early Morning Memorials for David Coady

Last Wednesday evening, Abbot Paul announced that for the next seven Thursdays, memorials for David Coady will be held in the Buddha Hall at City Center during the time of morning service, 6:30am.

The first of the services, held last Thursday, July 28, is described in The Ino’s Blog: Evening Assembly, Morning Assembly. The remaining services will be on August 4, 11, 18, 25; September 1, 8.

Plans for the larger memorial service and funeral will be posted as information becomes available.

July 30, 2011

Photos of David Coady


Photos of David at Tassajara, taken by Renshin Bunce (color) and Shundo David Haye (black-and-white). Click on an image to bring up a slide show view with captions. In the slide show, use the arrows below the photo to move forward and backward. To close the slide show, and return to this page, click directly on a photo.

If you have a photo of David you’d like to submit, please email it to the editor of The Great Leap. Thank you!

July 28, 2011

The Ino’s Blog: Evening Assembly, Morning Assembly

Yesterday, David Coady’s brothers arrived at City Center. In the evening, there were small group discussions in lieu of the regular Wednesday evening dharma talk. Shundo, our ‘town crier’, describes the evening and the service held this morning, too:

Afterwards all the groups came together in the grey light of the courtyard, a typical summer evening cool breeze blowing, to fill the space with the chanting of the Refuges.

This morning we had the first of what will be seven memorial services, to take us through the traditional forty-nine day period. During the Dai Hi Shin Dharani, everyone stood up and took a turn to offer incense as we chanted. I am not sure where we got the dedications for these services from; each makes an appeal to a different buddha or bodhisattva, and the phrasing is unlike anything else we use.

via The Ino’s Blog: Evening Assembly, Morning Assembly.

July 28, 2011

Gretchen Rau, “the thing that cannot be undone”

Over at the texture of ordinary, a post we missed on Monday: Gretchen Rau reflects on her experience of events surrounding David’s death:

I came back to City Center last night ready to talk and find out how things were for everyone, and many people were ready to give it a rest for awhile.  And then this morning in the Buddha Hall I began to melt a bit, seeing Dave’s photo on the altar.  He’s gone and he’s not coming back.  This one thing, it cannot be undone.  The men I see walking down the street with the same haircut and the similar walk, they are never going to be Dave.  We can talk to his door, sealed now by the medical examiner, and say it was all a mistake, please come back, we’ll try again, but it’s not going to do any good.
. . . We were caught off-guard, but not completely surprised.

via the thing that cannot be undone | the texture of ordinary.

July 26, 2011

Abbot Ryushin Paul Haller on “the loss that we feel most”

Watch the recorded video stream or
listen to the audio recording.

On Saturday, Abbot Ryushin Paul Haller dedicated his Dharma Talk to reflecting on loss — on the loss of David Coady and the impact of that loss on the community, on community and the practice speaking truth.

Here are some excerpts:

Every life is precious. Every life is a loss. But you know, we’re living the life we’re living. And the one that’s right in front of us is the loss that we feel most.

Maybe the challenge for us is, through living this life, to touch all life, and through living this loss, to touch all loss.

read more…

July 26, 2011

Midlife Monkeygirls: Dharma Tennis

Caren at Midlife Monkeygirls remembers David Coady as a ‘dharma tennis’ partner and reflects on the allure of the idea of suicide:

David and I played tennis a few times last summer. It was there, on the tennis court, down at Dolores Park in the Mission, on a chilly San Francisco summer night, where I got to know him. He shared with me his struggles with the medications that he was taking, and his suicidal history. I shared with him my history. There we stood, rackets dangling from our hands, a ball bouncing intermittently, the tethered net between us, some cracks on the pavement of the court – two sarcastic zen students from Boston, expressing through gallow’s humor, the struggles to simply live, the angst of life, the frustrations of being out of shape in our 40′s, romanticizing what our backhand looked like when we were younger, and how alive we once felt on the tennis court.

via Midlife Monkeygirls (One Woman’s Midlife Crisis): Dharma Tennis