All posts by stonecreek

Events

Book Class – The Feeling Buddha with Burt Quinn

Please join us as we study The Feeling Buddha by David Brazier. This text presents a modern, alternative look at the Four Noble Truths.

“The Feeling Buddha is a lucid account of how the Buddha’s path of wisdom and loving kindness grew out of the challenges he encountered in life. Brazier explains the concepts of enlightenment, nirvana and the four Noble Truths, free from mystification. Buddha emerges as a very human figure whose success lay not in his perfection, but in how he positively utilized the energy which was generated through his suffering.”

In person at Stone Creek Zen Center.

Thursdays, July 10 – August 14                                                                                   6:30 – 8pm

Burt Quinn is a long-term Zen practitioner whose journey started in 1970 at the Berkeley Zen Center and moved through Sonoma Mountain Zen Center in the 90s, till he finally settled down at Stone Creek Zen Center in 2011. He recently received entrustment as a lay Dharma teacher from Jisho Warner.

Events

Three Day Sesshin: September 25 – 27

Join us for a period of intensive practice led by Jisho Warner and Annette JoE’ Lille. These three days of practice will be held in silence, with alternating periods of zazen (seated meditation, usually 30-minute periods) and kinhin (walking meditation, usually 10 minutes), and a work period each afternoon. A Dharma talk will be given in the morning and participants will have the opportunity to speak with a teacher (dokusan).

We will be sitting from 7am to 5pm each day.  

Sign Up Here

Attendance all three days is strongly encouraged but not required, though please plan on attending the entire day for days you have registered. Please do not leave in the middle of the day unless you have received permission from one of the teachers (info@stonecreekzen.org).

Vegetarian breakfast, lunch, and snacks will be served each day, and for meals we will be using oryoki (Japanese nesting bowls). Oryoki sets will be available if you do not have one, and instruction will be given each day for those who are new to the practice.

Each day will begin with a short orientation and opportunity for zazen instruction. Please plan on arriving by 6:45 am and on being in your seat ready to start by 6:55am.

We look forward to practicing together!

Jisho Warner is the Abiding Teacher and Annette JoE’ Lille is a teacher at Stone Creek Zen Center. More here.

Events

Half Sitting – July 19, 2025

Led by Burt Quinn

You are invited to join this half-day sitting suited both for beginning and experienced meditators. There will be alternating periods of zazen (seated meditation, usually thirty-minute periods) and kinhin (walking meditation, usually ten minutes). 

Sliding scale donations, all are welcome regardless of resources.

If you have questions, please email info@stonecreekzen.org.

Sign Up Here

 

Burt Quinn is a long-term Zen practitioner whose journey started in 1970 at the Berkeley Zen Center and moved through Sonoma Mountain Zen Center in the 90s, till he finally settled down at Stone Creek Zen Center in 2011.

Events

Two Day Sesshin – June 27-28

Join us for a period of intensive practice led by Jisho Warner and Burt Quinn. These two days of practice will be held in silence, with alternating periods of zazen (seated meditation, usually 30-minute periods) and kinhin (walking meditation, usually 10 minutes), and a work period each afternoon. A Dharma talk will be given in the morning and participants will have the opportunity to speak with a teacher (dokusan). 

We will be sitting from 7am to 5pm each day.  

Sign Up Here

Attendance both days is strongly encouraged but not required, though please plan on attending the entire day for days you have registered. Please do not leave in the middle of the day unless you have received permission from one of the teachers (info@stonecreekzen.org). 

Vegetarian breakfast, lunch, and snacks will be served each day, and for meals we will be using oryoki (Japanese nesting bowls). Oryoki sets will be available if you do not have one, and instruction will be given each day for those who are new to the practice. 

Each day will begin with a short orientation and opportunity for zazen instruction. Please plan on arriving by 6:45 am and on being in your seat ready to start by 6:55am. 

We look forward to practicing together!

Jisho Warner is the Abiding Teacher and Burt Quinn is a teacher at Stone Creek Zen Center. More here.

Events

Half-Day Sitting – August 23

Led by Edmée Danan 

You are invited to join this half-day sitting suited both for beginning and experienced meditators. There will be alternating periods of zazen (seated meditation, usually thirty-minute periods) and kinhin (walking meditation, usually ten minutes).

If you have questions, please email info@stonecreekzen.org.

Sliding scale donations, all are welcome regardless of resources.

Sign Up Here

 

Edmée Danan has been practicing Zen since 1981 and received lay transmission from Jisho Warner Roshi. She is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist with over 30 years of patient care experience. More about her work can be found at edmeedanan.com.

Events

Half Day Sitting – May 17

Led by Edmée Danan

8:30 am to 12:30 pm

You are invited to join this half-day sitting suited both for beginning and experienced meditators. There will be alternating periods of zazen (seated meditation, usually thirty-minute periods) and kinhin (walking meditation, usually ten minutes).

Sliding scale donations, all are welcome regardless of resources.

If you have questions, please email info@stonecreekzen.org.

Sign Up Here

Edmée Danan has been practicing Zen since 1981 and received lay transmission from Jisho Warner Roshi. She is a psychiatrist and psychotherapist with over 30 years of patient care experience. More about her work can be found at edmeedanan.com.

 

Events

Training in Compassion – A Four Week Course

with Edmée Danan

Part 1: Compassion Training

May 24, May 31, June 7, June 14 – 1 pm to 2:30 pm

This compassion training is designed to foster connection and support among participants through lively discussions, interactive exercises, guided meditation practices and meaningful activities to try out in your daily life. We will explore techniques to deepen our compassion for others, embrace the vital role of self-compassion, and cultivate a life filled with kindness and openness. This offering is open to Zen practitioners as well as anyone in the community.

Sign Up Here

Suggested reading:

Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong by Norman Fischer

Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chödrön

Schedule

Week 1: What is compassion?

Understand the difference between sympathy, empathy, and compassion. Learn how to cultivate compassion skills and overcome potential obstacles to compassion.

Week 2: Practicing compassion: Opening our heart to others and to ourselves

Empathy is feeling with another. It can be painful, and excessive empathy can lead to burn out. Compassion is feeling for another: it is empathy plus an active wish to relieve suffering.

Learn how to switch from empathy to compassion, thereby feeling energized and inspired instead of depleted or overwhelmed. Discover the spirit of tonglen (sending and receiving) meditation.

Week 3: Self-compassion 

Having compassion for others starts with having compassion for oneself and treating ourselves as we would our best friend.

Learn how to develop kindness and gentleness towards yourself.

Week 4: Bringing compassion into our daily life

Use inspiring practices to bring compassion into your everyday actions and live your life with joy.

 

Part 2: Practicing compassion in daily life

The compassion training course detailed above will be followed by a three-month workshop series consisting of on-hour meetings. The schedule will be determined after the conclusion of Part 1.

This workshop series is designed to build up connection and support among participants to strengthen our intention to practice bodhicitta – opening our heart to others and to ourselves. We will do this by having conversations and sharing our experiences in a small group. We will use the 59 slogans of lojong  (mind training). This offering is open to anyone with some meditation experience or as a follow up after completion of the four classes of the compassion training.

Suggested reading: 

Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong by Norman Fischer

Start Where You Are: A Guide to Compassionate Living by Pema Chödrön

———————

Edmée Danan was led to Zen practice after living for three years in an ashram in India. Her first teacher was Robert Aitken Roshi when she lived as a resident of the Diamond Sangha zendo on Maui, Hawaii for two years. After moving to California, she continued practicing with Jakusho Kwong Roshi at the Sonoma Mountain Zen Center until she met Jisho Warner Roshi in 1995, who authorized her to teach in April 2023. As a psychiatrist and psychotherapist, she is interested in determining when it is helpful to consider therapy to support Zen practice. She teaches meditation to both patients and health care professionals.

Sangha Blog

A Note from Dean, Our Beloved Tenzo

Written by Dean Musgrove 

Nearing retirement, I became more and more aware of an impending hell realm approaching- the special hell reserved for widowed old men, consigned to their Barcalounger recliners, screaming at the six o’clock news. To avoid that fate, I made a to-do list: renew passport, join a gym, get some service commitments, and never set an alarm clock again. But foremost was the intention to live out my golden years fully involved with Stone Creek and practice, so when Jisho and Meg asked me to be Tenzo, I said yes without thinking and abandoned the vow to never set an alarm clock.

Food has been a karmic throughline in my life. As I child, in bewildering circumstances, I turned to food for comfort and solace. My first job was delivering pies in a 1962 Rambler station wagon, “Pizza Man, He Delivers!” I was a teenage line cook at the Cattleman’s on the Redondo Beach pier the first time I was fired. Early career was owning and operating a couple of highly unsuccessful restaurants, each in possession of a liquor license. If only, I would have realized then that the license was to sell liquor, not a license to abuse it at will. The suffering that arose out of living by that confusion led me to spiritual practice. My first and probably deepest meditative insight was, “Dude, you think about food a lot!”…

Sunday dinners at my Sicilian grandmother’s, with platters of pasta, lasagna, braciole, noisy with aunts and uncles yelling at each other from across the table in second generation Italian are happy memories. Helping my wife, Susan, pull together her famous St. Patrick’s Day corned beef and cabbage dinners for family are some of the best times we shared. From these meals, I learned that food is love.

To cook for sesshins and practice days at Stone Creek is a joy. It is a practice that summons up my whole self. To fulfill the Tenzo’s role I must use heart and body. All of the senses, sight, smell, taste, touch, hearing and mind, instincts, experience, perception, judgement, discernment, and even neuroses come into play. It uses some of my best parts and forces me to face the worst. To gather energy and use its life force for the benefit of our practice feels like a culmination and a “just right” way to live out this next golden chapter.

The meal chant asks us to consider the giver, receiver and gift. Our oryoki meals make me question just who is the giver and who is the receiver, when the gift of gratitude and reverence for our miraculous shared life bursts forth in the dining room.

That food is love was always apparent to me. It took marriage to Susan to finally learn a more elusive lesson- love is food. Being nourished by love is a gentle current running through Stone Creek.

Thanks to Jisho and Meg for giving me the opportunity to cook my practice. Thanks to sangha for entrusting your stomachs to my hands. Thanks to my mentors, Toan, Annette, and especially the generous tutelage from Peggy.

Events

One-Day Sitting – Tuesday, April 8

This day of practice will be held in silence, with alternating periods of zazen (seated meditation, usually 30-minute periods) and kinhin (walking meditation, usually 10 minutes), and a work period each afternoon. A Dharma talk will be given in the morning and participants will have the opportunity to speak with a teacher (dokusan). 

Note: For participants in the Stone Creek ango (practice period), the one-day sittings on March 22 and April 8 are included in your ango registration, but please do sign up here. If you are not participating in ango, you are still very welcome to join this sitting. 

We will be sitting from 7 am to 5 pm and ask that you plan on attending the entire day. If you do need to leave for part of the day, please receive permission before registering (info@stonecreekzen.org).

This practice day will include breakfast and lunch as well as morning tea and afternoon snacks. During meals, we will be practicing with oryoki – the ancient tradition of eating with the three nested bowls wrapped in cloth. Oryoki sets will be available to borrow if you do not have one, and instruction will be given for those who are new to the practice. 

The day will begin with a short orientation. Please plan on arriving by 6:45 am and on being in your seat ready to start by 6:55 am. 

We look forward to practicing together!

Sign Up Here

Events

One-Day Sitting – Saturday, March 22

This day of practice will be held in silence, with alternating periods of zazen (seated meditation, usually 30-minute periods) and kinhin (walking meditation, usually 10 minutes), and a work period each afternoon. A Dharma talk will be given in the morning and participants will have the opportunity to speak with a teacher (dokusan). 

Note: For participants in the Stone Creek ango (practice period), the one-day sittings on March 22 and April 8 are included in your Ango registration, but please do sign up here.  If you are not participating in ango, you are still very welcome to join this sitting. 

We will be sitting from 7 am to 5 pm and ask that you plan on attending the entire day. If you do need to leave for part of the day, please receive permission before registering (info@stonecreekzen.org).

This practice day will include breakfast and lunch as well as morning tea and afternoon snacks. During meals, we will be practicing with oryoki – the ancient tradition of eating with the three nested bowls wrapped in cloth. Oryoki sets will be available to borrow if you do not have one, and instruction will be given for those who are new to the practice. 

The day will begin with a short orientation. Please plan on arriving by 6:45 am and on being in your seat ready to start by 6:55 am. 

We look forward to practicing together!

Sign Up Here