Zoketsu Norman Fischer | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Title | Roshi |
| Personal life | |
| Born | c. 1946 |
| Spouse | Kathie Fischer |
| Children | Aron and Noah (twins) |
| Education | University of Iowa University of California, Berkeley Graduate Theological Union |
| Religious life | |
| Religion | Zen Buddhism |
| School | Sōtō |
| Lineage | Shunryu Suzuki |
| Senior posting | |
| Based in | Everyday Zen Foundation |
| Predecessor | Sojun Mel Weitsman |
| Website | www.everydayzen.org www.bellinghamzen.org |
Zoketsu Norman Fischer is an American poet, writer, andSoto Zen priest, teaching and practicing in the lineage ofShunryu Suzuki.[1] He is aDharma heir ofSojun Mel Weitsman, from whom he received Dharma transmission in 1988. Fischer served as co-abbot of theSan Francisco Zen Center from 1995–2000, after which he founded the Everyday Zen Foundation in 2000, a network of Buddhist practice group and related projects in Canada, the United States and Mexico.[2] Fischer has published more than twenty-five books of poetry and non-fiction, as well as numerous poems, essays and articles in Buddhist magazines and poetry journals.[3]
Norman Fischer was born to aJewish family inWilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1946, and was raised inPittston, Pennsylvania.[4] As a child he attended services with his parents at aConservativesynagogue.[5] He received a B.A. fromColgate University, where he studied religion, philosophy, and literature, an M.F.A. in poetry from theIowa Writers' Workshop at theUniversity of Iowa, and an M.A. in history and phenomenology of religion at theUniversity of California, Berkeley, and theGraduate Theological Union.[6]
From 1970 through 1976, Fischer trained at theBerkeley Zen Center, a temple in the lineage ofShunryu Suzuki, under the guidance ofSojun Mel Weitsman. In 1976, he and his wife moved toTassajara, a training monastery nearBig Sur, where they lived as residential monastics for five years. In 1980, they were both ordained as Zen priests byZentatsu Richard Baker, from whom Fischer received the dharma name Zoketsu Rinsho. In 1981, they moved toGreen Gulch Farm Zen Center inMarin County, California, where Fischer served in various monastic positions including Director, Tanto (Head of Practice), and Co-Abbot from 1981 to 2000. During that time, in 1988, he receivedDharma transmission from his longtime teacher, Sojun Mel Weitsman.[7]
From 1995 to 2000, Fischer served as co-abbot of theSan Francisco Zen Center (SFZC), first with Sojun Mel Weitsman, and then with ZenkeiBlanche Hartman.[8] During his abbacy, Fischer supported the research, drafting and formal institution of a women's lineage chant, alongside the traditional men's lineage chant, during services. Later, with poet and translatorPeter Levitt, he supported the drafting of an official women's lineage paper—the first female lineage document in the history of any major world religion—which traces the line of female practitioners from the Buddha's time to the present and recognizes the important historical role of the Zen women ancestors.[9]
As a senior Dharma teacher, Fischer continues to participate at the San Francisco Zen Center and its affiliate temples, giving talks and leading practice events. In 2000, he founded the Everyday Zen Foundation, which has practice groups in Canada, the United States and Mexico.[10]
Fischer has also integrated Buddhist contemplative practices in business, law, and education—specifically for hospice workers, software engineers, and conflict resolution specialists. In 1987, Fischer founded (among others) theZen Hospice Project at the San Francisco Zen Center, for which he served as board chair for over 20 years, and is now emeritus chair.[11] He is also a faculty member of the Metta Institute, a training institute for hospice caregivers.[12]
In 2007, he developed (along withChade-Meng Tan, Mirabai Bush, Daniel Golemen andJon Kabat-Zinn) the course on mindfulness andemotional intelligence,"Search Inside Yourself",[13] which was originally taught at Google's program for employees, and has now been taught to over 20,000 people in more than 100 cities.[14] Fischer is currently involved with conflict resolution work at Gary Friedman and Jack Himmelstein'sCenter for Understanding in Conflict, where he trains conflict resolution professionals.[15]
He has also consulted withU.S. Army chaplains about incorporating Zen practices into their work.[16] He has taught and lectured atHarvard,Yale,Brown andStanford universities[17] and in 2014, he gave the baccalaureate address at Stanford University.[18] He has also served as mentor to teenage boys; this experience is chronicled in his bookTaking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up (HarperOne, 2003).[19]
Fischer also teaches Zen workshops and retreats on the importance of compassion practice, as modeled in his book,Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong (Shambhala, 2013).[20] This was the subject of a Spring 2016 online course taught by Fischer, and offered throughTricycle Magazine, in collaboration with San Francisco Zen Center.[21]
Fischer is a proponent ofinterreligious dialogue between the world's religions, stating:
I feel that in our period it is the challenge of religious traditions to do something more than simply reassert and reinterpret their faiths, hoping for loyal adherents to what they perceive to be the true doctrine. Looking back at the last century, with its devastating wars and holocausts and the shock of ecological vulnerability, I have the sense that religious traditions must now have a wider mission, and it is in the recognition of this mission, I believe, that interreligious dialogue becomes something not only polite and interesting, but also essential.[22]
He currently sits on the Board of World Religious Leaders for theElijah Interfaith Institute, an interreligious dialogue organization.[23] In July 1996, he attended a five-day meeting between members of different religions held atThe Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Trappist, Kentucky, where he gave a talk aboutDogen,zazen, and the importance of religions coming together—despite their different philosophies—to serve humanity.[24] Fischer has participated in interreligious pilgrimages with FatherLaurence Freeman OSB and theDalai Lama.[25]Fischer has been active in theJewish meditation movement since the 1990s, working at first with Rabbi Alan Lew, and now with rabbis and Jewish meditation teachers from around the world.[26] In January 2000, he and Rabbi Lew founded Makor Or, a Jewish Meditation Center in San Francisco, which Fischer now continues to direct, in the wake of Rabbi Lew's 2009 death.[27][28]
Fischer has written about the concept ofGod being integral toJudaism and many other religions. In his bookOpening to You: Zen-Inspired Translations of the Psalms (Viking, 2002), Fischer replaced the words "God", "King", and "Lord" with the word "You." He explains:
For many of the religious seekers I encounter, the word God has been all but emptied of its spiritual power. The relationship to God that is charted out in the Psalms is a stormy one, co-dependent, passionate, confusing, loyal, petulant, sometimes even manipulative. I wanted to find a way to approach these poems so as to emphasize the relational aspect, while avoiding the major distancing pitfalls that words like God, King, Lord and so on create.[29]
During Fischer's years at The Iowa Writers' Workshop, he met poets associated with theL=A=N=G=U=A=G=E poetry movement of the seventies and eighties.[30] After receiving his MFA in poetry from the University of Iowa[31] in 1970, he moved to San Francisco where he remained associated with the movement, writing language-centered avant-garde poetry with a spiritual bent and publishing his first poems in 1979. His first collectionLike a Walk Through a Park (Open Books, 1980) comprises poems written at Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery, where he was in residence with poetsJane Hirshfield andPhilip Whalen. After Whalen's death in 2003, Fischer became his literary executor.[32]
Fischer has since published over fifteen volumes of poetry.[33] His poetry has been published in literary magazines such asTalisman,Jacket,Mag City, Fracture, Tinfish, Bezoar, Periodics, Bombay Gin, Raddle Moon, Gallery Works, Crayon, andAntenym, among others, and anthologized inThe Wisdom Anthology of North American Poetry, andBasta Azzez enough.
Charles Bernstein has called Fischer's poetry "illuminating and essential"[34] andRon Silliman says "nobody gives more completely of himself in the act of writing than Norman Fischer ... I am in awe of this gift."[35]
Fischer is a founding board member of Poets in Need, an organization that grants emergency funds to poets in financial distress.
Fischer has written nine books on Zen,[36] and numerous essays and books on writing, poetry, and spirituality. His essays have been published in magazines such asBuddhadharma,Tricycle andShambhala Sun, and in collections such asRadical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture (University of Alabama Press, 2010) andThe Best Buddhist Writing (Shambhala Sun).
Fischer lives inMuir Beach, California with his wife Kathie, a retired middle school science teacher and ordained Zen priest. In 2012, Kathie received dharma transmission from Sojun Mel Weitzman, and since her retirement from teaching in 2016, has been co-leading Zen workshops and retreats with Norman.[37]
They have twin sons, Aron and Noah, and three grandchildren.[38][39]
Aron Fischer is a New York attorney,[40] and Noah Fischer, also based in New York, is a conceptual artist and political activist, whose work is shown internationally.[41][42]
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)