Saturday, January 25, 2025

A00091 - Norman Fischer, American Poet, Writer and Soto Zen Priest

 Fischer, Norman - A00091

"Time is constantly passing.  If you really consider this fact, you will be simultaneously amazed and terrified.  Time is passing, even for tiles, walls, and pebbles.  This means that every moment dies to itself. As soon as it arises, it is gone.  You cannot find any duration.  Arising and passing away are simultaneous.  That is why there is no seeing nor hearing. That is why we are both sentient beings and insentient beings."  (09/01/2022)

8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888
Zoketsu Norman Fischer
TitleRoshi
Personal life
Bornc. 1946
SpouseKathie Fischer
ChildrenAron and Noah (twins)
EducationUniversity of Iowa
University of California, Berkeley
Graduate Theological Union
Religious life
ReligionZen Buddhism
SchoolSōtō
LineageShunryu Suzuki
Senior posting
Based inEveryday Zen Foundation
PredecessorSojun Mel Weitsman
8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

Photo of Zoketsu Norman Fischer

About Norman

Zoketsu Norman Fischer is a poet and Zen Buddhist priest. For many years he has taught at the San Francisco Zen Center, the oldest and largest of the new Buddhist organizations in the West, where he served as Co-abbot from 1995-2000. He is presently a Senior Dharma Teacher there as well as the founder and spiritual director of the Everyday Zen Foundation, an organization dedicated to adapting Zen Buddhist teachings to Western culture. For more on Norman’s poetry and dharma publications, visit Norman Fischer Books:

A person of unusually wide-ranging interests, his Zen teaching is known for its eclecticism, openness, warmth, and common sense, and for his willingness to let go of everything, including Zen. His chief interests in addition to poetry and traditional Zen and Buddhist teachings, are the adaptation of Zen meditation and understanding to the worlds of business, law, conflict resolution, interreligious dialog (he works especially with Jewish meditation and Catholic intermonastic dialog), care of the dying (he has for many years been a teacher with and is emeritus chair of the board of the Zen Hospice Project), the world of technology, and anything else he can think of.

Norman was a member of a lively group of Bay Area poets in the 70’s and 80’s, and participated widely in readings, publications, and poetry performances during those years. He collaborated with musicians and dancers at Green Gulch to create pageants for Buddha’s Birthday and Parinirvana Day (Buddha’s death day), annual events that have become San Francisco Bay Area institutions. He has often participated with the Beat Generation poets, especially Phil Whalen, Gary Snyder, and Michael McClure, close friends and mentors of his.

Norman’s poetry is noted for its linguistic investigation, humor, off-beat spiritual insight, and variety. Of “Precisely the Point Being Made, ” his 1992 collection, the poet and critic Charles Bernstein has written, “incandescently tranquil, the writing of Norman Fischer refuses to confront or confirm, preferring to give company along the way.” His writing has been taught and written about in universities, and he has often read in the academy. Audio files of reading can be found at PennSound.

His latest collections of poetry are “Men in Suits: A Poem” (2022), “Selected Poems 1980-2013” (2022), “The Museum of Capitalism” (2021), “There was a clattering as…” (2021), “Nature” (2021), “Untitled Series: Life As It Is” (2018), “On a Train at Night” (2018), “any would be if (tanka)” (2017), “Magnolias All At Once” (2015), “Escape this Crazy Life of Tears (Japan, July 2010)” (2014), “Conflict” (2012), “Questions/Places/Voices/Seasons” (2009), and “Charlotte’s Way” (2008).

Earlier collections include  “I Was Blown Back” (2005), “Slowly But Dearly” (2004), “Success,” (2000), “The Narrow Roads of Japan” (1998), “Turn Left in Order to Go Right” (1989), “The Devices” (1987), “On Whether or Not To Believe in Your Mind” (1986), and  “Like a Walk Through a Park” (1980).

Norman has also published numerous books of prose, primarily on Zen and related traditions. These  include “Opening to You: Zen-inspired Translations of the Psalms” (Viking Penguin, New York, 2002) which is used liturgically by many Christian and Jewish groups and individuals. In 2003 his book about spiritual maturity “Taking Our Places: the Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up” came out, and was greeted with critical and popular acclaim. It was on the San Francisco Chronicle Best Seller list, and won an award as one of the best spiritual titles of that year. In 2008 his Dharma book, “Sailing Home: using Homer’s Odyssey to navigate life’s perils and pitfalls,” was published by Free Press. In 2013, he published “Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong,” a commentary on the Tibetan Buddhist practice of working with short phrases (called “slogans”).

In 2015, a long-awaited collection of Norman’s essays, “Experience: Thinking, Writing, Language & Religion,” was published by the University of Alabama Press. These essays trace the history of Norman’s thoughts on experimental writing as a spiritual practice, representing the distilled insights of a lifetime spent immersed in words and Zen.

In 2016, Shambhala Publications released  “What Is Zen: Plain Talk for a Beginner’s Mind,” co-authored by Norman with Susan Moon. Presented in a reader-friendly question-and-answer format, this is an accessible introduction to Zen Buddhist practice by two highly regarded teacher-writers.

This was followed in 2019 by “The World Could Be Otherwise: Imagination and the Bodhisattva Path,” published by Shambhala Publications, an imaginative approach to spiritual practice in difficult times, through the Buddhist teaching of the six paramitas or “perfections” — qualities that lead to kindness, wisdom, and an awakened life.

In 2020, Sumaru Press released “Mountains and Rivers Sutra: Teachings by Norman Fischer,” edited by Kuya Nora Minogue, a series of talks given at the Upaya Zen Center in 2012 that discuss an essential text of the 13th century Zen Master Dogen in language understandable to us in the 21st century, providing a rich commentary on how to apply these principles in our daily lives.

And in 2021, Shambhala published the first collection of Norman’s writings on Buddhist philosophy and practice, “When You Greet Me I Bow: Notes and Reflections from a Life in Zen,” edited by Cynthia Schrager, essays spanning a life of inquiry into Zen practice, relationship, cultural encounter, and spiritual creativity.

Norman is also the author of a prose memoir about Judaism and Buddhism called “Jerusalem Moonlight” (1995) and co-author of a book edited by Patrick Henry called “Benedict’s Dharma: Buddhists Comment on the Rule of Benedict” (Riverhead, New York, 2001). His poetry and essays have often been anthologized. Perhaps the book of his he most enjoys is one he co-authored with a group of African-American high school students called “Racism: What About It?” which was a local best seller in Mill Valley, CA.

For more on Norman’s published writing, please visit the website Norman Fischer Books.

Norman has been particularly interested in the application of Zen to issues of Western culture and everyday life in the world. His Zen essays on topics ranging from racism to monasticism to romance appear frequently in “Tricycle,” “Shambhala Sun” and “Buddhadharma” and have been included in every issue so far of the annual “Best Buddhist Writing.” In addition to his regular work at Zen Center, and with Everyday Zen, he has taught extensively, with his old friend the late Rabbi Alan Lew, on the relationship between Buddhist and Jewish practice (work which has been discussed in Judith Linzer’s book “Dharma and Torah”). He teaches Buddhist principles to business people, Buddhist compassion-in-action to lawyers and conflict resolvers, and poetry writing and appreciation to children and adults. He’s led workshops at Esalen Institute in California, the Open Center in New York City, and Hollyhock Farm, in British Columbia, as well as at Zen Center, and teaches Zen regularly at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in California, as well as in Canada, Mexico, and Europe. He’s participated with His Holiness the Dalai Lama in conferences on Buddhist Christian dialog and non-violence.

From 1996 through 2020, Norman co-led workshops for business people with Zen teacher and executive coach Marc Lesser, entitled “Company Time,” at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin County, north of San Francisco. Together, Norman and Marc also helped Google’s Chade-Meng Tan develop “Search Inside Yourself,” a mindfulness-based training program for Google’s employees fostering emotional intelligence.

Norman leads poetry retreats in various locations on the West Coast, and regular workshops and classes at Makor Or, a Jewish meditation center in San Francisco founded by Norman and Rabbi Alan Lew. Norman was the “zen advisor” to Zoza, a now defunct clothing company started by a boyhood friend of his, Mel Zeigler, who created Banana Republic with his wife Patricia.

In 2002 he began work on the faculty of the Metta Institute, a program dedicated to training health professional to serve as mentors for the dying.

In addition to his teaching with the Everyday Zen sangha in the Bay Area, Norman was the founding teacher of the Red Cedar Zen Community in Bellingham (WA) and the Mountain Rain Zen Community (Vancouver, B.C.). Everyday Zen also has several smaller affiliates in Mexico, Canada, and around the Pacific Northwest.

Norman was born in a small town in Pennsylvania where he attended public schools; he went to college in upstate New York, and graduate school at the famed University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop (MFA) and the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where he received an MA in the history and phenomenology of religion. He was a Danforth scholar and a Woodrow Wilson scholar.

He lives with his wife Kathie at Muir Beach, CA. a mile and a half from the Green Gulch Zen temple where he lived for many years. Their twin sons Aron and Noah live in Brooklyn; Aron is an attorney and Noah an installation and performance artist (see his website www.certainlynot.com).


8888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

Zoketsu Norman Fischer is an American poet, writer, and Soto Zen priest, teaching and practicing in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki.[1] He is a Dharma heir of Sojun Mel Weitsman, from whom he received Dharma transmission in 1988. Fischer served as co-abbot of the San 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]

Early life and education

[edit]

Norman Fischer was born to a Jewish family in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania in 1946, and was raised in Pittston, Pennsylvania.[4] As a child he attended services with his parents at a Conservative synagogue.[5] He received a B.A. from Colgate University, where he studied religion, philosophy, and literature, an M.F.A. in poetry from the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa, and an M.A. in history and phenomenology of religion at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Graduate Theological Union.[6]

Religious practice

[edit]

Zen training, service and teaching

[edit]

From 1970 through 1976, Fischer trained at the Berkeley Zen Center, a temple in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki, under the guidance of Sojun Mel Weitsman. In 1976, he and his wife moved to Tassajara, a training monastery near Big Sur, where they lived as residential monastics for five years. In 1980, they were both ordained as Zen priests by Zentatsu Richard Baker, from whom Fischer received the dharma name Zoketsu Rinsho. In 1981, they moved to Green Gulch Farm Zen Center in Marin 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 received Dharma transmission from his longtime teacher, Sojun Mel Weitsman.[7]

From 1995 to 2000, Fischer served as co-abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC), first with Sojun Mel Weitsman, and then with Zenkei Blanche 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 translator Peter 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) the Zen 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 with Chade-Meng Tan, Mirabai Bush, Daniel Golemen and Jon Kabat-Zinn) the course on mindfulness and emotional 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's Center for Understanding in Conflict, where he trains conflict resolution professionals.[15]

He has also consulted with U.S. Army chaplains about incorporating Zen practices into their work.[16] He has taught and lectured at HarvardYaleBrown and Stanford 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 book Taking 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 through Tricycle Magazine, in collaboration with San Francisco Zen Center.[21]

Interreligious dialogue

[edit]

Fischer is a proponent of interreligious 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 the Elijah Interfaith Institute, an interreligious dialogue organization.[23] In July 1996, he attended a five-day meeting between members of different religions held at The Abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani in Trappist, Kentucky, where he gave a talk about Dogenzazen, and the importance of religions coming together—despite their different philosophies—to serve humanity.[24] Fischer has participated in interreligious pilgrimages with Father Laurence Freeman OSB and the Dalai Lama.[25] Fischer has been active in the Jewish 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 of God being integral to Judaism and many other religions. In his book Opening 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]

Writing

[edit]

Poetry

[edit]

During Fischer's years at The Iowa Writers' Workshop, he met poets associated with the L=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 collection Like a Walk Through a Park (Open Books, 1980) comprises poems written at Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery, where he was in residence with poets Jane Hirshfield and Philip 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 as TalismanJacket, Mag City, Fracture, Tinfish, Bezoar, Periodics, Bombay Gin, Raddle Moon, Gallery Works, Crayon, and Antenym, among others, and anthologized in The Wisdom Anthology of North American Poetry, and Basta Azzez enough.

Charles Bernstein has called Fischer's poetry "illuminating and essential"[34] and Ron 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.

Non-fiction

[edit]

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 as BuddhadharmaTricycle and Shambhala Sun, and in collections such as Radical Poetics and Secular Jewish Culture (University of Alabama Press, 2010) and The Best Buddhist Writing (Shambhala Sun).

Personal life

[edit]

Fischer lives in Muir 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]

Bibliography

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ "Jewish Buddhist Encounters" (PDF).
  2. ^ "Everyday Zen :: Teachers"www.everydayzen.org. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
  3. ^ "Biography"Norman Fischer Books. Retrieved 2017-06-21.
  4. ^ Moffett, Shannon (2006-01-20). The Three-Pound Enigma: The Human Brain and the Quest to Unlock Its Mysteries. Algonquin Books. ISBN 9781565128903.
  5. ^ Loundon, Sumi (2006). The Buddha's Apprentices: More Voices of Young Buddhists. Boston: Wisdom Publications. pp. 125–130. ISBN 086171332X.
  6. ^ "Language and emptiness: John Wright interviews Norman Fischer"Norman Fischer Books. Retrieved 2017-06-21.
  7. ^ San Francisco Zen Center: Lineage
  8. ^ Prebish, Charles S.; Martin Baumann (2002). Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia. Berkeley: University of California Press. p. 226. ISBN 0520226259OCLC 48871649.
  9. ^ Fowles, Mary. "Roused from a Dream"Tricycle. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
  10. ^ "Zoketsu Norman Fischer (Senior Dharma Teacher) | San Francisco Zen Center"www.sfzc.org. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
  11. ^ "RamDass: Norman Fischer".
  12. ^ "Metta : EOL Faculty"www.mettainstitute.org. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
  13. ^ "Google's Chade-Meng Tan Wants You to Search Inside Yourself for Inner (and World) Peace - Knowledge@Wharton"Knowledge@Wharton. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
  14. ^ "siyli.org | About"siyli.org. 2017-06-21. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
  15. ^ "Our Trainers | The Center for Understanding in Conflict"understandinginconflict.org. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
  16. ^ "Zen Judaism"Mountain Xpress. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
  17. ^ uw (2016-01-03). "Norman Fischer"Point Reyes Books. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
  18. ^ "Prepared text of Zoketsu Norman Fischer's Baccalaureate address"Stanford University. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
  19. ^ Fischer, Norman (6 May 2003). "Book Review: Taking Our Places: The Buddhist Path to Truly Growing Up by Norman Fischer, Author HarperOne $23.95 (208p)"PublishersWeekly.comISBN 978-0-06-050551-6. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
  20. ^ Meditation, Seattle Insight (2013-09-11), Training in Compassion: Zen Teachings on the Practice of Lojong, retrieved 2017-06-22
  21. ^ "Tricycle Online Courses: Training in Compassion"Norman Fischer Books. 7 March 2016. Retrieved 2017-06-22.
  22. ^ Barnhart, Bruno; Yuese., Huang (2001). Purity of heart and contemplation : a monastic dialogue between Christian and Asian traditions. Continuum. ISBN 082641348XOCLC 47136534.
  23. ^ "Buddhist Leaders"Elijah Interfaith. 2015-04-27. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  24. ^ Mitchell, Donald W.; Wiseman, James A. (1997). The Gethsemani encounter : a dialogue on the spiritual life by Buddhist and Christian monastics. Continuum. ISBN 0826411657OCLC 746900315.
  25. ^ "A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Stupa"www.beliefnet.com. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  26. ^ "Norman Fischer on Meditation"Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly. PBS. 2010-06-25. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  27. ^ "JCCSF - Makor Or: Jewish Meditation"www.jccsf.org. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  28. ^ admin (2001-06-08). "Meditation deepens Judaism for Makor Or participants"J. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  29. ^ "'Buddhist' translation of biblical Psalms"SFGate. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  30. ^ "thezensite:Language and emptiness: An interview with Norman Fischer"www.thezensite.com. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  31. ^ "Norman Fischer"Poetry Center. 2015-01-28. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  32. ^ "Norman Fischer"Poetry Foundation. 2017-06-20. Retrieved 2017-06-21.
  33. ^ "Books of Poetry"Norman Fischer Books. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  34. ^ "Norman Fischer to Share From New Book in Dharma Talk Tomorrow - Upaya Zen Center"Upaya Zen Center. 2015-10-13. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  35. ^ "The Strugglers"Norman Fischer Books. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  36. ^ "Books on Zen"Norman Fischer Books. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  37. ^ "Family Practice with Norman and Kathie Fischer, Feb. 15th | Brooklyn Zen Center"brooklynzen.org. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  38. ^ Lattin, Don (2003-06-15). "Father, Buddhist are one and the same: Writer finds new truth through parenting role"SFGate. Retrieved 2008-02-16.
  39. ^ "White Heron Sangha - "Imagination" - A Weekend Nonresidential Retreat with Norman and Kathie Fischer"www.whiteheronsangha.org. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  40. ^ "Biography | Aron Fischer"Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler LLP. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  41. ^ "noah fischer"www.noahfischer.org. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
  42. ^ "Haaretz: Go Because Everyone is Running"www.noahfischer.org. Retrieved 2017-06-27.
888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888888

No comments:

Post a Comment