“As long as there is true bowing, the Buddha Way will not deteriorate.”
In this 3 week series, Marcia Lieberman will each week address a verb that is essential to our practice. Verbs have the talent of describing action and action helps us keep our practice alive and considered. Using readings, lecture, and small group discussion, the seminars will provide a time to deeply dig into meanings in our everyday practice.
Dharma seminar sessions consist of two zazen periods, an informal talk, writing reflections (bring a notebook), small/large group talking circles, followed by tea and snacks in the kitchen. Everyone welcome! By donation.
Marcia Lieberman is a long-term Buddhist practitioner who has been at San Francisco Zen Center since 1989. She has been a resident at all three SFZC practice centers. During this time she received training in the various doan positions regarding service and practice. She is a devoted beginning student of Tea Ceremony. As head gardener at City Center, she also has been Flower Chiden (gathering and arranging flowers for the altars) for many years. Together with the City Center Ino, a book was produced on the forms and preparations for the various services throughout the year. She served as Shuso in the spring 2017 Green Gulch Farm practice period.
Prior to residing at Zen Center, Marcia taught at UC Berkeley and at California College of the Arts. Some of the courses she taught include: theory on space and time, aesthetics of dwelling, and photographing people. This teaching experience has helped her develop skills to communicate ideas and concepts to students. As an artist, her affinity for the beauty and form of Zen ceremony has been a guiding part of her practice. She has in recent years increased her focus and study of the basic Zen temple arts and their place in every day zen practice.
In the SFZC Zen community, she has given instruction on chidening, Japanese garden aesthetics, and gardening and beekeeping as devotional practices.
Mobility has been a part of Marcia’s choices and lifestyle and she has traveled widely to enrich her sense of history and tradition. While teaching at the American University in Paris, she lived and practiced for 3 months each year at a Korean Zen center; in Japan she did research at Kyoto University on Dogen and lived at Rinso In for 2 months.
Marcia has completed graduate studies at the Institute for Buddhist Studies at UC Berkeley Graduate Theological Seminary. Her third photographic book is forthcoming, entitled: CLEAN SLATE: IMAGES FROM DOGEN’S GARDEN.
Marcia has spent time as gardener in all three centers of SFZC. She also tends to the tea garden (roji) at GGF as part of her tea studies. Her time in Japan included studying and practicing all three of these ceremonies.
