Clarifying Meditative Work

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Toni Packer, 1927 - August 2013

The following information is reprinted from the Springwater website:

"The emergence and blossoming of understanding, love and intelligence has nothing to do with any tradition, no matter how ancient or impressive — it has nothing to do with time. It happens completely on its own when a human being questions, wonders, listens and looks without getting stuck in fear, pleasure and pain. When self concern is quiet, in abeyance, heaven and earth are open. The mystery, the essence of all life is not separate from the silent openness of simple listening." — Toni Packer

Toni Packer founded the organization that became Springwater Center and was its resident teacher for many years. Born in Germany in 1927, Toni lived most of her adult life in western New York. Beginning in 1976 she led retreats in the United States and Europe, and continued even through ill health in her later years. Toni left us in August 2013, leaving a legacy of extraordinary recorded talks in which she "lives the work" with a vibrant and passionate intensity.

Toni was also the author of six books, including Seeing Without Knowing / What is Meditative Inquiry, The Work of This Moment, The Light of Discovery, The Wonder of Presence and The Silent Question.

Below are some articles that appeared in various publications shortly after Toni's death:

Shambhala Sun Tribute: http://shambhalasun.com/sunspace/?p=34596

Sweeping Zen Tribute:
http://sweepingzen.com/toni-packer-of-springwater-center-dies-at-86/

Toni Packer of Springwater Center dies at 86
by: Adam Ko- Shin Tebbe August 24, 2013

The Shambhala Sun has reported today that German-born Toni Packer, founder of
the Springwater Center, died yesterday at age 86 — having entered hospice care
on August 13.

Zen teacher James Ishmael Ford Roshi wrote in his book Zen Master Who? of
Packer:

Described occasionally as a Zen teacher minus the “Zen”
and minus the “teacher,” Toni (as she prefers to be addressed) has
abandoned all forms that might incline a person to cling to an outside
authority. This includes the use of words like Buddhism and Zen. Indeed, she is
the first great Zen “heretic” in the West — and is generally as respected as she
is controversial.

Toni was a Zen teacher at the Rochester Zen Center before she and her group of
students split off in 1981 to start the Genesee Valley Zen
Center, herself having come to question the rituals found at Rochester
Zen Center (and in Zen at large). In James William Coleman’s book The New
Buddhism, Coleman quotes Packer as saying:
I know the teaching that things leading up to
enlightenment are worth doing: practices like rituals, bowing, and
incense burning. But these things don’t lead to truth. They comfort us…
These practices have nothing to do with understanding.
A few years after founding the Genesee Valley Zen Center, Toni’s
group purchased a 300 acre plot near Springwater, New York, where they
founded the Springwater Center for Meditative Inquiry. Instead of
teaching, Packer would question — encouraging people to inquire in to
the nature of their experiences with an open mind.
Toni Packer will be missed by many.

From Seth Zuiho Segal: http://www.existentialbuddhist.com/author/sethsegall/

I just received word that Toni Packer, after a brief hospitalization, is
now in hospice care at the Livingston County Center for Nursing. My
first impulse was to write that I had heard the news “with great
sadness,” but those words would not be entirely true. I’m not at all
sure that Toni feels any sadness at the moment, or if she does, I
suspect it’s fleeting, coming and going with the clouds and the warm
summer breeze. My fantasy is that she’s ready for whatever comes,
embracing and investigating each moment with her customary clarity and
equanimity, and not necessarily eager to hang on to a failing body with
all its attendant pain. This is all, however, just my fantasy, my
projected wish for Toni’s last days. It’s been years since we’ve last
talked or corresponded. My own personal sorrow is mixed with my great
appreciation for having met and known her, and a wish for her suffering
to be minimal and at its end.

Toni has been in pain for over a decade. In 2003 she wrote me about
her chronic and debilitating pain and neuropathy, hoping her doctors
would come up with some “miracle med.” (“Too much to expect?” she asked in
parenthesis.) Despite the pain, she tried to maintain her life’s
work of meditative inquiry and dialogue:
“The one thing that has not been affected by this ailing
body are talks and meetings even though we had to cut back schedules.
There seems to be even more than the usual clarity and sharpness of mind in
meeting together, and I’m thankful for that indeed.”
As time went on, her energy and mobility decreased, until she became bed-ridden.
In 2006 I’d written Toni about some changes going on in my own life,
including my late wife’s struggles with cancer and my first
grandchildren — twins! — on the way. Toni’s response says, I think,
something about her perspective on her own worsening adversity:
“And twins about to arise… have they fully made their
appearance? I wish you all the best for your new family! It won’t be
easy, but good if you can maintain some equanimity in the midst of all
this relentless change, the endless demands that little human beings
bring into life from the very outset. Wishing you lots of strength,
remaining in touch with that bottomless source of energy that only seems to
elude us at times — with sufficient patience a little bit of a toe-hold is
always possible!”

She ended with her characteristic warmth: “Sending you love and a big hug for
all of you.”

Toni was one of my very first teachers. The first time I heard her
voice was at a Q-and-A session at the 1997 Buddhism in America
conference in Boston. It was the most moving dharma talk I’ve ever
heard, composed and delivered in the moment, spontaneously, from the
heart. It seems fitting now that what she talked about then was life
and death — how people who are dear come and go in our lives — how
that’s the very nature of our existence. It wasn’t so much what she
said, but the way she said it, tinged with tenderness, emotion, and the
ring of hard-earned truth. I decided then and there that I wanted Toni
in my life as a “teacher” (she would reject the term), and began a
series of retreats with her at the Springwater Center for Meditative
Inquiry.

Toni’s the real thing. She talks the talk and walks the walk.
There’s a clarity, genuineness, and openness about her that very few
people possess. She invites you to sit with her and discover things for
yourself, without dogma, ritual, or cant. She doesn’t need to teach
you anything, but gives you the space to discover things for yourself.
She’s a true kalyana-mitta, or spiritual friend, and she’ll always be with me.
When I first sat retreat with Toni, it seemed to me she did things
backward. Coming from a Theravada tradition, I had traditionally
meditated with eyes-closed. Toni meditated Zen-style with eyes open, but when
she gave her dharma talks, she often did so with eyes closed. It
was as if the attention she needed to find the right words required that she
shut out all possible distractions. When she spoke, her body moved and swayed
with her words, so that she wasn’t talking from her “head,”
but with her whole body-heart-mind. I have never seen or heard anyone
else talk in just that way. Her talks never seemed canned or rehearsed, but
were truly of and in the moment.

As Toni nears her end, I wish her everything she wished for me seven
years ago — equanimity, connection to the “bottomless source of energy,” and the
possibility of “maintaining a toe-hold” in “aware-ing” and
“presence.” Her life has been extraordinary from beginning to end,
from the little half-Jewish girl raised in Berlin in the shadow of the
Third Reich, to her marriage, family and immigration to the U.S., to her
pioneering role at Phillip Kapleau Roshi’s Rochester Zen Center, to the gradual
process of shedding past attachments and allegiances to create
her own Center, forged from her acquaintance with Zen and Krishnamurti,
but also from her own unique understanding of awareness. Along with
other seminal figures like Charlotte Joko Beck, she has helped shaped
the course of Buddhism in America for the better: a Buddhism that’s
centered in the aliveness of discovering the moment, freed from
authority and dogma, and welcoming of women on a footing of respect and
equality.

Toni, I’m thinking of you as you begin your final journey. My heart
and thoughts are with you. And Toni, as Milton Erikson used to say,
“your voice goes with me.” You’re a part of me and everyone you’ve
touched in all your years, and you live on in the future of the Buddhism (and
non-Buddhism) you’ve helped shape.
Many blessings! And may your path be easy!

Toni Packer: "Dropped Away"

From Endless Further: http://theendlessfurther.com/tag/toni-packer/

Aug 25, 2013
You won’t find her obituary at the LA Times, nor at the NY Times, the Washington
Post, Huffington Post, or at CNN. You will find one for
Julie Harris, the great actress who passed away Saturday, of course. And for
Charles Pollock, the designer of the popular office chair. And
there’s one for Sheila Walsh, an activist nun who lobbied for the needy. But
scour the Internet and you’ll find very few mentions of the passing of a pioneer
woman author and meditation teacher named Toni Packer.
She died August 23rd at the age of 86.

I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised at the slight, if that’s the word
for it, but given the high profile Buddhism has these days and the
growing interest in meditation, I do find it rather odd. Toni Packer
truly was a pioneer and that is important.

She got involved with Zen Buddhism in the late sixties, studying under
Philip Kapleau, one of the “founding fathers” of American Zen. By the
early eighties, however, disenchanted with the Japanese formalism in
Zen, and inspired by the writings of J. Krishnamurti, she set out to
forge a new path, one that in her words centered on “the work of this
moment.”

In 1981, she established the Genesee Valley Zen Center. Four years
later, most of the Zen aspects were laid aside and the name was changed
to Springwater Center for Meditative Inquiry & Retreats. As the Shambhala
Sun noted, in one of the few notices about her death I’ve found, “Toni
called herself a friend rather than a teacher.” In a 1996 Tricycle
interview, she said, “When I do say that I’m not a teacher, I mean
something very simple: I do not have that teacher image of myself. It
dropped away quietly.”

Somehow I feel that “dropped away” is apropos to describe her
passing. For some time, she had been living in a hospice, bedridden due
to a number of medical conditions. I have no knowledge of her final
days, but I suspect that she “dropped away quietly,” peacefully, with no fear
and no illusions.

I didn’t know Toni Packer, but I know that she was a remarkable
woman. I never heard her speak but I’ve read her words and they have
resonated with me. I am not as soured on Asian forms as she; however, I
am very much aware that forms are empty.

I did think it was important to say a few words on this blog about
her presence and her passing. I invite you to learn the details of her
life here at Wikipedia, visit the website for Springwater Center, and to read
this touching remembrance of her by Seth Zuiho Segall.
This is an excerpt from a talk given by Toni Packer at a February 2006 retreat:
Can we throw out all of our previous ideas of attainment
and watch freshly whether there is something we wish to attain, today,
this instant? Listening from moment-to-moment, without knowing ahead of
time. If you know something ahead of time, like Faust anticipating
gaining land from the sea, that wouldn’t count! That is already living
in the realm of fantasy, and we’re trying to see whether we can live
actually, this moment, concretely, not in fantasy. Can this
anticipating, wanting, or striving toward attainment come into awareness by
itself? I can’t speak for you, but is it possible for each one of us to turn
awareness inward?

Awareness does not really know inward and outward — whatever is going on
this instant simply appears. And what is going on? . . . In fully
observing what is going on here this instant — is there a noticeable
slowing down? Awaring the franticness often results in slowing down. It
is a seeming paradox. And the more slowing down of thoughts, the clearer the
vision. In hecticness there is very little that can be seen
clearly. But as soon as everything slows down, we see in much more
subtle detail what is happening. Not what we want to see — let’s be very careful
because there is great power in our desire to shape things —
hectic wanting can produce mirages — but what’s here, actually. If we
urgently need to see clearly, then there is a good likelihood that we
will.”