Dear friends and members,

Abbot Gaelyn Godwin and President Royce Johnson wish you the very best during the closing days of this eventful, surprising, challenging, and rewarding year. Your Zen Center now has both urban and rural locations to provide sanctuary and opportunities for Zen practice. As we ask for your generosity, we first express our deep gratitude to all of you, and to everyone who makes our Zen Center such a vibrant place of peace and practice.

This year began and concludes during the Covid-19 pandemic. Some highlights of the year include these items:

• Our Board of Directors and Safety Committee have guided us through the steps of re-opening our doors in a safe and mindful way.

• Our response to the ice storm early in the year, led by our temple residents, protected most of our plants, and most of our plumbing.

• Our practice leadership created and kept a steady calendar of visiting teachers, classes, sesshin, and practice periods.

• Our Finance Committee led us through the process of accepting the miraculous gift of the 40 acres of Margaret Austin Center. The gift transfer was formalized on July 13, 2021. We have so much gratitude to the members of the Margaret Austin Center for the trust they have placed in our sangha. We have held two retreats on our new property this fall.

• The November sesshin with Tenshin Reb Anderson Roshi deepened our practice, and enhanced our appreciation of practicing together in the middle of a rural, natural, quiet, and expansive landscape.

Houston Zen Center is a refuge of peace and clarity, and we exist to maintain and extend that to all persons. With the end of 2021 approaching and all that this entails, you can be confident that clarity and peace will prevail at your Zen center. Our budget for 2021 was sound and we maintained our fiscal strength throughout the many months of the pandemic because of your steady generosity, and our mindful fiscal restraint and careful guardianship of those resources.  With your on-going support, our 2022 budget is expected to continue along this same path and be a steady foundation upon which the Dharma can be brought forth in Houston and beyond. We are deeply grateful for all you do to support and maintain the vibrancy and warmth of the Zen Center.

During the upcoming end of year holiday season of thankfulness and giving, we ask for your support for two projects.

First Project: Our Trees. We ask for your support to care for the trees on our new 40-acres. The beautiful landscape includes hundreds of trees, and we aspire to care for the several dozen that surround the buildings. Elms, oaks, a native persimmon, pecans, hackberry, pines, cypress, and more, need our attention. Arborist Lee Davis, of Davis Treescape, will attend to the trees in early Spring: pruning out dead wood, removing a few dying trees (compromised by the ice storm), clarifying the canopy to enhance the growth of the understory. This will cost approximately $10,000, but our trees are great beings who share their lives with us.

Second: We ask for help completed the sign for the new fence that was installed this year along the front of the main temple building. The new fence provides a feeling of welcoming invitation to newcomers and embraces our returning long established members and friends. The additional funds needed for the new front entry fence signage and necessary plantings will be about $4,000.

Reaching out, warm hand to warm hand, is the nature of the Bodhisattva Vow. With the above two projects, we seek to care for all beings, including the tallest trees, and to demonstrate that feeling of welcoming and warmth in all our activities that is the heart of our Zen practice.

Please help us with these projects,.
With palms together,

Abbot Gaelyn & President Royce

Read More Below About 2021 Activities

We would like to share some of the highlights President Royce Johnson presented at the general meeting. We will accompany the text with more images of trees on the land.

2021 The Year in Review. I want to start by thanking all of you for your steady presence and support over this very challenging year. We relied on our Health and Safety Committee for guidance in responding to the Covid-19 Challenge, and I am proud that we were careful, skillful, and creative in how we managed our Center together.

Here are some highlights of the past year, since our last General Meeting:

We maintained a full schedule of classes throughout the year, and continued to offer all classes, except the Introduction to Zen class, in a hybrid form. 2021 classes include:

• Unpacking Whiteness

• Song of the Grass Roof Hermitage

• Dharma Gates of Art

• The Four Immeasurables      

• Introduction to Buddhism

• Introduction to Zen

• A Class on Karma

• The 16 Bodhisattva Precepts

• Zen Mind Beginner’s Mind

• We offered One-Day sittings in January, March, April, June, October, and December.

We also offered 2 Modules of the Entering the Path of Practice program. This is an important opportunity to deepen Zen practice and it was very effective.

In February we experienced a very unusual ice storm and freeze – we had numerous plumbing repairs to address. Here is one of our attempts to protect the plants. Many of the plantings were affected, and the temple was without water for several days.

In March we realized a dream that we had harbored for some years, and replaced the fence along Heights Boulevard with a welcoming aluminum fence. We think of this as a 100 year fence – it is built to last and to welcome Zen seekers for many years to come.

Throughout the year, our on-going groups continued to meet, usually on zoom for most of the year: Queer Dharma and Dharma en Español. Both groups now meet in a hybrid form, with participants coming in person as well as by zoom.

We held a number of garden days at both our Houston Temple and the Land in Chappell Hill – Auspicious Cloud West.

In May, four members received the precepts from the Abbot in a ceremony with masks on. Our senior sewing teacher and her assistant are an outstanding resource of skill and generosity. They offer their time throughout the year to assist everyone. In the first ceremony, the participants remained outdoors, and the technological challenges were managed by our tireless residents and members. Later a 5th member of the group received the precepts after returning from quarantine in Vermont. Later in the year, another member received the precepts before moving to Florida.

Also in May, the Practice Period began with Shuso Gayle Klaybor. The hybrid practice period concluded with a hybrid sesshin and a wonderful shuso ceremony – the ceremony of Dharma Inquiry, which was also hybrid.

 In July we finalized our acquisition of the 40 acres known as Margaret Austin Center / sometimes called Auspicious Cloud West. We will report more on that later in the agenda.

In addition to the many great dharma talks by the Abbot, senior leaders and members of HZC, we hosted many visitors to give dharma talks and teachings. Most of the visitors appeared over zoom. They include:

• Korin Charlie Pokorny from California

• Eijun Linda Ruth Cutts from Green Gulch Farm in California

• Laura O’Loughlin from New York

• Koshin Paley from New York

• Ch’an Teacher Guo Gu from Florida

• Dojin Sarah Emerson from California

• Koun Franz from Nova Scotia

• Colin Gipson from San Antonio

• Kokyo Henkel arrived in person to lead a three day retreat

• Shinji Linda Galijan and Zenshin Greg Fain arrived in person to give teachings and dharma talks

• And finally, November 2-7 was a 5-day in person retreat led by Tenshin Reb Anderson Roshi at our newly acquired land, Auspicious Cloud West.

Congratulations on being a warm and welcoming sangha that knows how to practice safely and intimately together. I look forward to another great year together.
With warm bows,
President Royce Johnson

As you plan your year-end gift giving, please consider helping Zen Center continue its offerings.