Toni Packer

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Toni Packer, 1978

Toni Packer (born July 5, 1927 in Berlin - † August 23, 2013 in Mount Morris , Livingston County (New York) ) was a German - American writer. She developed and taught her own style of meditation in the Springwater Center, which she founded , free of religious or cultural ties. The central terms of her work are “awareness” and “meditative questions”. Before founding her own center, Packer studied the Sanbo Kyodan lineage of Zen Buddhism and was a student of Philip Kapleau at the Rochester Zen Center .

Life

Toni Packer was born in Berlin in 1927. Both parents were scientists. When Packer was six years old, Adolf Hitler came to power and shortly afterwards her mother, who was Jewish, was no longer allowed to work. The parents had her, her older sister, and her stepbrother baptized in the hope that this would protect them. Because of the danger they tried very hard not to discuss anything political in front of the children. Nonetheless, Packer consciously experienced the disregard for other children and raved in childish enthusiasm about the uniforms of the other children, which she was not allowed to wear herself. During the war she witnessed the bombing and questioned how all that she experienced could be reconciled with a loving God.

As a scientist, Packer's father had a job that was important to the system and protected them from persecution on the one hand, but also prevented them from leaving the country. Immediately after the war, Packer and her family emigrated to Switzerland. There she met her future husband, Kyle Packer, who was stationed there as a soldier. They married in 1950 and moved to Buffalo, New York. Packer, like her husband, studied psychology and read the basic works on Zen Buddhism by Alan Watts , DT Suzuki and Philip Kapleau . Soon they both visited the nearby Rochester Zen Center, run by Philip Kapleau.

During the 1970s, Packer studied with Kapleau and soon received permission from him to advise his students on social and interpersonal issues. In 1981, during Kapleau's absence, she ran the center and introduced many changes in teaching practice. This included For example, that the rakusu , a ritual garment that advanced students were awarded with, was no longer worn.

Shortly after Kapleau's return, they split up, as a result of which more than 200 people teamed up with Packer and founded the Genesee Valley Zen Center in Springwater, Genese, NY an hour's drive south of Rochester. Not least because of the shared experiences and the influence of the many people who had felt restricted in the strict traditional Zen meditation and were now meditating in Springwater, a new style of meditation developed that was increasingly free from rituals and traditions. In a consequent departure from Zen, the center was also renamed the Springwater Center for Meditative Inquiry and Retreats. Packer managed the center together with a team of permanent employees. In the course of time, some of her employees also took on tasks during the meditation weeks and, encouraged by her, later led retreats themselves when Packer's health deteriorated. Packer died at the age of 86. The Springwater Center will be continued in their interest. Meditation weeks in silence are offered, but new forms of meditating together are also developed, such as the "Silent Weeks". Her successors also offer meditation weeks in the Packer's style outside the USA, in Europe (Germany, Poland, Sweden and Finland) and in Nicaragua. Other groups related to Packer's work are also offered ( House of Silence ).

Teaching and work

Packer refused to be considered an authority or a spiritual teacher. She saw all people as completely equal.

The contact with the lectures and writings of J. Krishnamurti had a lasting influence on Packer. Krishnamurti's radical stance that if one wants to find the truth it is necessary to break away from all tradition, has encouraged her to abandon Zen Buddhism .

An important part of Packer's practical meditation work took place in meditation weeks (“ retreats ”), which take place as described below. The meditation group spends time in silence for about 4 to 10 days. Sitting meditation is offered throughout the day. But there is also plenty of time to rest and exercise. In contrast to many other meditation styles, participation in all offers is completely free throughout the day, so that each participant can arrange sitting meditation, walking meditation and breaks according to their own needs. The conversation takes place in daily group discussions and in short one-to-one discussions with the leader. There is also a lecture given daily by the leader.

A central term in Packer's meditation work is "awareness", a state of mind in which everything that can be experienced at the moment, "the whole drama", is consciously experienced without a person, an "I", being present. She writes, “Awareness brings the whole drama to light right away. Everything happens by itself. Nobody directs the show. "

For Packer, awareness is the key to knowledge, not thinking. She writes, “Awareness cannot be taught and when it is there it has no system. All systems are created by thought and therefore can be corrupted by thought. Awareness just sheds light on what is. Right away."

A direct knowledge of what is, and the resulting blossoming of understanding, love and intelligence, is something for Packer that is possible for all people. She writes: “The awakening and blossoming of understanding, love and intelligence has nothing to do with an attitude or tradition, however old and impressive it may be. It has nothing to do with time. It happens by itself when a person asks, amazes, researches, listens and looks quietly without getting stuck in fear, pleasure or pain. When self-centeredness is silent, heaven and earth are open. The secret, the essence of all life, is nothing other than the silent openness of simple listening. "

Another central aspect of Packer's work is "Meditative Inquiry", a completely open, interested questioning of the experience of each moment. Your last book “Questions in Silence” is entirely dedicated to this topic. The questions can be directed inward while sitting quietly, or during a conversation e.g. B. be placed outside in a group. In the recorded conversations, the special relationship and communication that Packer had with the people with whom she worked becomes clear. Not the participants ask the questions and Packer answers them. Questions are shared, illuminated together and slowly penetrated. The process of looking at the questions together is important, not giving the answers. This is also how Rainer Maria Rilke's words stand: “... Now live the questions. Perhaps one day, without noticing it, they will gradually live into the answers ”(quoted from“ Letters to a Young Poet ”) as the motto before the table of contents in“ Questions in Silence ”.

criticism

Packer's meditation weeks have been described as a mixture of ritual-free Zen and Neo-Advaita, as a silent retreat with group discussions in the style of David Bohm. Packer has been described as "... a Zen teacher minus Zen and minus teacher". But even after dropping all rituals, she found the practice of zazen helpful.

Fonts

Videos and tapes

  • Daniela Butsch recorded six of these lectures by Packer on video in May 1996 and published them on a video cassette entitled "Meditation beyond tradition and method". The rights for the films are held by Toni Packer (or her heirs) and ariadne filme, Prof. Daniela Butsch. Watch it on youtube
  • Joan Tollifson interviews Toni Packer, on the Springwater website .
  • Biography video of Toni Packer, Joan Tollifson and Paula Kimbro in 1993 on youtube .
  • Digital archive of Tonis Talks: A donation from Packer's family in Switzerland and Peter and Chana Santschi made it possible to digitize their recorded retreat lectures from Springwater, Europe and California. Some of the lectures are on Packer's audio page. Over 800 of these audios and video lectures have been uploaded to the Springwater Center 's YouTube channel .

literature

  • Lenore Friedman: Meetings with Remarkable Women. Buddhist Teachers in America. Boston 2000, ISBN 1-57062-474-7 .
  • Richard Bryan McDaniel: Cypress Trees in the Garden. The Second Generation of Zen Teaching in America. Richmond Hill 2015, ISBN 978-1-896559-26-1 .
  • Alan Watts: The way of Zen. New York 1999, ISBN 0-375-70510-4 .

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Lion's Roar magazine: remembering-meditation-teacher-toni-packer-1927-2013. In: https://www.lionsroar.com/ . Lion's Roar magazine, August 24, 2013, accessed January 28, 2018 .
  2. ^ A b c d Lenore Friedman: Meetings with Remarkable Women. Buddhist Teachers in America . Shambhala Publications, 2000, ISBN 1-57062-474-7 .
  3. ^ A b c d Richard Bryan McDaniel: Cypress Trees in the Garden: The Second Generation of Zen Teaching in America. The Sumeru Press, 2015, ISBN 978-1-896559-26-1 .
  4. ^ Richard Bryan McDaniel: Cypress trees in the garden. S. 389 .
  5. ↑ James Ishmael Ford: Zen Master Who ?: A Guide to the People and Stories of Zen. Wisdom Publications, 2006, ISBN 0-86171-509-8 , pp. 159-162 .
  6. ↑ James William Coleman: The New Buddhism: The Western Transformation of an Ancient Tradition. Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-515241-7 , pp. 82 .
  7. ^ Events on the Springwater site and events in Germany and Poland
  8. ^ Huston Smith, Philip Novak: Buddhism: A Concise Introduction. HarperCollins, 2004, ISBN 0-06-073067-6 , pp. 159 .
  9. ↑ Toni Packer: The miracle of now . Theseus, March 2004, p. 56 .
  10. ↑ Toni Packer: Seeing with completely new eyes . Aurum, 1991, p. 76 .
  11. ↑ T. Packer: See with completely new eyes . Aurum, 1991, p. 74-75 .
  12. ↑ Rainer Maria Rilke: Letters to a Young Poet (=  Insel-Bücherei . No. 406 ). Insel-Verlag, 1950, p. 23 .
  13. ↑ Toni Packer: Questions in Silence . Aurum, 2007.
  14. ↑ James Ishmael Ford: Zen Master Who ?: A Guide to the People and Stories of Zen . Wisdom Publications, 2006, ISBN 0-86171-509-8 , pp. 159-162 .
  15. ↑ Charles S. Prebish, Martin Baumann: Westward Dharma: Buddhism Beyond Asia . University of California Press, 2002, ISBN 0-520-22625-9 , pp. 227-228 .
personal data
SURNAME Packer, Toni
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German-American writer
DATE OF BIRTH July 5, 1927
PLACE OF BIRTH Berlin
DATE OF DEATH 23rd August 2013
Place of death Mount Morris (Village, New York) , Livingston County, New York