SFZC Elders Look Forward to the Move to Enso Village
Starting in the autumn of 2023 and spread out over the following two years, 27 elders from the San Francisco Zen Center will be relocating to Enso Village, a unique senior living facility in Healdsburg, California. This move will bring the total number of seniors living at the village up to around 320.
This article examines SFZC’s involvement in establishing the first Zen-inspired retirement residence, how Buddhist values will be applied to the lifestyle there, and how two SFZC elders—Susan O’Connell and Leslie James—are confronting the challenge of transitioning to a new home. Their insights on the difficult process of adapting to change offer an honest, realistic view of growing older and relinquishing what is familiar.
Susan O’Connell, a Zen teacher with three decades of meditation experience and a knack for securing private investment funds, recognized that SFZC had in the past been able to provide Zen practice in an innovative, business-minded manner. She saw this as an opportunity to answer the many practical questions about how the practice centers could both offer support to those in retirement and remain open to new students.
Greens Restaurant and Zen Hospice, two programs that had achieved a high level of excellence in their respective fields, were both supported by the San Francisco Zen Center and reflected its values.
She and others were given the opportunity to investigate and come up with a new approach to senior living due to the generous contribution from a benefactor and the assistance of SFZC.
This idea was based on the concept that meditation and mindfulness should not be abandoned as one gets older, but instead should be used as the foundation of a community composed of seniors from different backgrounds and beliefs.
The SFZC elders were encouraged to stay true to their Zen practice of facing life’s changes instead of denying or avoiding them.
