Toni Packer
A conversation with my friend and teacher
Someone I met with today mentioned the video of an interview I did back in 1994 with my teacher and friend Toni Packer. I was on staff in those days at the retreat center in rural northwestern New York that Toni founded, and we were both in Oakland at the time of this conversation. I was in my forties back then—it was before my first book was published—and Toni was in her sixties.
I was moved to re-watch it tonight, and it reminded me once again of what a rare and marvelous teacher Toni was—her open listening presence and incisive questions. And now I’m moved to offer it to all of you:
Toni was born in Germany in 1927 and grew up half-Jewish during the rise and reign of Hitler. The city where she lived was bombed during the war. All of this prompted her spiritual search and led her eventually to the Rochester Zen Center in New York. She would have been Roshi Kapleau’s successor there, but she grew increasingly uncomfortable with the ritual, hierarchy, and dogmatic aspects of formal traditional Zen. She attended talks with J. Krishnmurti, whose insights confirmed what she was feeling. Eventually, she left RZC to work in a simpler and more open way. She and her students (or friends, as she preferred) bought land in the Genesee Valley in the Finger Lakes region of rural northwestern New York and built a retreat center there, Springwater Center for Meditative Inquiry and Retreats.
Springwater Center is still going strong, and it’s a wonderful place for retreats that I very highly recommend.
My first book, Bare-Bones Meditation: Waking Up from the Story of My Life, is largely about working with Toni.
You can read an article I wrote about Toni after her death in Lion’s Roar Magazine here, and it includes some great short selections from her writing as well.
There is a wonderful YouTube channel with a huge selection of her talks here.
Love to all…
In addition to saying thank you for the great video, I just want to point to the following sentences from your Lion's Roar article and say, "This!"
"No matter what state dawns at this moment, can there be just that? Not a movement away, an escape into something that will provide what this state does not provide, or doesn’t seem to provide: energy, zest, inspiration, joy, happiness, whatever. Just completely, unconditionally listening to what’s here now, is that possible?"
I’m not familiar with Toni, but reading that she was in her 60s during this interview sparked a deep curiosity in me to learn more about her final days. There’s something symphonic in discovering a revered soul and envisioning the arc of their lifetime. It’s both melancholy and beautiful to witness the pure efforts of a human seeking to understand life, only to gracefully let it all go when Death comes knocking. I understand she endured years of pain before entering hospice care. Reflecting on all the Masters who have left this earth—Watts, Osho, Ram Dass, Carl Sagan—and even my own father, who took his last breath just months ago, fills me with a poignant mix of sadness and reverence.