Guest Speaker Series

Recovery Sangha is excited to be joined by our series of guest speakers who have offered to share their own experience with how practice can support ongoing recovery. Guest speakers will be welcomed during the regular meeting time on Wednesdays from 7:15-8:15pm on Zen Zoom. All are welcome!

Guests Speakers:

Roger Hillyard first came to Zen practice in 2007, and studied as a nonresident at City Center for four years. During that time he became the jiko (attendant) for his teacher Shosan Victoria Austin and continued in that role for six years. He received Buddha’s precepts and lay initiation from Shosan in 2009. In 2010, he became a full-time resident at City Center. Over the last ten years, he has lived and worked at Tassajara, Green Gulch, and City Center. He served on the SFZC Board and has held a variety of positions in the three temples. He was Shuso in 2021, and is now a Practice Leader at City Center. In addition to his Zen practice, Roger has been actively involved in recovery for over thirty years.

Patsy Creedy has practiced at San Francisco Zen Center's City Center since 2000. She received lay initiation in 2010 from Eijun Linda Ruth Cutts. She was on the board of SFZC’s Meditation in Recovery for several years, and was a regular featured speaker.

Catherine Gammon is a fiction writer and Soto Zen priest. Catherine served on the faculty of the Master of Fine Arts program of the University of Pittsburgh before leaving the university to begin formal Zen training. She trained for twelve years in residence at San Francisco Zen Center, where in 2005 she was ordained a priest in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi by Tenshin Reb Anderson Roshi. Since serving as Shuso in 2010 at SFZC’s Green Dragon Temple/Green Gulch Farm, Catherine has given teachings in Zen and writing in the U.K., in Brooklyn, in Pittsburgh, in Massachusetts, and at Green Gulch Farm. She lives again in Pittsburgh, with her garden and her cat.