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Toni Packer (April 1, 1927 – August 23, 2013) was a teacher of "meditative inquiry", and the founder of Springwater Center. Packer was a former student in the Sanbo Kyodan lineage of Zen Buddhism, and was previously in line to be the successor of Phillip Kapleau at the Rochester Zen Center. ==Biography== Toni Packer was born in Berlin, Germany in 1927. Her family was Lutheran in name only, as they endeavored not to divulge the fact that her mother was of Jewish descent. It was in her childhood, growing up amidst the turmoil of Nazi Germany, that Packer first developed mistrust for authority. The family eventually made a move to Switzerland, where she married her husband Kyle Packer in 1950. The pair moved to New York near the State University of New York at Buffalo, where Kyle came to earn a degree in psychology. Toni began reading the pioneering works about Zen Buddhism by Alan Watts, D. T. Suzuki and Philip Kapleau. It was the latter which had the greatest impact on her, and she soon joined the nearby Rochester Zen Center with her husband. Throughout the 1970s she accepted minor teaching positions at Rochester, and in 1981 she ran the center for an extended period in Kapleau's absence. During this time she instituted many changes in the practice there and discontinued wearing the rakusu that normally distinguishes teachers from students. Packer left the Center shortly after Kapleau's return and ceased calling herself a Buddhist. Her eventual departure from Zen Buddhism was due in part to her growing scepticism toward the use of Japanese ritual in Zen as practised at the Rochester Zen center. In 1981 she opened the Genesee Valley Zen Center, in Springwater, in the Finger Lakes region of upstate New York, an hour south of Rochester. In 1986 the center relocated and changed its name, dropping the word Zen to become the Springwater Center for Meditative Inquiry and Retreats in Springwater, New York.〔 The Springwater Center is incorporated under New York State law as a religious institution. Packer has rejected labels for herself such as a teacher or authority, though some of the individuals she has asked to carry on her work do not. The word "Zen" was dropped from the Center's name as a result of Packer's move away from Japanese Zen Buddhist traditions. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Toni Packer」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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