A Village for the Elders 

Zesho Susan O’Connell is a senior Zen teacher with San Francisco Zen Center and is currently president of Zen-Inspired Senior Living, a division of the San Francisco Zen Center.  She has served as director of development, vice president, and president of San Francisco Zen Center, among other senior positions. She began Zen practice in 1987, became a resident of Zen Center in 1995, and received priest ordination from Tenshin Reb Anderson in 1999 and dharma transmission in 2016. Tricycle spoke with her about the project’s senior living community, Enso Village, which recently opened to residents, and where she is a resident.

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What is Enso Village? Enso Village offers 221 independent living residences, plus access to 30 assisted living units and 24 memory care apartments. We are licensed in such a way that a lot of assisted living care can be delivered in one’s own residence and that people can have hospice support at home. There are multiple community spaces, such as the meditation hall, an auditorium for talks and performances, the Sangha Room for smaller gatherings, three makerspaces for creative expression, a swimming pool, fitness room, and physical therapy space, plus rooms for alternative healing modalities like acupuncture and massage, and a tea room for informal Japanese-style tea gatherings and classes.

And this is your brainchild. Yes, there was a need, and I was paying attention to the need. In 2006, we did not have a way to fulfill our promise to the Zen elders who had been at San Francisco Zen Center for many years. We had offered room and board for life once they turned 70 and had been there for at least twenty years. But when that promise was made, the people who were in charge were in their 40s. No one actually figured out how we were going to do it. I thought there must be a senior living developer out there who would be able to help us build a “Zen-inspired” community.

“Zen-inspired means more than just having a bunch of Zen teachers living there.”

We went through different partners but found our way to the senior community developer Kendal, a not-for-profit with Quaker-based values. Zen-inspired means more than just having a bunch of Zen teachers living there. It means not turning away from impermanence, from the inevitable changes of aging. It is wonderful to enjoy this time in our lives and be silly and dance, but it is also an opportunity to ask questions about what it means to be a human, and have dialogues about the purpose of this time in our lives.

Many communities are facing this issue now. Years ago I went to a meeting at Spirit Rock Meditation Center in Woodacre, California. There was a meeting of all their teachers from around the world, which they do from time to time. I was telling them about this plan that we were developing, and I looked around the room and 80 percent of the people had lived strictly on dana [donations]. The dana model is wonderful. But as you get older, you’re able to teach less, and if your only resources come from teaching, you’re not going to have what you need to support yourself when you age.

In a monastic model, younger monks would take care of their elders, but we’re more lay-based in the US. Even the San Francisco Zen Center has a huge percentage of lay practitioners and teachers. And at the Zen Center less than 20 percent of the money that comes in from the public is through donations. We’ve always had to have businesses. We were very fortunate with Enso Village. When the time came for us to actually ask people to make a deposit to join a priority list, we received more than 1,000 deposits in three weeks. We had started with 4,000 people on our mailing list, but for a lot of them, it was just wishful thinking. They were never going to be able to afford to move into this modality. When the pricing was revealed, a lot of people’s hearts were broken. I knew that was going to happen, and there was nothing I could do. As it turned out, there were many people who could afford it, and by the time we went for the construction financing, 95 percent of the units were reserved.

When the news about Enso Village came a few years back, everyone in the Buddhist world heard about it because it was so remarkable. Where are things now? We opened the doors in November 2023. More than 50 percent of residents have moved in already, and another 20 percent have put deposits down. We still have units available, and we’re starting a second center in southern California called Enso Verde. It’s in Ventura County, up against the hills in Simi Valley. This site is twenty-one acres, and it feels like a retreat center. We started it because there was such enthusiasm for Enso Village. We’re widening it so that it isn’t just Zen Center teachers. It could include a rabbi or a yoga teacher, Vipassana teachers, Tibetan teachers. A few of the units, maybe fifteen, will be set aside for teachers.

To someone who’s not Buddhist, how is life at Enso Village different from other retirement communities? There are lots of people here who are not Buddhist. There’s a Catholic woman who does her rosary during meditation! But there’s a zendo in the middle of the courtyard. That’s a pretty strong statement. There are some rock gardens and contemplative spaces, so visually it looks like a Zen retreat. But the thing that’s the most different is the people. The conversations are similar to what you’d have at a Zen Center. It’s not “What did you do?” but, “Why are you here? What are you looking for? How do you want to live this part of your life?”

Students can continue their practice there? Right now the residents have set up three different meditation times during the day. There’s a Zen sitting at 7:30 in the morning. Then at 9:15 a bunch of Vipassana people get together and do a sitting, and then there’s another Zen sitting at 5:15. And on Sundays there’s a Quaker meeting. We’re looking to hire a head of spiritual life to set up a series of programs. Maybe we’ll study the paramitas, because those are pretty universal. But the Vipassana people said, “There are ten!” And the Zen people said, “No, only six!” So we’ll have to work through that.

You’ll have to cross some sectarian lines in the dharma. That will be a growing experience. Totally. The people moving in, except for the Zen elders, they’ve never lived in a community. All of them have owned their own home, because that’s usually what happens, you sell your home and move in. They are used to making their own decisions, just for themselves, so it’s going to be an interesting first year of settling into processes that are community-based.

This is a values-based community. For many years people were making senior communities to please everybody. They were location-based, near shopping malls or golf courses or whatever. But by narrowing it slightly, by saying this is a Zen-inspired community, you find what Chip Conley calls “like-hearted people.” Not that we have the same ideas, not like-minded, that’s too narrow. But like-hearted. We share these values. We are offering to residents and staff Mindful Community Training, which came out of the Zen hospice work. We took what we learned about how to train volunteers to be with dying and we said, “Let’s train people to be with aging.”

You mentioned “not turning away,” directly confronting old age, sickness, and death. Buddhists understand, but how will non-Buddhists get this? Because it will just be reality. All of a sudden you fall, and everything changes and you need different kinds of help. You could stay in denial, but it’s a lot more painful to stay in denial.

What sort of connection does Enso Village have with other nodes of Zen Center? The ownership of Enso Village is separate. I still work for the Zen Center, to continue to market Enso Village and oversee the “authenticity” of the offering, and I’m bringing in a couple of people I’m training to take over for me, because someday I’m gonna die. There could be additional senior communities that are Zen-inspired. We sometimes take people to Green Gulch for a daylong retreat. This summer, we’re taking ten people down to Tassajara for a sangha week. So it’s all connected, but we remain separate entities. We have people coming back and forth from there to here and here to there.

Have people from other dharma communities reached out to you? What have those conversations been like? Over time, various people have reached out, usually as an individual as opposed to a representative of an organization. What I say to them is, “Find a piece of land and a little bit of money, probably a million bucks, then you can start to put something together. And I’ll help in whatever ways I can.” But it’s not easy. I must have looked at twenty pieces of land in northern California. But if the community is in South Carolina, which would be a wonderful place to have it, the land is going to be less expensive, although the process, getting permission to build, can take ten years. And there are very few other centers that are big enough. I’m open to conversations, and I’m happy to encourage people.

I imagine building this was an uphill battle. It was, but I stuck with this because I’m very stubborn. Before I moved into the Zen Center, I was a film producer. I understand what it means to have an idea and hold the idea together, and then gather people around me who are going to make it happen. Zen Center thought, “We can’t do this. It’s too big, it’s never gonna work.” But I know about sticking with something through thick and thin. And everything changes. Nothing lasts, including resistance to a vision.

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This interview has been edited for length and clarity. Visit tricycle.org for the full article.