Linda Galijan will be Berkeley Zen Center’s first female abbot. Credit: Nathan Dalton for Berkeleyside

The Berkeley Zen Center has chosen a new abbot. Linda Galijan will be just the third person to fill the role in the 59-year history of the center and will be its first female abbot. Galijan will officially be installed during a ceremony on March 1.

Galijan comes to the center after 21 years at San Francisco Zen Center, where she split her time between Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, its monastery in the Big Sur mountains, where she served as director and head of practice, and its City Center temple, where she served as president of San Francisco Zen Center.

But Galijan is no stranger to Berkeley Zen Center. In fact, it was the place where she decided to devote her life to zen training some 30 years ago.

“I came here one Monday morning and sat with the community and just felt immediately right,” said Galijan about her first visit to Berkeley Zen Center in 1996. “ It was just like there was a whole being, whole body ‘Yes.’ I felt like I was home.”

Galijan indeed made the center her home, soon becoming a resident. It’s also where she met her future husband, Greg Fain. The two were married there in 2005.

The center was founded in a house on Dwight Way in 1967 by Mel Weitsman, with encouragement from Shunryu Suzuki, who founded San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center after coming to San Francisco from Japan in 1959. Suzuki, who is often described as a “founding father of zen in America,” is also the author of the influential book “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.” 

Berkeley Zen Center moved to its current home on Russell Street in 1979. The center, which is rooted in the Soto Zen tradition of Buddhism, hosts daily zazen (meditations) Monday through Friday and zazen instruction on Saturday mornings, as well as classes, retreats, dharma talks and monthly intensive “sesshins,” where attendees meditate from 5 a.m,-5:30 p.m. The center has about 120 members, including nine residents who live on the grounds.

Weitsman served as abbot for nearly 50 years. He passed away in 2021 at age 91. The center’s next abbot, Alan Senauke, was a longtime student of Weitsman’s and a resident of the center from 1985 until his death in 2024. Galijan and Fain returned to the center in September 2024 as visiting teachers while Senauke’s health was in decline. Galijan has been serving as head priest/abbot-elect since September. She was ordained as a zen priest by Weitsman in 2004 and received dharma transmission from him in 2012. 

Linda Galijan at the altar inside Berkeley Zen Center’s zendo. Credit: Nathan Dalton for Berkeleyside

Galijan is also a licensed clinical psychologist, and has worked as a massage therapist and a professional musician, playing stand-up bass in a swing band aboard the Queen Mary, which is docked in her hometown of Long Beach, and in the San Francisco-based world-beat band, Mapenzi.

Galijan was elected by the Berkeley Zen Center community in a democratic process, a contrast from the usual abbot succession, where the role is passed down from one abbot to the next.

“It’s really kind of a new era,” said Colleen Busch, BZC’s board president, about Galijan’s appointment. 

“She’s kind of ideal in that she grounded her practice at Berkeley Zen Center,” Busch continued. “She is good about tending to all the relationships between people in the community, good at listening to people and taking in their views.”

Busch said that Galijan’s appointment is coming at a time when the center’s Saturday morning zazen is growing in popularity, which she accounts to the “moment we’re living in.”

“People are anxious and stressed and needing some sort of peace,” said Busch. “And [Galijan] has a very kind of grounded and peace giving presence and I think people feel that.”

Galijan will officially be installed as abbot on Sunday, March 1, during a special “Mountain Seat Ceremony,” which will feature many special guests, including Hoitsu Suzuki, the son of Shunryu Suzuki, who is flying in from Japan. The event is not open to the public, but will be livestreamed on the center’s website.

Berkeley Zen Center, 1933 Russell St., Berkeley. Connect via Facebookand YouTube.

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