Tassajara Mountain Zen Center in central California lost a key part of its retreat infrastructure when an attic fire burned down the meditation hall on March 26, swallowing the remote wooden structure and damaging a nearby library, according to Michael McCord, president of the San Francisco Zen Center, which owns and runs the retreat. McCord said the fire broke out while practitioners were in the home stretch of a sequestered three-month meditation program in which they were contemplating impermanence—the idea that physical, mental and environmental things are in constant flux.
McCord said the center’s monks and staff moved quickly to contain the blaze, even as the site’s remoteness and rugged access complicated the response. The volunteer firefighting crew that came from about an hour away reached the mountain using a one-lane dirt road without guardrails, he said, during a period when the monks used hoses and buckets to buy time.
David Zimmerman, a former Tassajara director who had experience responding to fires at the site, was leading a retreat when the attic fire started, McCord said. McCord described Zimmerman as a veteran of firefighting efforts at Tassajara, saying the center previously drew attention to so-called “fire monks” after Zimmerman and others stayed to defend the sacred space even after authorities issued evacuation orders.
A statement posted by the Cachagua Fire Department praised the center’s initial response, saying: “The staff at Tassajara Mountain Zen Center should be incredibly proud, their initial fire attack efforts helped keep the fire contained, buying critical time for responding apparatus to arrive and preventing further damage.” McCord said that for the monks and spiritual practitioners who visit Tassajara from around the United States and the world, seeing a deeply symbolic meditation center burn down was heartbreaking, even as leaders framed it as teaching the lesson of impermanence.
McCord said the center would not know what was lost immediately and planned to determine the damage after the rubble was sifted. In addition to the meditation hall, he said the fire destroyed sitting cushions, the altar and oryoki bowls used by Zen monks for mindful, formal meals, while potentially damaging or destroying other sacred objects.
Among the items McCord said could have been damaged or lost were a 2,000-year-old Gandharan Buddha statue, which had been rescued after an electrical fire gutted the meditation center in 1978, and a century-old Japanese bell, he said. McCord also said a wooden fish-shaped drum called mokugyo—used during chanting and ritual—was in the rubble, and that the center was eager to see whether these items could be salvaged and repaired.
McCord said the center had received an outpouring of support from around the world and reiterated that while the loss was significant, relief followed the lack of injuries. “We are eager to see if these items can be salvaged from the rubble and repaired,” he said. “Right now, we’re receiving an outpouring of support from around the world. People are really sad. But we’re relieved no one was injured.”
Colleen Morton Busch, a Zen practitioner who wrote about the “fire monks” in her 2011 book “Fire Monks,” said the monks were neither trained firemen nor “some burly, fit, heroic types ready to charge into a dangerous situation.” She said: “They are humble people who share a deep love of Tassajara and have this incredible ability to stay calm and clear-headed — to pause and think what’s appropriate and possible at this moment,” adding that this ability is cultivated through meditation practice.
Tassajara was founded in 1967 and is described as the oldest Japanese Buddhist Soto Zen monastery in the United States and the first Zen monastery established outside Asia, McCord said. The center’s name comes from an Indigenous Esselen word meaning “where meat is hung to dry,” and it is inaccessible during winter months because of snow and rain, while also closing to the public between September and April when it operates as a training monastery for groups of Zen practitioners.
McCord said the center hoped to keep the retreat open this summer when hot springs on the site become accessible to the general public with reservations. He also said fire has long been a looming threat at Tassajara, adding that Indigenous Esselen people in the Los Padres region historically managed chaparral with controlled burns every 25 years, describing the natural cycle as part of local ecology.
Busch said the center’s natural beauty and remoteness are blessings, but also what makes the location dangerous. “When you’re there it’s all really simple, pared down and fundamental,” she said, describing how the environment slows people down enough to feel rooted in what they experience—before the fire risk arrives as an unavoidable reality.