Toni Packer

Toni Packer
Toni Packer (1978)
Born	April 1, 1927 Berlin, Germany
Died	23 August 2013 aged 86 Livingston County Center for Nursing in Mt Morris, NY.
Residence	New York
Nationality	American
Known for	Meditative inquiry
Spouse(s)	Kyle Packer

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.

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; for example, she discontinued wearing the abbreviated Buddhist robe called a rakusu, worn in some Japanese Zen circles to distinguish more advanced practitioners.

Packer left the Center shortly after Kapleau's return and ceased calling herself a Buddhist. Her eventual departure from Zen Buddhism was due to her ever-increasing resentment of all organized religion: all received doctrines, all rituals, all traditions. Her rebellion against religion was inspired by Krishnamurti, who had himself rebelled against Theosophy. She took most of her students with her when she was excommunicated and exiled from the Rochester Zen Center, immediately founding her own "non-religion" of "meditative inquiry" (which is, simply, paying full and undivided attention to the present moment).