January 29, 1992 – March 18, 2024
Our beloved Caroline Meister, 32, died on Monday, March 18, 2024. As over one hundred people searched and countless more prayed, sang, and chanted for her, Caroline’s body rested in a pool at the base of a waterfall in the Ventana Wilderness until she was found on Friday, March 22. Caroline had gone for a walk from Tassajara on a beautiful day on a familiar trail and fallen off a cliff.
Caroline was in her fourth year at San Francisco Zen Center, finishing her third practice period at Tassajara, after several years of practice at Green Gulch and periods of residency at City Center. On June 5, 2022, she received Jukai from Jiryu Rutschman-Byler, who gave her the Dharma name Sōshi Gōkon / Ancestral Kindness, Diamond Root.
Caroline grew up in River Forest, Illinois with her parents, John and Jean, and her siblings, Lizzie and Willie. She reflected on high school as being a time of major opening for her, when she began to emerge from her painful shyness, as she auditioned for her first play, took a “feelings” class, and later joined an improv/sketch comedy group. After graduating from Oak Park and River Forest High School in 2010, she went to Oberlin College, where her focus shifted to “the biggest issues of our time.”* She studied Politics and Environmental Studies, leaned into social justice causes, began her lifelong passion of peer counseling, and studied non-violent communication. She engaged in Theater of the Oppressed workshops, co-facilitated community care workshops with close friends throughout her four years of college, and was passionate about her work on the Resource Conservation Team. She joined a meditation group and interfaith dialogue group, and in a period of independent study spent a week at Thich Nhat Hanh’s Plum Village. Through it all she built deep, lifelong community and friendships that profoundly shaped her.
After graduating in 2014 she stayed in Oberlin, fulfilling her calling “to listen to and support young people to live in this world.” Leading youth programming for the YWCA of Lorain County, Caroline most loved facilitating “Girls’ Circle”, where she held space for adolescent girls to tell their stories, process their trauma, and be girls together.
Caroline deeply felt the immense grief and pain of the world and of her life and loved ones. Her desire to learn to be with herself led her to monastic practice. In the Fall of 2019 she took a leap and spent two months at the Monastic Academy for the Preservation of Life on Earth in rural Vermont, where residents practiced socially engaged Buddhism. In March 2020, Caroline arrived at Green Gulch Farm for a two-week guest student stay, intending to practice and return to her life and home in Oberlin. The pandemic canceled her flight, and she stayed for the next four years. During this time (in her words), “I learned how to express the deepest parts of my being, my interconnection with all of life, by simply meeting each moment with my full presence and an open heart. I began to trust in my own goodness and the goodness of life itself.”
In her practice she saw “the ways my inner conflicts mirrored those of the external world, and finding ways to be with, rather than suppress or evade, my deepest pain.” Like many of us, she felt her orientation towards practice shift from training to ‘go back’ to her life, to being fully alive and present in this chapter of sincere wholehearted practice, a practice not separate from her life or the world. As she deepened in her understanding of the central importance of spirituality in her life, Caroline took several months away from Green Gulch to live and practice at Our Sister of the Redwoods Abbey in Northern California, integrating her Catholic practice and faith that had been with her since childhood.
In her four years of residence across all three SFZC temples, Caroline became a beloved member of the sangha. She was known by her wholehearted and sincere practice, her radiant smile, and her genuine kindness. From those who knew her for years to those who spent just hours or days with her, as their Tassajara stage driver or their sangha week garden crew head, countless people were touched by her presence.
Not everyone who met her saw Caroline’s total humanness, and how intimately she knew grief, despair, heartbreak, shame, horror, confusion, doubt, and powerlessness. She understood deeply what Jiryu wrote on her rakusu, that “everything is included.” As she kept growing into that knowing, kept expanding to include it all, to not turn away or hide from any of the pain of being alive and in this world, she taught–and continues to teach–us.
Throughout the joy and suffering, Caroline was exquisitely alive, expressed through her whole being and through her boundless creativity, as she channeled beauty across countless mediums: dance, theater, painting, sculpting, embroidery, drawing, poetry, and so many more. From laminating poison oak earrings and lacquering peach pit necklaces to creating giant painted portraits and sculpting the delicate elegance of Kwan Yin in clay in the last weeks of her life, she left so many gifts. She was a truly beautiful writer, offering clarity, wisdom, and honesty. And throughout her life she wove an incredible tapestry of loving community.
In her last months, Caroline was excited about her life. With “clearer eyes and a more open heart,” she planned to return to the marketplace and begin a Master’s Degree program in Drama Therapy. She saw this step as a continuation on her path of learning and transformation, with the intention to “share what I learn in the fullest way I can so that it may be of benefit to others”—just as she always had.
Among countless teachings, Caroline left these words, written years ago, that help us grieve her, and meet ourselves and each other in the inevitable grief that life brings:
Through this grief, I am striving to become more alive, not less. Sometimes, this means aching sorrow–letting my body heave and feel the abyss. Other times, it means planting a vegetable garden for the first time, the steadiness of breath and sun and season, the ongoing work and play of life. It means, ultimately, not numbing. Accepting the real gravity of this loss–as my own, but also as a window into everyone’s loss. Accepting every feeling that comes to me, no matter how powerful or unwanted. Finding the people who can love and hold it together.
*All quotes throughout are Caroline’s words in the last five years, in writing or video.
