Zen Buddhist monk Jana Drakka married same-sex couples in 2004 and again in 2008. (Courtesy photo)

SAN FRANCISCO — Zen Buddhist monk Jana Drakka married same-sex couples in 2004, when San Francisco attempted to legalize such unions, and again in 2008. She was at City Hall on Thursday prepared to marry couples.

Why did you come down here today? I grew up in Scotland and I am gay, and I was frequently beaten up and stoned — people literally threw stones at me — for being different. It was very difficult growing up as a queer person in Scotland. Last week, I was in front of the federal building waiting for the ruling, and someone turned to me and said, “Are you here to get married?” And I realized that never in my life before that did it occur to me that I could get married.

What was today like? We all stood outside waiting for the ruling, and then we all came rushing in because we thought, “This is it!” But, no. It’s been hurry up and wait, all along.

Are you optimistic that the stay will remain lifted and same-sex marriages will be performed next week? Yes! Oh, please, please, let it be. I’m very hopeful. I don’t think we can go backwards.

You blessed some couples today, since you couldn’t marry them. What was the blessing? May all beings be happy. May we be joyous and live in safety.

Jana Drakka Community Services In The News

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Through Meditation, the Homeless Achieve Radical Peace | End ...

In The News...Falkirk Herald

Falkirk Woman Devotes Life to Helping The Poor.
(Falkirk Herald, Falkirk, Scotland. Jan 2010)

YOU COULD be an old friend of Jana Drakka but chances are, if you bumped into her you wouldn't recognise the former Bainsford Primary and Falkirk High pupil.

With her flowing robes and shaved head, she is almost unrecognisable from her Falkirk days now she is a senior zen priest living in San Francisco.

Born as Elizabeth Potts in Falkirk, Jana moved to San Francisco in 1989 to study Buddhism, going on to take her monastic vows in 2001 - which meant she had to change her name to honour the religion.

Jana works in homeless ministry, leading meditation and conducting funeral services for some of the thousands that find themselves on the streets of the Californian city.

"When I moved here from Falkirk I couldn't believe it. This country that we all thought to be so rich treats it's poor and disabled folks terribly. One has to develop the ability to step over fellow human beings on the street and to ignore all the people with mental health problems riding the buses and screaming at everyone. I won't do that."

For Jana, homelessness is a plight that is close to her heart. Soon after arriving in America, the 57-year-old was struck down by ill health and, unable to work or pay her rent and medical bills. She found herself homeless and living in the city's overcrowded hostels.

Eventually she was given a room in a Buddhist centre, still donating her time and services to helping the homeless and making life less stressful for them.

"Believe me living on the streets is stressful and I just want to help. I have felt a drive my whole life to help folks."

Now, Jana has started her own non-profit organisation, Jana Drakka Community Services, which aims to not only help the homeless but to educate the community on homelessness and the reasons behind it.

Earlier this year she was honoured by the mayor of San Francisco for her work and is now working tirelessly to get her charity up and running so she can help even more vulnerable people in her adopted home town.

If you recognise Jana and would like to get in touch or make a donation to her organisation, visit www.janadrakka.com.

In The News

Jana Drakka's Homeless Ministry Honored by SF Mayor

On November 20, Zen Buddhist priest Jana Drakka's work in homeless ministry was recognized by San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom at the 10th Annual Mayor's Interfaith Thanksgiving Prayer Breakfast. The theme of the breakfast was Honoring Models of Hope: Recognizing Organizations Overcoming Violence in the Community. The event was co-sponsored by the Interfaith Council. Two hundred civic and religious leaders were present. Mayor Newsom gave the keynote address. View event photos here.

Receiving her award, Rev. Jana's acceptance speech began with: "I wish it were not me standing here but all the hundreds of homeless people that have been helped by this program." Later in the speech, she said, "To have peace in the world, we must have peace in America. To have peace in America, we must have peace in California. To have peace in California, we must have peace in San Francisco. To have peace in San Francisco, we must have peace in our hearts and that's what meditation can help you to find."

Accompanying Jana to the breakfast was her Zen teacher former Abbess Zenkei Blanche Hartman.

Earlier this year, Jana's work with the homeless was featured in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle. View it here http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/03/MNG73NC2QC1.DTL

In The News

Woman Offers Meditation To The Homeless - First Project Of Its Kind In Nation
By Carolyn Tyler

Apr. 4 - KGO (KGO) -- If you are homeless in the Bay Area, there are a number of places you can turn to for shelter, clothing and food. But none is as unusual as a one-woman effort now underway in San Francisco. She's offering peace of mind.

Read the whole story here http://abclocal.go.com/kgo/story?section=assignment_7&id=518422

In The News

Priest brings Zen to S.F.'s neediest souls - Buddhist teaches meditation, holds memorials for homeless
Justin Berton, Chronicle Staff Writer
Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Inside the community room of the Raman Hotel, a single-room occupancy hotel at Howard and Sixth streets, Jana Drakka set up a makeshift altar for a tenant named Guillermo who had died a week earlier.

"Memo," as his fellow residents and caseworkers knew him, was a 76-year-old Korean War veteran as well as an alcoholic who had ricocheted among the city's streets and homeless shelters.

He had spent most of his last three years at the Raman, one of city's low-rent SROs, and the 16 people who had gathered at his memorial reflected the tail end of his life: eight tenants from the Raman and eight social workers who had met him at rehab clinics, nursing facilities and a halfway house for parolees on the mend -- but not a family member in sight.

At the altar, Drakka, an ordained Buddhist priest, dressed in a layered kamboa, dropped pear incense onto a piece of charcoal and offered a prayer.

"Memo," she said in her lithe Scottish accent, "we're here to give you a proper send-off."

In the past three years, Drakka has performed about 100 such memorials inside SROs in the Mission, Tenderloin and South of Market districts. No one keeps an official count of how many people die inside the estimated 500 hotels each year, said Sam Dodge, director of the Central City SRO Collaborative, but living conditions there are often stressful and uniquely fit for death. The majority of the 30,000 residents are elderly and without health insurance, Dodge said; drug addicts, who often hole up in the cheap rooms, are more likely to overdose in an SRO than anywhere else in the city. In the past two months alone, at least nine people have died in Mission District hotels, said Christina Olague, coordinator of the Mission SRO Collaborative.

Read the article here http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/03/MNG73NC2QC1.DTL