Toni Packer (April 1927 – August 23, 2013) was a teacher of “meditative inquiry”, and the founder of Springwater Center.

[citation needed] It was in her childhood, growing up amidst the turmoil of Nazi Germany, that Packer first developed mistrust for authority.

Toni began reading the pioneering works about Zen Buddhism by Alan Watts, D. T. Suzuki and Philip Kapleau.

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.