Zen Practice, Education, Healing & Service
Reclaiming the World as Sacred
Our Mission
The Zen Garland Order is a cooperative affiliation of formally empowered, lineage-bearing Zen Teachers. We hold in common an ethical code and standards for empowerments and teach a shared curriculum for Core Practices and Training Paths. Each Zen Garland Teacher has their own talents, creativity, and specializations. They carry on their work with students in their own style and offer unique personal approaches to Zen training.
We aspire to provide open, welcoming communities for spiritual development, accessible to people with varying goals and at different stages of development. Our teachers value respect for each practitioner and offer skillful and caring guidance in a safe, structured, and supportive environment. We treat each practitioner as an individual, helping you develop a personal spiritual practice appropriate to your needs, the context of your life and talents, and shaped by your aspirations. We are part of the Engaged Buddhism Movement and encourage envisioning life as service in our own personal and particular forms of engagement.
The Zen Garland Way
“Awakening manifests in compassionate service and action for oneself, others and all creation.”
~ Roshi Paul Genki Kahn
The Zen Garland Way cultivates the human capacity to connect intimately with each living moment in experience, in relationship, in interactive co-creation with our situation. Dogen Zenji calls this shinzo, “the ever intimate.” Human nature is this intimate, unified inter-relatedness of all creation. The place of wholeness, salvation, and liberation is this intimate connection with life, moment by lived moment, which we describe as “reclaiming the world.”
In our communities we offer 8 Core Practices.
The 8 Core Practices
We believe that experiencing reality as our identity with all creation is the fundamental and necessary ground for the ethical transformation of our values, motivations, and priorities. But awakening is not enough. We must continue our lifelong spiritual journey by facing the more profound and difficult task: how to live this dynamic unity in the indeterminacy, fluidity, and diversity of daily life.
Our Zen Garland Order 8 Core Practices are designed to assist that lifelong development. Each of our 8 Core Practices contains elements of all the other Core Practices, and each is present as well in every other of the Core Practices.
The Zen Garland Order Centers
DHARMA RIVER, Winona, MN
DHARMA RIVER
Winona, MN
Roshi Paul Kisho Stern
Sensei Trish Baishin Johnson
ANCIENT OAKS, Savannah, GA
ANCIENT OAKS
Savannah, GA
Roshi Paul Genki Kahn
Roshi Monika Genmitsu Kahn
Rev. Tucker Sansui Brown (Dharma Holder)
EIDO-JI - DER EWIGE WEG, Goch and Münster, Germany
EIDO-JI – DER EWIGE WEG
Goch und Münster,
Nordrhein – Westfahlen, Germany
Roshi Wolfgang Okami Schmachtenberg
INFINITE CIRCLE, Online Zen Community
INFINITE CIRCLE
Fishkill, NY/Online
Rev. John Mitsudo Mancuso (Dharma Holder)
Roshi Monika Genmitsu Kahn
DHARMA HERZ, Duisburg, Germany
Duisburg, Germany
Rev. Kai-Uwe Juushin Trollmann (Dharma Holder)
Roshi Monika Genmitsu Kahn
SPIRIT OF LIFE, Cape Town, South Africa
SPIRIT OF LIFE
Cape Town, South Africa
David Ando Rosenstein
Roshi Paul Genki Kahn
DEEP BLUES, Memphis, TN
DEEP BLUES
Memphis, TN
Rev. Yves Keichi Calderone (Dharma Holder)
Roshi Paul Genki Kahn
Support Our Work
Dana - Generosity, the first of the six perfections of wisdom.
"I vow to seek what is needed responsibly,
To share generously,
To work well with what I have,
And to take only what is freely given."
… from the Zen Garland Vows, Vow 7
The Zen Garland Order operates in the black. Our only debt is a deep debt of gratitude to the members and friends who donate so generously to support us, and who fill our programs, classes and retreats.
Membership is the most direct way a practitioner can help sustain our order and local communities. But membership and fees for our programs only cover our operating costs. Money to provide scholarships, stipends for our full time staff and expansion all must come from Dana, the spiritual giving by our friends and members.