Taking the Zen Garland Order Vows – Study
Practicing the Zen Garland Order Vows means to embody Zen ethics as a way to salvation, healing, and liberation. The Vows are an essential element in the practice path of all Buddhist traditions: precepts, meditation, and wisdom. Taking the Zen Garland Vows is the commitment to enter the Zen Buddhist path and the initiation into the Zen Garland Order family of Zen Buddhism.
This empowerment is open to those with over a year of regular practice under the guidance of a Zen Garland Order Teacher. Prior Buddhist, and specifically Zen, practice experience, can be considered as contributing to this requirement. The practitioner request of their teacher to take the Zen Garland Order Vows.
Once accepted, the practitioner joins a training group that studies the history, philosophy and dynamics of precepts and vows in Buddhist, Zen, and the Zen Garland Order traditions. A rakusu, a miniature version of a monk or nun’s robe, is sewn by each practitioner with help from their sewing mentor. A ceremony is held where they receive the Zen Garland Order as ongoing ways of practice from their Teacher.
This study will include:
- 9 Dharma talks on Sundays on each of the Zen Garland Order Vows (live or recorded)
- 6 Video lectures on the history and practice of the precepts in Buddhism
- 6 classes on zoom to discuss the video lectures on Monday evening from 6:30 – 7:45pm ET.
- Material, instructions and support to sew your own rakusu.
Dates & time:
Monday evenings from 7:00 – 8:15pm ET
(6:00 -7:15pm CT)on zoom
January 8th
January 15th
January 22nd
January 29th
February 12th
February 19th
One of the leading Zen masters of our time, Roshi Paul Genki Kahn augments traditional Zen practices with modern psychology, philosophy, science, and socially engaged service to marginalized communities. He has developed a thorough and profound holistic approach to Zen practice that offers personal and inter-relational development for skillful living in the world. He is Co-founder with his wife, Roshi Monka Genmitsu Kahn, of the International Zen Garland Order. Along with his duties as the Spiritual Director of the Zen Garland Order and the Ancient Oaks Zen Community, Roshi Genki maintains a private psychotherapy practice in Savannah.
Roshi Monika Genmitsu Kahn is a Zen Master Teacher and Zen Buddhist Priest. Together with her husband Roshi Paul Genki Kahn she is the co-founder of the Zen Garland Order, the Ancient Oaks Zen Community and the Practice of Zen Focusing. Originally a Swiss mountaineer she is also the lineage holder in Zen Garland’s Red Path Zen trained and transmitted by Grandfather Shook Sings-Alone Roshi.
Genmitsu works as a professional Compassionate Bereavement Care Counselor and Family Services Coordinator for the MISS Foundation and the Selah Carefarm, providing services and aid to traumatically bereaved families in their difficult grieving process.