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23-630: The Sanshin Zen Community was incorporated as an organization in 1996 by Shohaku Okumura after serving as the interim abbot of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center since 1992. He chose the name sanshin ( 三心 , sanshin ) , meaning "three minds", in reference to Eihei Dogen 's teaching from the Tenzo Kyōkun of the three minds a Zen student should cultivate: magnanimous mind, parental mind, and joyful mind. However,

46-482: A gassho bow to their seat, and a second bow to fellow practitioners. The beginning of a period of zazen is traditionally announced by ringing a bell three times ( shijosho ), and the end of the period by ringing the bell either once or twice ( hozensho ). Long periods of zazen may alternate with periods of kinhin (walking meditation). The posture of zazen is seated, with crossed legs and folded hands, and an erect but settled spine. The hands are folded together into

69-555: A chair, sometimes with a wedge or cushion on top of it so that one is sitting on an incline, or by placing a wedge behind the lower back to help maintain the natural curve of the spine. The initial stages of training in zazen resemble traditional Buddhist samatha meditation. The student begins by focusing on the breath at the hara/tanden with mindfulness of breath ( ānāpānasmṛti ) exercises such as counting breath ( sūsokukan 数息観) or just watching it ( zuisokukan 随息観). Mantras are also sometimes used in place of counting. Practice

92-491: A local architect employed to design a combined zendo and living space for the Okumura family. The sangha follows a modified monastic schedule with a retreat each month. Sanshin is one of the few Zen communities offering a sesshin ('without toys') in the style of Uchiyama-roshi, featuring 14 hours of zazen per day with no ceremonies, work, or Dharma talks. Okumura also offers regular Genzo-e retreats devoted to studying one of

115-523: A meditation hall usually referred to as a zendo , each sitting on a cushion called a zafu which itself may be placed on a low, flat mat called a zabuton . Practitioners of the Rinzai school sit facing each other with their backs to the wall, while those of the Sōtō school sit facing the wall or a curtain. Before taking one's seat, and after rising at the end of a period of zazen, a Zen practitioner performs

138-433: A simple mudra over the belly. In many practices, the practitioner breathes from the hara (the center of gravity in the belly) and the eyelids are half-lowered, the eyes being neither fully open nor shut so that the practitioner is neither distracted by, nor turning away from, external stimuli. The legs are folded in one of the standard sitting styles: It is not uncommon for modern practitioners to practice zazen in

161-557: A work termed Zuòchán sān mēi jīng ( A Manual on the Samādhi of Sitting Meditation ) and the Chinese Tiantai master Zhiyi (538–597 CE) wrote some very influential works on sitting meditation. The meaning and method of zazen varies from school to school, but in general it is a quiet type of Buddhist meditation done in a sitting posture like the lotus position . The practice can be done with various methods, such as following

184-536: Is a meditative discipline that is typically the primary practice of the Zen Buddhist tradition . The generalized Japanese term for meditation is 瞑想 ( meisō ); however, zazen has been used informally to include all forms of seated Buddhist meditation. The term zuòchán can be found in early Chinese Buddhist sources, such as the Dhyāna sutras . For example, the famous translator Kumārajīva (344–413) translated

207-424: Is considered the heart of Japanese Sōtō Zen Buddhist practice. The aim of zazen is just sitting , that is, suspending all judgemental thinking and letting words, ideas, images and thoughts pass by without getting involved in them. Practitioners do not use any specific object of meditation, instead remaining as much as possible in the present moment, aware of and observing what is occurring around them and what

230-415: Is typically to be continued in one of these ways until there is adequate " one-pointedness " of mind to constitute an initial experience of samadhi . At this point, the practitioner moves on to koan-practice or shikantaza. While Yasutani Roshi states that the development of jōriki ( 定力 ) ( Sanskrit samādhibala ), the power of concentration, is one of the three aims of zazen, Dogen warns that

253-556: The Gyobutsuji Zen Monastery in Arkansas in 2011. In early 2016 it was announced that the founding abbot Shohaku Okumura would retire in 2023 to be gradually succeeded by his student Hoko Karnegis , who would serve as vice abbot in the interim. The style of practice at this zendo follows the lineage of Kosho Uchiyama -roshi and his teacher, Kodo Sawaki -roshi, who founded Antaiji temple, and greatly simplified

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276-675: The Soto Zen forms used there. This Zen -related article is a stub . You can help Misplaced Pages by expanding it . Shohaku Okumura The way The "goal" Background Chinese texts Classical Post-classical Contemporary Zen in Japan Seon in Korea Thiền in Vietnam Western Zen Shōhaku Okumura ( 奥村 正博 , born June 22, 1948) is a Japanese Sōtō Zen priest and

299-728: The Buddha Amitabha's name, is common in the traditions influenced by Pure Land practice, and was also taught by Chan masters like Zongmi . In the Japanese Buddhist Rinzai school , zazen is usually combined with the study of koans . The Japanese Sōtō school makes less or no use of koans , preferring an approach known as shikantaza where the mind has no object at all. Kapleau quotes Hakuun Yasutani 's lectures for beginners. In lecture four, Yasutani lists five kinds of zazen: In Zen temples and monasteries, practitioners traditionally sit zazen together in

322-658: The United States, Okumura was a teacher at the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota from 1993 to 1996 and then founded the Sanshin Zen Community in 1996. Okumura's daughter, Yoko Okumura , made a short documentary film entitled Sit described as "a film about purpose in life, seen through the eyes of a Buddhist monk and his son." The film explores parts of Okumura's way of thinking, how his views affected his parenting and

345-504: The aim of zazen is not the development of mindless concentration. In the Rinzai school, after having developed awareness, the practitioner can now focus their consciousness on a koan as an object of meditation. While koan practice is generally associated with the Rinzai school and Shikantaza with the Sōtō school, many Zen communities use both methods depending on the teacher and students. Zazen

368-476: The breath ( anapanasati ), mentally repeating a phrase (which could be a koan , a mantra , a huatou or nianfo ) and a kind of open monitoring in which one is aware of whatever comes to our attention (sometimes called shikantaza or silent illumination). Repeating a huatou, a short meditation phrase, is a common method in Chinese Chan and Korean Seon . Meanwhile, nianfo, the practice of silently reciting

391-828: The evening. There are no services, chants, or work periods. These alternate with " genzō-e retreats", which are five days of intensive study of one or more fascicles of Dōgen's collection of writings called the Shōbōgenzō . He has published several translations of material previously unavailable in English such as Dōgen’s Pure Standards for the Zen Community and Eihei Kōroku , both with Taigen Dan Leighton . Zazen The way The "goal" Background Chinese texts Classical Post-classical Contemporary Zen in Japan Seon in Korea Thiền in Vietnam Western Zen Zazen

414-553: The fascicles of Dōgen Zenji's Shōbōgenzō ; he also travels to give them at other prominent North American Zen Centers. Since the founding of Sanshin-ji, Okumura has ordained multiple students as priests, some of whom have gone on to found their own temples and monasteries elsewhere. For example, Okumura's student Densho Quintero had founded the Comunidad Soto Zen de Colombia in Bogotá in 1989, while Shōryū Bradley founded

437-713: The following year the Sōtō-shumucho, the administrative body of Sōtō Zen in Japan, asked Okumura to head the Soto Zen Education Center in San Francisco, to which he agreed, delaying his plans to found his own temple. While still serving in that position, his friend and Buddhist Studies scholar John McRae, recommended locating his temple in Bloomington, Indiana . By 2002 land had been purchased and

460-759: The founder and abbot of the Sanshin Zen Community located in Bloomington, Indiana , where he and his family currently live. From 1997 until 2010, Okumura also served as director of the Sōtō Zen Buddhism International Center in San Francisco, California , which is an administrative office of the Sōtō school of Japan . Shōhaku Okumura was born in Osaka, Japan in 1948. He received his education at Komazawa University in Tokyo, Japan , where he studied Zen Buddhism . On December 8, 1970, Okumura

483-497: The practice of zazen , largely to the exclusion of other rituals associated with the tradition. Okumura also focuses on the translation of the works of Eihei Dōgen and associated texts into English, as well as aiding his students in the study of such writings. His practice of zazen is built on what Uchiyama called " sesshin without toys.” These sesshins of three, five, or seven days are completely silent and consist of fourteen hours of zazen each day, punctuated only by meals and sleep in

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506-412: The results this had on Yoko and her brother Masaki, with a strong focus on Masaki. Okumura attributes his desire to become a Buddhist to the discovery of a book while he was in high school called Self ( 自己 , jiko ) by Kōshō Uchiyama , who would become his teacher not long after. After Okumura became a teacher in his own right, his message remained much the same as Uchiyama's and is centered around

529-575: Was ordained at Antaiji by his teacher Kōshō Uchiyama , where he practiced until Uchiyama retired in 1975. Following Uchiyama's wishes, Okumura traveled to the United States where he co-founded Valley Zendo in Massachusetts and continued Uchiyama's style of zazen practice there until 1981. In that year, he returned to Japan and began translating the writings of Uchiyama and Eihei Dōgen from Japanese into English . He spent some time teaching at Kyoto Sōtō Zen Center. After returning to

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