Sanshin Zen Community is a

Soto Zen Soto may refer to: Geography * Soto (Aller), parish in Asturias, Spain * Soto (Las Regueras), parish in Asturias, Spain * Soto, Curaçao, Netherlands Antilles * Soto, Russia, a rural locality (a ''selo'') in Megino-Kangalassky District of the Sak ...

sangha Sangha is a Sanskrit word used in many Indian languages, including Pali meaning "association", "assembly", "company" or "community"; Sangha is often used as a surname across these languages. It was historically used in a political context t ...

based at the temple Sanshin-ji in

Bloomington, Indiana Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the central region of the U.S. state of Indiana. It is the seventh-largest city in Indiana and the fourth-largest outside the Indianapolis metropolitan area. According to the Mo ...

founded by Shohaku Okumura.

History

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 The Minnesota Zen Meditation Center (Kounzan Ganshoji, "Cultivating Clouds Mountain, Living in Vow Temple") is an urban, non-residential, Sōtō Zen practice community in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Since 2019, MZMC has been led by two co-guiding Dhar ...

since 1992. He chose the name , meaning "three minds", in reference to Eihei Dogen's teaching from the ''

Tenzo Kyōkun , usually rendered in English as ''Instructions for the Cook'', is an important essay written by Dōgen, the founder of Zen Buddhism's Sōtō school in Japan. Title and content While the title suggests the scope is limited to simple cooking in ...

'' of the three minds a Zen student should cultivate: magnanimous mind, parental mind, and joyful mind. However, the following year the Sōtō-shumucho, the administrative body of

Sōtō Sōtō Zen or is the largest of the three traditional sects of Zen in Japanese Buddhism (the others being Rinzai and Ōbaku). It is the Japanese line of the Chinese Cáodòng school, which was founded during the Tang dynasty by Dòngshān ...

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

. By 2002 land had been purchased and a local architect employed to design a combined zendo and living space for the Okumura family. The

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 the fascicles of Dōgen Zenji's

Shōbōgenzō is the title most commonly used to refer to the collection of works written in Japan by the 13th century Buddhist monk and founder of the Sōtō Zen school, Eihei Dōgen. Several other works exist with the same title (see above), and it is som ...

; 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 Bogotá (, also , , ), officially Bogotá, Distrito Capital, abbreviated Bogotá, D.C., and formerly known as Santa Fe de Bogotá (; ) during the Spanish period and between 1991 and 2000, is the capital city of Colombia, and one of the largest ...

in 1989, while

Shōryū Bradley Shōryū Bradley () is a Sōtō Zen priest and the founder and abbot of Gyobutsuji Zen Monastery located near Kingston, Arkansas. Biography Shoryu Bradley studied psychology at Texas A&M University, where he received a B.S. He went on to grad ...

founded the

Gyobutsuji Zen Monastery is a small Sōtō Zen Buddhist monastery near Kingston in Madison County, Arkansas in the United States. It is located in the Boston Mountains of the Ozarks. The temple focuses primarily on the practice of zazen in the tradition of Kosho Uchiy ...

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 Hoko may refer to: Places * Hoko, Kachin State, a village in Kachin State, Burma *Hōko Prefecture, administrative division of Taiwan under Japanese rule, corresponding to present-day Penghu County *Hōkō temple, name of several Japanese temples, ...

, who would serve as vice abbot in the interim.

Lineage

The style of practice at this zendo follows the lineage of Kosho Uchiyama-roshi and his teacher,

Kodo Sawaki __NOTOC__ Kodo may refer to: Japan * ''Kōdō'' (香道), ceremonial appreciation of incense * Nippon Kodo (日本香堂), an incense company * Kodō (taiko group) (鼓童), a ''taiko'' drumming group * Kodo-kai (弘道会), a yakuza criminal orga ...

-roshi, who founded

Antaiji is a Buddhist temple that belongs to the Sōtō school of Zen Buddhism. It is located in the town of Shin'onsen, Mikata District, in northern Hyōgo Prefecture, Japan, where it sits on about 50 hectares of land in the mountains, close to a n ...

temple, and greatly simplified the

forms used there.

References

External links

Sanshin Zen Community

Sanshin Zen Community
on

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

Sanshin Zen Community
at the

Soto Zen Buddhist Association The Soto Zen Buddhist Association was formed in 1996 by American and Japanese Zen teachers in response to a perceived need to draw the various autonomous lineages of the North American Sōtō stream of Zen together for mutual support as well as ...

Buddhism in Indiana Zen centers in the United States Buddhist temples in the United States Buildings and structures in Bloomington, Indiana Religious buildings and structures in Indiana {{zen-stub

History

Lineage

See also

References

External links