Zen is a branch of Japanese Buddhism. Zen Buddhism. Eihei-ji Temple, the home of Zen in Japan. Saikawa Roshi , who speaks excellent English, opens Sojiji temple’s dojo (training hall) on Sundays to foreigners living in Japan and to everyone interested in learning about Zen. The training hall is a place where both Japanese and foreigners have the chance to deepen their understanding of the self in the way of the Rinzai Zen sect. Japanese rock gardens—or Zen gardens—are one of the most recognizable aspects of Japanese culture.Intended to stimulate meditation, these beautiful gardens (also known as dry landscapes) strip nature to its bare essentials and primarily … Dosho Saikawa Roshi, the Head of the international department at Sojiji Temple, is responsible for laymen’s Zen meditation training in the temple. Zen Mountain Monastery and Zen Center of New York City. Coming from China, it was introduced in Japan sometime in the eleventh century. One of the coordinators of “ZAZEN for Foreigners” at KENCHOJI. Both Japanese and English are used in daily conversations. LIVING ZEN - HOSHINJI MONASTERY, OBAMA-JAPAN..Foreign visitors taking part to the morning sutra service. Many of them, after training, leave the monastery to serve in a more modest temple. Zen Buddhism is one of the Buddhism sects that has Daruma as its father, a monk from India who moved to China. Undertook ZEN monastic training for four and a half years at KENNINJI（建仁寺）monastery in Kyoto and KENCHOJI（建長寺） monastery in Kamakura. It is located deep in the mountains, near the northwest coast of Japan, not far from Fukui City. Eihei-ji Temple in Fukui Prefecture is the head temple of the Soto school, one of the Zen schools in Japan. In addition to Japanese, the temple accepts foreigners as trainee monks, including people from China, the U.S. and Germany. The Mountains and Rivers Order is a Western Zen Buddhist lineage established by the late John Daido Loori Roshi and dedicated to sharing the dharma as it has been passed down, generation to generation, since the time of Shakyamuni Buddha. Worked as a writer and researcher for Japan Cooperation Agency and the Ministry of Foreign … Here's her story. These have the right to marry and have a family. Hoshinji is one of the first monasteries of Soto Zen Buddhism, to become very popular to western scholars of Zen. She didn't know, however, that with time, she would influence this tradition in ways that only she could. Over several centuries, the Rinzai school of Zen emerged in the land of the rising sun.Zen is notably based on the practice of sitting meditation (zazen in Japanese) that leads to Buddha's enlightenment. A temple alive with real Zen monastic practice Eiheiji, "The Temple of Eternal Peace", is one of the two head temples of Soto Zen. When Gretchen Miura married into a Buddhist temple family 17 years ago, she knew that she was about to embrace a completely foreign culture and bear the responsibility of continuing a centuries-old tradition. This temple was founded by Zen Master Dōgen in 1244. These days it has 15,000 temples in Japan and 30,000 monks and nuns. It was thanks to this double heritage, that Soto Zen was largely developed ,touching all levels of the Japanese population.