Zen Mountain Monastery
The Zen Mountain Monastery is a Zen Buddhist monastery and training center on a 250 acre forested property in the Catskill Mountains in Mount Tremper, New York. It was founded in 1980 by John Daido Loori, Roshi, and serves as the flagship of the Mountains and Rivers Order of Zen Buddhism, also founded by Daido Roshi in 1980. It combines the Rinzai and Soto Zen traditions, in both of which Daido Roshi received Dharma transmission. Besides Daido Roshi, the Zen Mountain Monastery also has two Sensei teachers, Bonnie Myotai Treace and Geoffrey Shugen Arnold, who received Dharma transmission from Daido Roshi in 1996 and 1997, respectively.
The Zen Mountain Monastery is home to several other monastics, and also hosts short-term lay students for a variety of weekend and week-long Zen training programs, focusing variously on painting, poetry, shakuhachi performance, Zen archery, and many other activities. Additionally, week long intensive meditation retreats called sesshins are held monthly. Sesshin retreats include daily talks given by a senior student or Zen teacher as well as daily face to face meeting with a Zen teacher.