Welcome...

...to the practice of Buddhism.

Don't just sit there - do something!

Conventional wisdom

Don't just do something - sit there!

Buddhist wisdom

This website includes Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced programs for practicing Zen, with each program having ten steps. It's a rather lengthy website and it continues to grow so you may want to bookmark it for future reference. There is too much here to absorb in one visit.

We use the term "Zen" in its broad meaning of meditation. The course is not limited to the practices of the Zen sect of Buddhism. We include all of the Zen practices, but we also include practices from other Buddhist schools, including the Theravada school, the Mahayana school, and the Pure Land sect (Zen and Pure Land are sects of the Mahayana school).

Most of us believe that Zen is impenetrable and mysterious. "What is the deepest wisdom of Buddhism?" Answer: "The cypress tree in the courtyard!"

Or sometimes the answer is: Three pounds of flax!

Here you will learn why such answers are given.

Getting started as a beginner is easy. An hour from now, you'll be a Zen practitioner!

But ten years from now, thirty years from now, you'll still be practicing Zen. It's not a hobby, it's not something you try awhile and then walk away from.

Vista Zen Center

We have no affiliation with the Vista Zen Center; we use this photo just to depict a typical Zen practice group. Note that some people are sitting on cushions and some are in conventional chairs.

Zen practice in the States is primarily a lay practice by people who lead busy lives. As such, it is much more relaxed than the classical Zen or Ch'an practiced in Japanese or Chinese monasteries where the discipline is strict and no chairs are to be found.

We use the Ten Ox-Herding Pictures as an organizing tool for the Beginning, Intermediate, and Advanced programs.

We introduce the Three General Resolutions, the Four Vows, the Four Foundations of Mindfulness, the Four Noble Truths, the Four Brahma Viharas, the Four Jhanas, the Four Immaterial Attainments, the Five Hindrances, the Five Aggregates, the Six Perfections, the Seven Factors of Enlightenment, the Eightfold Path, the Ten Cardinal Precepts, the Ten Fetters, the Ten Dharma Realms and the Twelve Nidanas of the Doctrine of Dependent Origination.

We will learn what is meant by Stream Entry, the Once Returner, the Non-Returner, and Nirvana.

Here we will learn why the Buddha said: We are the happy ones!

Venerable Ajahn Sumedo with Master Hsuan Hua

The course is not limited to meditation practices. four of the ten steps (the first three and the ninth) directly involve classic sitting meditation. The other six practices support the meditation practice and therefore cannot be ignored.

The other practices are important because meditation practice in a vacuum may be better than no practice at all, but not by much.

A year from now, you won't be the same person you are now. Of course, that will happen whether you take this course or not! But the change will be for the better.

If you resolve to work hard to master this course at all three levels, a year from now you'll be glad you did. We look forward to hearing from you at Contact Us when you "complete" all three levels.

We put "complete" in quotes because practice has no beginning and enlightenment has no end...Dogen Zenji.

Remember the sign that builders used to put by busy highways to advertise their developments? A large billboard would announce:

If you lived here, you'd be home now!

A Buddhist-inspired New Yorker cartoon provided the perfect retort:

If you lived now, you'd be home here.

Thanks to the down-to-earth, easy-to-follow instructions provided by the Venerable Ajahn Brahm, we can guarantee that at this website you will learn how to live now, and to be home where ever you are.

When you experience the beautiful breath for the first time, you'll be happy that you stumbled here. Just follow the practices, every day, until they become second nature. You will see the nimitta, the sign of Nirvana, and then you'll experience emptiness, and be set free.

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How To Practice Zen

Welcome...

...to the practice of Buddhism.