Coming Soon
Open Palm School of Zen
Over the past twenty years ZCLA has evolved a distinctive practice and culture, which is deeply rooted in the White Plum Lineage founded by Maezumi Roshi and informed by Bernie Glassman and our many Zen Ancestors. Out of this evolution, Roshi Egyoku felt that ZCLA can best serve the future by creating a school that clarifies ZCLA’s distinctive practice and culture.
Roshi Egyoku began exploring the idea of creating a spiritual School in the Spring of 2018 and it continues to be developed with a small working group. The name of the School–Open Palm School of Zen (OPSZ)–is helping to guide the discussion. Open is the quality of intrinsic mind and also captures the spaciousness of ZCLA and the city of Los Angeles. Palm is for the mudras or palm positions we assume in practice, such as the cosmic mudra of zazen and the no-fear mudra of the garden Kanzeon. It is also a nod to the distinctive palm trees along Normandie Avenue. School captures the distinctive style or flavor of Zen practiced at ZCLA. The word ‘school’ is commonly used in this sense in the Zen tradition.
OPSZ will clarify and set forth our practice culture and identify the primary practices and training paths. This will make explicit much of what we have already been doing where everything that we do is practice.
A preliminary list of ZCLA’s core practices and training paths is as follows:
The Practices
Zazen
Face-to-face interview
Koan training
Buddhist and Zen Texts
Precepts
Council
Ceremony
Shared Stewardship
Relationship
Embodying
Peacemaking
The Training Paths