dharma.

zen centers I've found helpful.

• Dharma Field Learning and Meditation Center in Minneapolis, MN. I regard Steve Hagen as my teacher, I regard Dharma Field as my home sangha. The website, specifically the podcasts, have been vital to my practice. I would not be the zen student I am today without the Dharma Field website. I sat my second sesshin here in October of 2007.
• The Friends of Western Buddhist Order in NYC was very important to the early development of my practice. I will always feel a part of this group and I still sit with them when my schedule permits. The beginning meditation classes there are excellent for people completely new to meditation. If you are in NYC and want to learn to meditate, this is a great resource.
• Ordinary Mind Austin is my "zendo away from my zendo" in Austin, Texas. I recommend it for newcomers. They are mindful, kind and welcoming.
• Ordinary Mind NYC is the sangha with whom I regularly sit. Barry Magid is the teacher and I consider myself a student of his as well. Barry received permission to teach from Charlotte Joko Beck. He is also a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. If you tread the territory between and/or amongst zen and psychotherapy, either as a client or a therapist, Barry's writing deserves your attention. If you are curious about how zen buddhism specifically interdepends with psychotherapeutic models and Greek Classical archetypes, there is a lot of rich material in Barry's teachings to work with.
• San Francisco Zen Center, the center that Shunryu Suzuki Roshi established in the US. I sat my first sesshin at the City Center, it was where I really took the empty-handed leap, and it will always be a little bit of home for me. They have a very active organization and there's a lot happening on the website.
• Sanshin Zen Center. The head teacher here is Shohaku Okumura, He impresses me as an advocate for the "shut up and sit" shading of zen that particularly appeals to me. He's also a player in the formal Japanese Soto Zen religious organization in the US and he writes the English translations of some of the official (i.e., with the imprimatur of the Soto big-wigs in Japan) Soto Zen publications. I've listened to some of his recorded lectures and he is the teacher for a professional colleague of mine who is a zen priest. I've never been to the center, but it has been a very helpful resource for me as a place to obtain otherwise hard-to-find books which I regard as particularly relevant to my course of study, and hand-sewn kapok-stuffed meditation cushions. Something about knowing of this center and the kinship I feel with Okumura comforts me.