Description
Crestone Mountain Zen Center is the Dharma Sangha Center for Monastic Zen Practice and for Personal Retreats. It was founded by Zentatsu Baker Roshi, the Successor of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Suzuki Roshi founded the San Francisco Zen Center and the Tassajara Zen Monastery, and he is the author of ‘Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind’.
The Buddha’s experience of enlightenment, release from suffering caused by the deeply held belief in a separate self, is the basis of Zen Practice and Teaching, which maintains that all human beings, in fact all sentient beings, are in their essential nature, free – “enlightened”. Human beings, because of attachment to the idea of self and its attendant greed, hatred, and delusion, suffer unnecessarily. Zen practice is how to realize this freedom and happiness that is our true nature.
In Zen, we assume that transformation and awakening are possible. We assume that it is possible to free ourselves from mental and emotional suffering. And we assume that it is possible to live beneficially. A Zen Practice Center ought to be a space that provides the conditions for this kind of realization. It ought to be a location that locates us: Within ourselves, within this world (our true body and our true home), and within the mystery of aliveness.
