Dear Visitor,

At Open Door Zen, practice is direct and unembellished. It is a commitment to the living dharma: wild, ungraspable, and endlessly alive. This dharma is grounded in the non-dual Mahāyāna sūtras, informed by the Zen lineage we come through, and unapologetically expressed in the present.

The work is to study experience as it arises: to see how perception weaves identity and reality. Through this investigation, we clarify our vision, cut through ignorance, and collapse the imagined gap between samsara and nirvana. From impermanence, suffering, impurity, and not-self into the great reversal: Permanence, Bliss, Purity, and Self.

Practice here has no edges. What begins on the cushion moves into conversation, action, laughter, grief, and relationship. Nothing is excluded. Everything is training.

This is not a space for belief, identity, or emotional reassurance. It is a training hall for clarity, responsibility, respect, and freedom. The work can be fierce. It can also be hilarious. But it is always real.

Two quotes from my teacher, Jun Po, cut to the heart of it:

“Because our ego is a wholly conditioned process and not a fixed entity, it can and must be reconditioned to become liberated.”

“What is most essential is the practice of Dhyāna, meditative mindfulness, which enables us to experience the Absolute Purity of our deepest nature and to hold that transpersonal truth in the complexity of our personal lives.”

See below for details on our next weekly session, or to schedule a conversation with me.

I look forward to practicing with you.

Umi Dan Rotnem