OMS Zazenkai: All-Day Sit

SAVE THE DATE: 3/15/2025
Zuisei will give a teaching on Working with Koans
during OMS’s March Virtual Zazenkai
(Take a look here to learn more about Koan Practice)

Open to all, the next zazenkai takes place online March 15, 2025. Zuisei will give a teaching on Working with Koans. You can check the zazenkai schedule and register to join us here.

What is Zazenkai?

For millenia, Buddhist monks and home dwellers have practiced long periods of silent meditation under the guidance of a teacher, beginning with Shakyamuni Buddha. OMS continues this tradition for lay practitioners around the world. Once a month the sangha gathers online for a longer meditation retreat led by Guiding Teacher Zuisei Goddard.

Zazenkai (座禅会; “gathering together for zazen or seated meditation”) is a daylong retreat devoted to silent meditation in the Zen tradition. OMS holds an online zazenkai four times per year. The full day of silence includes zazen, optional kinhin (walking meditation), daisan or private teaching, liturgy, and a dharma teaching by Zuisei.

As the Zen student’s practice develops, even longer periods of silent meditation in the spirit of zazenkai are encouraged, from weekend to week-long sesshins.

Cultivating Samadhi

Zazenkai offers us the opportunity to dedicate ourselves to the cultivation of samadhi—one-pointed awareness—within the container of zazen (seated meditation). As the mind settles, the object of our meditation fills our awareness to such an extent that we, as the subject, disappear. From this place of unified awareness, insight occurs, revealing to us the direct experience of things as they are.

It can take time for the mind to begin to settle, and this is why longer periods of meditation are helpful. The distracted mind takes many forms: we can lose ourselves in thoughts or hide behind numbness and aversion. But as we return to our cushion, our concentration becomes stronger and these barriers to enlightenment soften, letting gentle awareness on and off the cushion grow.

If you’re not sure whether you’re ready for one of these longer retreats, contact Zuisei to discuss your current zazen practice and the ways that you might be able to deepen and strengthen it.

If you are new to sitting meditation you can always begin with a video of Beginning Instruction (How to Meditate), or join the sangha on a Wednesday Evening via Zoom for instruction with Zuisei and a short orientation to Ocean Mind Sangha. We look forward to practicing with you.

View our calendar or visit Calendly to learn the date and save your place in our next virtual Zazenkai. OMS holds a meditation intensive (Half-Day Sit, Zazenkai or Sesshin) once a month.

To stay informed about our events, sign up for Zuisei’s newsletter Living Dharma on Substack.

*Banner photo by Christian Holzinger

Virtual Zazenkai

Cost: $49
2025: 3/15, 6/14

Your generous dana supports the operations of the Ocean Mind Sangha and makes it possible for us to offer event scholarships to those who need them.