Programs: Monastic Training
Rather than a less formal "Zen center", Korinji is specifically meant to be a sodo: a place for rigorous, residential monastic practice. The foundation of such training is a regimented daily schedule including zazen (meditation), sanzen (interviews with the teacher), okyo (chanting/ceremony), samu (physical work), study of the Buddhist teachings, and periods of intensive retreat (sesshin).
In this situation of total immersion and constant contact with teachers and fellow practitioners, all the activities of one's day are more easily done with full concentration, "in one breath". It is a life lived completely in the spirit of the words often found brushed on the han, a wooden sounding board used to signal various events in the monastic day:
生死事大 The Question of Birth and Death is great;
無常迅速 How swift is impermanence!
光陰可惜 Every moment is to be cherished.
時不待人 Time waits for no one.
Upon completion of sufficient facilities, short- or long-term residence at Korinji will be open to a small number of persons determined to undertake intensive Buddhist practice. Observance of lay or ordained Buddhist precepts will be required while visiting or residing at Korinji.
Residential Practice at Korinji
Our view is that persons maintaining a contemplative practice comprise a tremendously valuable human resource that could benefit society deeply. Through residential training, Korinji hopes to develop many such persons who will eventually go out into the world to teach, to found other centers of Zen practice, and to express and explore the Buddhist teachings within the context of varied activities and professions...in diverse and creative ways we haven't yet imagined.
As Korinji is constructed, more information on residential training opportunities at Korinji will be released. If you are considering making this type of committment in your life and wish to speak with us or give your thoughts, please contact Korinji.
is undertaken with this same determination.
Korinji will conduct sesshin in cooperation with Daiyuzenji, the temple in Chicago with which we are associated (currently, Daiyuzenji offers sesshin four times yearly in the Chicago area; see our Events Calendar for information).
Sesshin: Intensive Zen Retreats
Sesshin means "to focus the mind". This retreat is perhaps the most intensive monastic training form that has been handed down to us through the centuries.
During sesshin, participants throw themselves wholly into Zen practice, forgetting all other activities. Long hours of meditation and frequent guidance from teachers and seniors combine to create conditions ideal for a deepening of one's practice and breaking through to new levels of insight.
2500 years ago the Buddha, reaching an impasse in his own spiritual quest, sat down beneath a fig tree by the banks of a river in northern India with this vow: "I will either attain enlightenment here on this seat, or I will die. But I will not rise before." Sesshin
