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Organization

Brooklyn Zen Center

Also known as: BZC, Brooklyn Zen

Founded 2005 as the first Zen Center in Shunryu Suzuki's lineage in New York — by Laura O'Loughlin, Gregory Snyder, and Ian Case, with founding teacher Soshin Teah Strozer (a Sōtō Zen lineage holder who received dharma transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman of Berkeley Zen Center). BZC operates two temples: Boundless Mind Temple (Brooklyn — sharing space at Christ Church Cobble Hill) and Ancestral Heart Temple (~2 hr north of NYC). The directory's Sōtō Zen anchor in the New York Harbor bioregion.

What they do

Daily and weekly Sōtō Zen practice — zazen ([[zazen|seated meditation]]), oryoki (formal meal practice), dharma talks, sesshins (multi-day silent retreats), classes, and ongoing residential practice opportunities. The two temples function as complementary containers:

  • Boundless Mind Temple (BMT) — [[brooklyn|Brooklyn]] (Cobble Hill, sharing space at Christ Church)
  • Ancestral Heart Temple (AHT) — ~2 hours north of NYC; longer-form residential practice

Founding teacher Soshin Teah Strozer trained under Sojun Mel Weitsman (the late teacher of [[berkeley|Berkeley]] Zen Center), who himself trained directly under [[shunryu-suzuki|Shunryū Suzuki]] Roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and the first U.S. Zen Buddhist monastery (Tassajara, 1967). Strozer is therefore in direct second-generation transmission from Suzuki Roshi.

Why it’s listed

Three reasons:

  1. First Suzuki Roshi–lineage Zen center in NYC. The Suzuki Roshi line is one of the principal Sōtō Zen lineages in the U.S. (the other major American Sōtō line traces to Maezumi Roshi at Zen Center of [[echo-park|Los Angeles]]). Until 2005, this lineage had no [[beacon-ny|New York]] anchor.

  2. Direct dharma transmission, two-generation chain. Strozer holds dharma transmission from Mel Weitsman, who held it from Suzuki Roshi. That documented transmission chain matters in Sōtō Zen [[daoism|the way]] IYNAUS certification matters in [[bks-iyengar|Iyengar]] Yoga.

  3. The two-temple structure (urban + rural). The Cobble Hill temple holds daily-life practice; Ancestral Heart holds the longer residential container. That’s the right shape for a Zen lineage in the NYC region — most U.S. Zen centers are either one or the other.

Bioregional fit

Anchors the [[new-york-city]] bioregion’s Sōtō Zen presence. Pairs with [[the-shala-yoga]] (Pattabhi Jois Ashtanga), [[integral-yoga-institute-nyc]] (Sivananda lineage), and [[flower-power-herbs-and-roots]] (East Village herbalism) — four lineage-authorized contemplative-and-plant-medicine institutions across the bioregion’s two principal boroughs.

See also

Auto-generated from this entry’s typed relations: frontmatter, grouped by relation type so the editorial signal isn’t flattened.

  • Instance of: [[soto-zen]]
  • Member of: [[organization]]
  • Contained by: [[brooklyn]] · [[new-york-city]]

Sources

A listing in the 0mn1.one [[directory]]. Filed under [[new-york-city]] in [[directory|the directory]].

What links here, and how

Inbound connections from across the wiki, grouped by lens and by relationship. These appear automatically — every entity page declares what it links to, and that data populates here on the targets.

Practical

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Spiritual

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