Chogye International Zen Center

The Zen Center offers daily practice which includes chanting, bowing, and sitting meditation, an extended sitting practice on Wednesday nights, monthly talks on Zen, and a regular Sunday evening Introduction to Zen Program. The Center also offers frequent retreats, workshops and one-day sitting intensives.

The Chogye International Zen Center of New York was founded in 1975 by Zen Master Seung Sahn who is the first Korean Zen Master to live and teach in the West. Addressed by his students as Dae Soen Sa Nim, he arrived in the United States in 1972 and established Zen Centers in the U.S. as well as Europe and Korea. These centers are linked together by an organization known as the Kwan Um School of Zen, which works to organize and schedule Dae Soen Sa Nim's efforts to teach Zen Buddhism  and to assist him in his other efforts in the direction of world peace.

Zen employs several simple techniques of formal practice and meditation that help direct the student towards a central question : "What am I ?" Athough this question seems shapeless, Zen has developed, over many centuries, a  practical and clearly defined means of approaching it. Meditation, communal activity, and student-teacher dialogue are common to all Zen traditions. If there is an element of faith in Zen, it is faith that steadfast concen-tration on the question of self-nature will bring clarity and energy to everyday life. That ultimately, Zen practice will not focus on an isolated "I" but on the whole real world.