If you want to see things just as they are, then you yourself must practice just as you are.
About Dewdrop Sangha
Our practice community is made up of people who come from all directions to sit as one in zazen, both in person and online, under the guidance of a teacher.
We follow the traditional forms of this ancient way, sitting zazen, chanting service, and meeting privately for face-to-face instruction with a teacher. Since our initial retreat in Loveland, Ohio in 2013, the group has gathered in varied locations across the U.S., including Los Angeles, Madison, Cincinnati, Washington DC, Kansas City, and upstate New York, locations responding to the needs and growth of the sangha. In addition to online practice, we offer three-day formal Zen retreats in locations around the country. The next scheduled retreat is April 11-14, 2024 at Marillac Retreat Center near Kansas City. You can find more information and registration for that retreat by clicking here.
In person or as a virtual community, we practice to wake up where we are and as we are, become intimate with our lives, and appreciate the harmony of sangha.
The experience of this body and mind as it is, is the plain, universal fact that all the ancient masters realized.
About Our Teacher & Lineage
The Dewdrop is led by Karen Maezen Miller Roshi. Maezen's practice started when she read the Tao Te Ching and contacted the Zen Center of LA asking how to sit. There, she began her practice in 1993 as a student of Taizan Maezumi Roshi and continued with his successor, William Nyogen Yeo. After taking Jukai in 1996 with Nyogen Roshi, she moved from Houston to Los Angeles, where she ordained as a Soto Zen priest at the Hazy Moon Zen Center in 2003 and received Precept Transmission in 2009. Maezen, who is also an author, lives in Los Angeles.
Zen is a living practice transmitted one-on-one, face-to-face from a teacher to a student. Our immediate ancestors expounded and maintained the Dharma as handed down through a continuous line of ancestors from India to China, Japan, and America.
Our teacher's teacher, Nyogen Roshi, is a successor of Maezumi Roshi, who brought Japanese Zen to the United States in 1956 and was widely considered the foremost Zen master of the 20th century. Nyogen Roshi was the last student authorized by Maezumi Roshi to succeed him as a teacher. Nyogen Roshi studied with Maezumi Roshi for 27 years before establishing the Hazy Moon Zen Center in 1997.
Maezumi Roshi was a unique figure in American Zen as he was a Dharma successor in three lineages including Soto and Rinzai schools. After arriving in Los Angeles from Japan as a Soto priest, he began teaching zazen to a small number of students in Los Angeles, then went on to establish six temples in the west and transmit the Dharma to 12 successors. Famous for his admonition to "be intimate with your life," he continuously encouraged his students to appreciate their lives as none other than the life of the Buddha.
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