Louisville Zen Center

Louisville Zen Center ​Louisville Zen Center is a welcoming and inclusive community offering support for the practice of Zen body-mind practice and training.

A local Zen meditation community of the Rochester Zen Center offering beginning and continuing meditation instruction, group practice, meditation retreats, and other activities and events. Newcomers, beginners, and experienced meditators invited.

The good book stirs the heart, fires the imagination, and leads to the resolve to let nothing stand in the way of full a...
09/05/2026

The good book stirs the heart, fires the imagination, and leads to the resolve to let nothing stand in the way of full awakening. In short, it gets you out of the armchair and onto the sitting mat.
- Roshi Philip Kapleau, Zen: Merging of East and West

Join us. https://www.louisvillezen.org/sittings.html

Learn – in the zendo [meditation room] – to leave the direct experience as it is: just the sound, just the feeling, and ...
08/29/2026

Learn – in the zendo [meditation room] – to leave the direct experience as it is: just the sound, just the feeling, and yes, just the thought. A thought, too, is part of human experience, and it poses no problem if we can refrain from stitching successive thoughts onto it.
- Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede, “Zhaozhou’s ‘A Newborn Baby’”, Zen Bow, Vol. XL, # 1

Join us. https://www.louisvillezen.org/sittings.html

To truly practice Zen therefore means not leaving lights burning when they are not needed, not allowing water to run unn...
08/22/2026

To truly practice Zen therefore means not leaving lights burning when they are not needed, not allowing water to run unnecessarily from the faucet, not loading up your plate and leaving food uneaten. These unmindful acts reveal an indifference to the value of the object so wasted or destroyed as well as to the efforts of those who made these things possible for us…This indifference is the product of a mind that sees itself as separated…This indifference robs us of our birthright of harmony and joy.
- Roshi Philip Kapleau, “Awakening to Zen”

Join us. https://www.louisvillezen.org/sittings.html

In the beginning any quiet place, outdoors or in, where the vibrations help you to focus inward is best for zazen [Zen m...
08/08/2026

In the beginning any quiet place, outdoors or in, where the vibrations help you to focus inward is best for zazen [Zen meditation]; this certainly would include the mountains and the desert. But it is well not to stay too long in such an ‘ideal’ environment, for without difficulties to struggle with one builds up a false strength, a seeming calm and steadfastness that crumble in the face of the demands of life.

Roshi Philip Kapleau, Zen Merging of East and West

Join us. https://www.louisvillezen.org/sittings.html

In Buddhist teaching the cause of suffering has been formulated in somewhat different ways, but the culprit is commonly ...
08/01/2026

In Buddhist teaching the cause of suffering has been formulated in somewhat different ways, but the culprit is commonly identified as "attachment." Through mental grasping we crave things and people, attach to them, and when they pass, we suffer. Most of us come to know this pain through close personal relationships. When someone with whom we have only the most casual contact - say, a clerk at a post office or gas station - disappears from our lives, we don't suffer because there was no attachment involved.
-Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede, "Attachment, Loss, Pain, and Freedom", Zen Bow, Spring 20004

Join us. https://www.louisvillezen.org/sittings.html

Question yourself day and night with the yearning to know and the conviction that you can know. Learn to live the way a...
07/25/2026

Question yourself day and night with the yearning to know and the conviction that you can know. Learn to live the way a fish swims or a bird flies – unself-consciously. Be aware and responsive. In whatever your right hand finds to do involve also your left. Avoid unnecessary judgments. Be modest and unassuming; offer your opinion only when it is asked for. Forget your good deeds and confess your bad ones. And never fail to relate every effect to the cause that produced it.
-Roshi Philip Kapleau, Zen: Merging of East and West

Join us. https://www.louisvillezen.org/sittings.html

When we don’t resist changing circumstances or conditions, we remain at rest.- Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede, “Becoming the Wind...
07/18/2026

When we don’t resist changing circumstances or conditions, we remain at rest.
- Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede, “Becoming the Wind”, Zen Bow, Vol. ###VIII, # 1 & 2

Join us. https://www.louisvillezen.org/sittings.html

People who are still in darkness deplore people who are different from them, who have different cultures, or different c...
07/11/2026

People who are still in darkness deplore people who are different from them, who have different cultures, or different colors of skin, because of a certain narrowness and ignorance. Cultural pluralism, instead of being deplored, should be cheered. We could all profit from each other's cultures.
Roshi Philip Kapleau, "A Ghost Story", Zen Bow, Summer 2019

Join us. https://www.louisvillezen.org/sittings.html

Address

Both In-person & Online
Louisville, KY
40213

Opening Hours

Tuesday 6:30pm - 8pm
Wednesday 7am - 8am
Thursday 6:30pm - 8pm
Friday 7pm - 8pm
Saturday 7am - 8am
Sunday 6:30pm - 8:15pm

Telephone

+15022765738

Website

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