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 bodhisattvic vows…are more than positive thinking. In the same sense that the peach stone vows to become a peach, t...
05/30/2026

The bodhisattvic vows…are more than positive thinking. In the same sense that the peach stone vows to become a peach, the acorn an oak, the infant a man, the man a buddha, the Four Vows are a reaffirmation of our innate vow to become what we intrinsically are – whole and complete. Seen in this light they are nothing less than a call to Self-awakening, to Self-liberation.
- Roshi Philip Kapleau, “Zen: Merging of East and West”

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

Those without experience in meditation may imagine that it lifts us to “higher” states – to the bright, pure realm of th...
05/23/2026

Those without experience in meditation may imagine that it lifts us to “higher” states – to the bright, pure realm of the spirit. And it does, eventually, but usually not until we’ve passed through the fear, pride, frustration, and other shadows cast by the self.
- Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede, “Zen Practice as Relationship Work”, Zen Bow, Vol. ###VI, #4, 2013-14

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

…usually we think of a barrier as being a kind of block. But in Zen, a barrier is simply a hurdle to make us jump highe...
05/16/2026

…usually we think of a barrier as being a kind of block. But in Zen, a barrier is simply a hurdle to make us jump higher than we normally would. In Zen a barrier is a challenge that gets us to draw on untapped resources lying dormant within us.
- Roshi Philip Kapleau, Straight to the Heart of Zen

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

We don’t have to get anything; we don’t have to possess extraordinary talents or intelligence; we simply have to perseve...
05/09/2026

We don’t have to get anything; we don’t have to possess extraordinary talents or intelligence; we simply have to persevere with vigor and diligence. This is not an idealistic or optimistic perspective. It’s realistic – this is reality, this is our nature, our fundamentally enlightened Mind.
- Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede, “Zen Jihad”, Zen Bow, Vol. XXIII, # 3&4

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

When faith in what we are trying to accomplish is strong, faith in ourselves, the teaching, or the teacher – the three r...
05/02/2026

When faith in what we are trying to accomplish is strong, faith in ourselves, the teaching, or the teacher – the three really being inseparable – then all discomfort become unimportant.
- Roshi Philip Kapleau, Awakening to Zen

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

The principle of ‘no preferences’ is often misunderstood to mean that we have to ‘get rid’ of our likes and dislikes. H...
04/25/2026

The principle of ‘no preferences’ is often misunderstood to mean that we have to ‘get rid’ of our likes and dislikes. How could we do that, when they are so basic to our nature? We can’t. It isn’t so much our likes and dislikes themselves but our attachment to them that binds us to suffering.
- Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede, “The Freedom of No-Choice”, Zen Bow, Vol. ###VI, # 1 & 2

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

The doctrine of karma…repudiates any notion of fate or fixed destiny, since circumstances and our response to them are c...
04/18/2026

The doctrine of karma…repudiates any notion of fate or fixed destiny, since circumstances and our response to them are constantly changing. Karma can be made to sound like fatalism only if one believes that the relation between cause and effect is rigid. Cause and effect, however, are dynamic, the effect always changing according to circumstances, which are themselves both effects of past causes [and] current and future effects. Past karma has to be expiated, but through our present actions we have the possibility of changing the future direction of our lives.
- Roshi Philip Kapleau, “The Zen of Living and Dying”

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

Why are people stymied by the koan they're working on, or even snarled up at times by breath practice? We complicate...
04/11/2026

Why are people stymied by the koan they're working on, or even snarled up at times by breath practice?
We complicate things. We complicate things unnecessarily through our thinking, or, more correctly, our clinging to our thoughts.
-Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede, "A Flower, A Smile", Zen Bow, Spring 2019

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

It is not always easy to distinguish between collective and individual karma. Suppose I neglect my health and become si...
04/03/2026

It is not always easy to distinguish between collective and individual karma. Suppose I neglect my health and become sick. This is individual karma and no one can substitute for me in this illness. I have to take the bitter medicine alone. However, collective karma would begin to operate if I become seriously ill, perhaps needing an operation, so that my family and friends become involved financially and emotionally. To be a passenger in a plane or car that crashes – this is also collective karma. But the fact that one passenger dies, another is only injured, and still another escapes unharmed – this is individual karma.
- Roshi Philip Kapleau, “The Zen of Living and Dying

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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