Zen Center in Montclair, NJ, offers a place of peace, community, and reconciliation to all who might benefit from a quiet, disciplined, and humanistic approach to daily life and the pursuit of awareness. While our spiritual heritage ultimately harkens back to the times of Gautama Buddha and Lao Tzu, the Clear Mountain sangha traces its immediate origins to the Metro Zen Community, which was formed
in 1998. A group of individual gathered and met regularly as to offer the Montclair, NJ vicinity the benefits of Zen sitting and teaching. Other founding members included Carl Bachmann, Deb Baretz, and Ray Cicetti. Before long, the group gained a new home at the Montclair Co-Op School, which was otherwise unoccupied on Sunday mornings. Several members of the group were also involved with the already established Morning Star Zendo in Jersey City, and were taking instruction from its resident teacher, Rev. Robert Kennedy SJ, who had himself studied Zen under noted teachers Yamada Roshi in Japan, Maezumi Roshi in Los Angeles and Bernard Glassman Roshi in New York. In 2003, several of the founding members had left to form other Zen sanghas in their own vicinity, or to train in the intricate rituals of the Zen priesthood. However, Carl Bachmann remained to organize the Clear Mountain Zen Center, and to maintain a Zen community presence in Montclair. By 2005, with the help of Clear Mountain Sangha Jeff Kuschner, Densu, the Clear Mountain sangha found a new home in downtown Montclair, in a rented storefront across from the re-developed former Lackawanna Railroad terminal. This eclectic, ethnically diverse neighborhood includes a Bikram Yoga studio, an interior design business, a gym, a cab company, a child learning center and several other residential buildings. Today, under the leadership of Sensei Bachmann and with the continuing guidance of Roshi Robert Jinsen Kennedy, the Clear Mountain Zen Center offers itself to all who wish to follow the path of Zen practice. We welcome all, regardless of formal faith affiliation or lack thereof. Our members come from a broad range of backgrounds from young to old, including artists, retirees, students, service workers, attorneys and other professionals. While faithfully hewing to the pathways tread by our elders in Zen and respecting the rigors they prescribed, we seek to offer a place of peace, healing, community and reconciliation to all who might benefit from a quiet, disciplined and yet ultimately humanistic approach to daily life and the pursuit of awareness. Under the guidence of the White Plum Asanga and our guilding teacher, Roshi Kennedy, we offer beginners instruction, weekly Zazen on Sunday mornings, weekday quiet time, and other ways of serving our community.
