SEVEN-DAY WINTER SESSHIN is full!

JANUARY 26 - February 2 2024

Full or part time attendance 

Scholarships available

St. Dorothy’s Rest
Occidental, Sonoma County

Sesshin is an ancient Zen tradition; it’s a special environment built to help you discover your own awakening. Often in your daily life, the light of your attention goes out from you into the world; during sesshin you turn the light back inward into your own heart/mind. 

We are so looking forward to meeting in person again for our Great Winter Sesshin. CityZen’s senior teacher, Rachel Mansfield-Howlett, Roshi will be giving dharma transmission to Gary Brandt on Sunday afternoon.

We practice in a relaxed traditional form of sesshin, with lots of dharma talks and opportunity for meeting individually with the teachers. Our silent retreat is held at St. Dorothy’s Rest in Camp Meeker, with stunning views of the redwoods and rolling hills and featuring exquisitely made hearty vegetarian meals.

We wholeheartedly invite you to join us for this practice intensive.

Please contact:  gbrandt@sonic.net, for more information about accommodations and registration.

Rachel Mansfield-Howlett Roshi is a koan master in the Pacific Zen School lineage and the Founder and senior teacher at CityZen in Santa Rosa CA. With degrees in botany and law she is also a public benefit environmental attorney and law professor. She is a contributor to The Book of Mu: Essential Writings on Zen's Most Important Koan and The Hidden Lamp, Stories from Twenty-Five Centuries of Awakened Women. Rhowlettlaw@gmail.com

In-person sittings with hybrid Zoom have begun in Santa Rosa!

We're very excited to announce that after an over 3-year hiatus we've resumed in-person sitting on some Monday nights in Santa Rosa and the balance of the time we'll continue to hold our meetings via Zoom. Our goal is to offer 2 in-person and 2 Zoom evenings per month. It's a beautiful space and we're very grateful for this opportunity for the renewal of our sangha in a physical location.

If you have friends you would like to invite to join us please ask them to email Zenappt@gmail.com for details about the location,

Our Zoom evenings are and will continue to be very important to us—we will absolutely continue to offer our meditation evenings in this format. Over the Zoom years we’ve been able to include some folks who don’t live in the area or have mobility issues, which has enriched our sangha immeasurably. We will continue to offer a full evening program via Zoom.

If you would like to join the list group and receive our notices, the links to Zoom and other practice opportunities please email Zenappt@gmail.com.

If you live in Fort Bragg CA or the Portland OR area, please go to the teacher page for more information about the programs held there.