Experience Ring of Moss Zendo
An Urban Zen Buddhist Community in Portland, Oregon.
Ring of Moss is a Diamond Sangha affiliate with roots in both the Rinzai and Soto schools of Zen. We have close ties to Ring of Bone Zendo in California.
Gathering in Portland, Oregon since 1996.
Ring of Moss has roots in both the Rinzai and Soto schools of Zen (Ch’an), as developed in the Diamond Sangha, with close ties to Ring of Bone Zendo on California’s rural San Juan Ridge. Meditation in community is central to our practice.
Advancing the Diamond Sangha tradition.
The Diamond Sangha is a lay Zen Buddhist lineage grounded in the heritage of our Chinese and Japanese traditions and drawing upon both major streams of Zen, Sōtō and Rinzai. We work to further the way of practice and realization laid out by Chan and Zen masters down through the ages and especially by our founding teacher, Robert Aitken Rōshi. Communities of the Diamond Sangha are functionally independent and diverse in many respects yet united in a commitment to penetrating inquiry into the great matter of life-and-death and to the welfare of all beings, including the mountains and rivers themselves. We hold that practice and realization must be embodied not just in the way that we conduct oursleves at temples and training centers but also throughout our lives — in relationships personal and familial, social and environmental, economic and political.
Meeting with Instruction Year-round.
Year-around instruction at Ring of Moss is available from Andrew Mason, authorized to teach by Nelson Foster in 2018. Andrew began Zen training with Robert Aitken in 1988.
First Timers
We welcome visitors, with or without prior experience in Zen practice. Join us for one of our weekly sittings.
“I follow my impulsive feet wherever they might go my body is a pine tree surrounded by the snow sometimes I simply stand beside a flowing stream sometimes I chase a drifting cloud past another peak.”
- Han-shan
