May Sesshin – The Light of Our Ancestors

Great Vow Zen Monastery's May sesshin takes its theme from ancestral practice—the idea that you sit within a lineage stretching back through generations of practitioners. In Soto Zen, this isn't metaphorical; it shapes how the retreat is structured and taught. The sesshin format itself is an inheritance: the schedule, the silence, the precise movements, all passed down through practice communities.

This is a week of traditional sesshin: early morning wake, zazen periods (sitting meditation), kinhin (walking meditation between sits), meals in oryoki style (if the center follows that practice), and dokusan—private meetings with the teacher. Days are structured around practice periods rather than clock time. If you've done sesshin before, you know the rhythm. If not, this retreat explicitly asks that you gain that experience elsewhere first.

The monastery setting in Oregon offers the kind of quiet necessary for this work. You'll stay on-site, eat with the community, and move through the week at the pace of the practice, not the outside world.