New Year's Eve Ceremony and Celebration

This overnight gathering at Great Vow Zen Monastery blends ceremony with community ritual — a deliberately informal way to mark the year's turning if you're drawn to practice but not ready (or not interested in) a formal sesshin. The format signals something different from the monastery's standard silent retreats: guided meditation, a letting-go fire ceremony where people burn written intentions or regrets, precept renewal (the Buddhist ethical foundation), and the traditional 108 bells at midnight.

The 108 bells practice itself has weight — it's both ritual and meditation, a sustained sound practice marking transition. If you've sat zazen before, you know the shape of it. If you haven't, it's a accessible entry point: you're held by ceremony and community, not by the austere silence of a multi-day sesshin.

Great Vow is a Soto Zen monastery in Oregon, which means the practice lineage is Japanese Zen transplanted to the American Pacific Northwest — formal but not rigid, grounded in zazen and precepts. This particular gathering is seasonal and lighter than their regular residential practice periods, though still rooted in that tradition.