One Continuous Thread: Home Practice Intensive—June

What this is

This is a parallel online track to Zen Mountain Monastery's residential June sesshin. Rather than attending in person, you stay home and join live webcasts of the formal practice periods, talks, and ceremonies happening on the mountain. You set your own daily schedule—fitting zazen sits around work, family, meals—while using the monastery's broadcast to anchor your practice to the sesshin's rhythm.

It's a practical solution for people drawn to sesshin intensity but unable to step away for a full week. You're not watching recordings of a retreat that happened; you're practicing alongside people sitting in the zendo in real time.

What to expect

The structure mirrors residential sesshin: multiple zazen periods throughout the day, dharma talks, and the ceremonial elements of Soto Zen practice. The difference is pacing and location. A residential sesshin runs a tight daily schedule with few breaks. The online track gives you flexibility—you sit when the monastery streams, but you eat your own meals, use your own cushion setup, and handle your own day between sessions. This is less immersive than residential practice, but it's also more honest: you're practicing with the constraint of ordinary life, which is where most people actually live.

Soto tradition

Zen Mountain Monastery teaches Soto Zen, the largest school of Japanese Zen. Soto emphasizes zazen itself as complete practice—not a means to enlightenment, but enlightenment already manifesting. Sesshin in this tradition stresses simplicity, repetition, and the discipline of schedule. You'll encounter kinhin (walking meditation between sits), formal ceremony, and talks that point directly at the nature of mind.

Online logistics

You'll need a quiet space, a meditation cushion, and a reliable internet connection. Expect to join live sessions at set times—the exact schedule will be posted closer to the retreat date. You won't have dokusan (private meetings with a teacher) or the enforced silence of residential practice, but you will have the anchor of communal timing and the teacher's live guidance.