Urban retreats

Our Zen practice is not confined to the meditation hall - ideally, our practice is one with our daily life and our everyday environment.

Our urban retreats offers a chance to deepen practice in our ordinary urban environment, without leaving Auckland. All our urban retreats are held at our Zendo in Onehunga. They are usually 2-3 days long and are non-residential. You will need to bring your lunch and/or dinner each day or you can purchase from the cafes in Onehunga. This creates an opportunity to integrate Zen practice with daily life- we sit, and then we go and order coffee for lunch, we sit some more, and then we go home for the night.

The Urban retreats are more flexible than our seven-day sesshins and they are an excellent introduction if you are interested in attending sesshin. You can attend the Urban retreats part-time or full-time, and can join from home via Mixlr if you want to. A donation of $20 per day is appreciated.

Check our events page to see the dates for the next Urban retreat.

Typical three-day urban retreat schedule

Note: the schedule of each Urban retreat varies, to accommodate public holidays and staff availability. This is an example of what you can expect.

Saturday

8:30 Zazen / kinhin

10:30 Silent tea

11:00 Zazen /  kinhin / remote dokusan

12:30 Lunch break

1:30 Zazen / kinhin / in-person dokusan

3:30 Chanting

3:50 Exercises

4:25 Zazen

5:00 Dinner break

6:00 Zazen / kinhin

8:00 Four Vows

Sunday

8:30 Zazen / kinhin / teisho

10:30 Silent tea

11:00 Zazen /  kinhin / remote dokusan

12:30 Lunch break

1:30 Zazen / kinhin / in-person dokusan

3:30 Chanting

3:50 Exercises

4:25 Zazen

5:00 Dinner break

6:00 Zazen / kinhin

8:00 Four Vows

Monday

8:30 Zazen / kinhin / in-person dokusan

10:30 Silent tea

11:00 Zazen /  kinhin / remote dokusan

12.30           Chanting

1p.m. Close, optional lunch at a cafè