We founded Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community in 2017 to be a hub for Zen training and Zen-inspired community engaged practice. Based on the Three Tenets of a Zen Peacemaker, we support personal and social transformation and spiritual flourishing.
Where you can visit us
We are located at 3958 Rte 30 in Cornwall, VT, near the college town of Middlebury, and about halfway between Burlington and Rutland. We are surrounded by farmland with a stunning panoramic view of the Green Mountains and Bread Loaf Mountain. BLMZC offers residency, public meditation and retreats, and direct services in the community. How you can contact us
You can send us an email:
- For information: info@breadloafmountainzen.org
- For a Zoom link for our daily meditation: programs@breadloafmountainzen.org
Visit us on Facebook at facebook.com/VermontZen/.
Guiding Teacher
The guiding teacher is Brian Joshin Byrnes, a Zen priest and teacher in the White Plum Asanga of Maezumi Roshi and Zen Peacemakers Order. Read more about Joshin.
Our Vision, Mission, and Values
Our vision: We imagine a world where all beings flourish, are honored, and are nurtured. We are dedicated to advancing community-engaged Zen practice. In the spirit of the Buddha’s own aspiration to understand suffering and bring about the end of suffering, we aspire to understand social, economic and environmental suffering, and vow to do what we can, as best we can, to bring an end to that suffering.
Our mission: We fulfill our vision in many ways, including:
- being a hub of practice that builds, trains, and supports an active network of Zen Peacemaker Community-Engaged practitioners;
- offering Zen Practices such as daily meditation, weekly talks, periodic retreats, study and practice groups, bearing-witness practice periods, and teacher-student relationships;
- engaging in social action projects such as Gather, StreetGreens, Peacemaker Quilts, Mindful Recovery, and pop-up projects like Food for Families;
- supporting community ministry and offering direct spiritual care to all who request it; and
- facilitating Bearing Witness Plunges and Street Retreats.
Our values:
- Imagination: We recognize that everything is open to change, challenge and revision. We meet it with creativity.
- Generosity: We allow our attitudes to reflect the natural abundance of being.
- Ethical Conduct: We act in solidarity, following the Zen precepts and endeavoring to be in the world without self-interest and self-importance.
- Patience: We transform difficult circumstances and misfortunes into spiritual benefit.
- Joyful Effort: We practice propelled by care and love, not by power or force.
- Meditation: We meditate to stabilize our shifting mind and heart, to recall our altruistic intention to end suffering, and to attune ourselves to others.
- Wisdom: We seek insight in all that we do and we learn by doing.
