Zen Mountain Monastery - Mountain and Rivers Order

Mountain and Rivers Order

ZMM is the main house of the Mountains and Rivers Order, an umbrella organization inspired by the teachings of Dogen as found in the "Mountains and Rivers Sutra." Founded by John Daido Loori in 1980, it includes the following branches:

1. Dharma Communications is a nonprofit, right livelihood training dojo run at the monastery, and supplies teacher's talks and sitting supplies to homedwelling practitioners. It also creates the Mountain Record the longest running Zen journal published in the USA.
2. Society of Mountains and Rivers is composed of affiliate sitting groups in Buffalo, Albany, Philadelphia, Vermont and New Zealand, which hold weekly sitting sessions and visits from the teachers of the Order.
3. National Buddhist Archives which collects and digitizes outstanding documents and media chronicling the history of Buddhism in America thus far, and especially the history of Zen Mountain Monastery.
4. Zen Environmental Studies Institute sponsors and conducts wilderness retreats, environmental mindfulness workshops, and pursues research on the local environment.
5. National Buddhist Prison Sangha provides teaching supplies and sitting opportunities to inmates currently serving in a correctional facility.
6. Fire Lotus Temple, is the only residential Zen training facility in New York City, offering training opportunities to lay practitioners on a daily basis. Geoffrey Shugen Arnold director of Fire Lotus Temple, and teaches during a number of intensive sitting retreats as well as a Sunday program similar to that held at ZMM.