Providence Zen Center

Providence Zen Center Zen Practice helps us to realize our true self and serve this world with wisdom and compassion.

Head Temple of Kwan Um School of Zen with programs in Cumberland, RI & Online

09/03/2026

We search everywhere until something breaks and we realize it’s always just this, all we have is this moment. We understand it intellectually, but it’s hard to believe: it’s just this.

This is what Zen points to.

🪷 Full Dharma Talk in our Youtube, DM for link

Did you know PZC has a thriving vegetable garden and several plots as part of our Eco-Dharma Initiative? Nature & ecolog...
09/02/2026

Did you know PZC has a thriving vegetable garden and several plots as part of our Eco-Dharma Initiative? Nature & ecology form a big part of our practice here at PZC. In the quote, from the 2019 interview Coming Together to Inquire, Nancy Hedgpeth P**p Sa Nim talks about her experience caring for the PZC garden as an extension of her practice.

You can often enjoy freshly harvested veggies from our garden at our weekly community dinners—hearty vegetarian meals that kickoff our Wednesday Evening Dharma Program. On the menu tonight is garden beet Borscht! 🌱🍲 Hope to see you at 5:30~

PZC has many opportunities to explore the intersection between Zen practice and artistic creation. This Sunday, join us ...
09/01/2026

PZC has many opportunities to explore the intersection between Zen practice and artistic creation. This Sunday, join us at PZC Art Club to put that into action — no experience needed. 🎨 And stay tuned for more art-as-practice opportunities coming soon.

In this quote, Zen Master Seung Sahn talks about don’t know mind and the creative process: “If you are thinking, your mind wanders away from your action, and the flow of your painting or writing will be blocked, your tea-ceremony will be stiff or clumsy. If you are not thinking, you are one with your action. You are the tea that you’re drinking. You are the brush that you’re painting with. Not-thinking is before thinking. You are the whole universe; the universe is you. This is Zen mind, absolute mind. It is beyond space and time, beyond the dualities of self and other, good and bad, life and death. The truth is just like this. So when a Zen person is painting, the whole universe is present in the tip of his brush.” — Zen Master Seung Sahn, Dropping Ashes on the Buddha

📍 Zen Arts Space at Providence Zen Center, 99 Pound Rd, Cumberland, RI
🕐 12–3pm — Link in bio for details.

08/31/2026

Zen Master Tan Gong on the practice of really asking “how are you?” with the readiness to listen. Zen Master Tan Gong is leading a 1-day Silent Retreat on September 19—register at the link in our bio for this opportunity to practice with our guiding teacher.

Congratulations to PZC resident Josh Senften on his publication in Primary Point! 🎉 Josh serves as our kitchen and garde...
08/26/2026

Congratulations to PZC resident Josh Senften on his publication in Primary Point! 🎉 Josh serves as our kitchen and garden master, bringing nourishing & fresh vegetarian meals to hundreds of sangha members and retreatants every month at PZC (thank you, Josh!!). He is a Dharma Teacher in Training in the Kwan Um School of Zen, and has sat both a one-month Summer Kyol Che and a 90-day Winter Kyol Che. He began practicing at the Orlando Zen Center in 2016. Josh has been a professional musician for 13+ years, and has played saxophone, clarinet, and flute with various groups throughout the US and the Caribbean.

Primary Point is the Kwan Um School of Zen’s teaching journal, published since 1983. Read Josh’s piece in the current issue — PDF link in bio. Dues-paying members of the Kwan Um School also receive a print subscription — learn more about how you can support us through membership at providencezen.org/donate.

08/25/2026

During Sunday’s Dharma talk, PZC co-guiding teacher and Buddhist monk Zen Master Dae Kwang spoke on how we face old age, sickness, and our own mortality. Thank you Zen Master Dae Kwang for your teaching 🙏

🎬 Watch the full talk — YouTube link in bio.

🪷 Join us for weekly dharma talks — Sundays, in person at PZC or online. Zoom link in bio.

Earlier this month, over 120 people from all over the US gathered at Providence Zen Center for ZenFest 🍃Thank you to eve...
08/23/2026

Earlier this month, over 120 people from all over the US gathered at Providence Zen Center for ZenFest 🍃Thank you to everyone who travelled, volunteered, and performed.

Missed this year? No problem, the date for next year’s Founders Day Sangha Weekend is already set (July 30-August 1, 2027) and next year is extra special because it marks the 100th anniversary of Zen Master Seung Sahn’s birth 🎉

08/23/2026

Zen is about practice. It's about practicing dropping thoughts and returning to the moment.

That is not easy.

It really obviously takes some time to continue, continue, continue to drop the thoughts.

One has to have faith that dropping thoughts will not cause you to lose who you truly are.

You're going to come home to your true self.

What Zen means is coming back home rather than becoming a statue or getting some fancy state of clarity.

~Zen Master Barbara Rhodes🐉
~ Zen Master Judy Roitman🪬

🪷

08/23/2026

Primary Point Summer 2026 is online to view and download! Inside you'll find these pieces: Inka Ceremony for Tony Sager; Buddha’s Enlightenment Day Speech by Colin Beavan JDPSN; Attachment to Emptiness in Culture Today by Agata Hae In JDPSN; Dharma in Hospice and Chaplaincy: A Conversation & more. See the new issue: https://kwanumzen.org/primary-point

08/22/2026

Kwan Haeng Sunim, JDPSN, co-guiding teacher of the Providence Zen Center, on attachment, suffering, and letting go of “I”. The Buddha taught that suffering comes from attachment to “I”: our likes, our opinions, our dislikes. Becoming unattached to that delusion is the practice.

🪷 For more teaching from Kwan Haeng Sunim, join us tomorrow in person or on Zoom for another weekly Dharma Talk at PZC. Link in bio for details.

Address

99 Pound Road
Cumberland, RI
02864

Telephone

+14016581464

Website

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