Danan offers Dharma talks, koan study, and dokusan. He also leads retreats and facilitates one-on-one as well as group inquiries into Zen scriptures and texts.
He and senior members of Cloud Zendo lead a twice-monthly Zen meditation and chanting service. These are open to the public and occur on the first and third Saturdays of the month starting at 9 AM in a space graciously made available by Sierra Foothills Unitarian Universalists in Auburn, California.
Danan’s Zen encouragement to people new to Zen, as well as to those with some familiarity, is to diligently cultivate and explore the farthest reaches of the experience of bodhicitta in stillness and silence.
“Bodhicitta is the warm hand that first guides us to the actual path of the bodhisattva,” he says. “It’s not unlike following the breath in meditation. Inspiration, compassion for others, and joy naturally arise from the initial thought of awakening. Bodhicitta, the ‘aspiration to enlightenment’ may come and go at first, but in time it will become embodied and shine through all of one’s affairs.”
Danan received inka shōmei from, and is a Dharma heir of, Zen Master George Bo Mun Bowman, founder of the Single Flower Sangha lineage. His training under Bo Mun included many years of “koan introspection” practice and followed a traditional immersive koan curriculum.
Danan has worked with koans and studied sutras at No Abode Hermitage with Tenshin Reb Anderson Roshi, a lineage holder in the Soto tradition of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, for more than a decade. He has also studied and practiced in retreat and sesshin settings with Vipassana and International Kwan Um School teachers, as well as with the late Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi, Martine and Stephen Batchelor, Chan Master Guo Gu, and Mu Soeng, the former Zen monk and teacher and scholar-in-residence at the Barre Center for Buddhist Studies.
Bo Mun was one of the first Dharma heirs of Zen Master Seung Sahn, founder of the International Kwan Um School of Zen, an offshoot of the Korean Chogye Order. The Korean Buddhist tradition – and Seung Sahn’s and Bo Mun’s practice of it – is characterized by inclusiveness, openness and the harmonization of diverse tenets and practices found in ancient and contemporary modes of Buddhism. Danan’s teaching style and influences continue to reflect this diversity and unity.
Bo Mun studied koans with the late Japanese Rinzai Zen teacher Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi for more than two decades. He also studied under the Soto Zen teachers Taizan Maezumi and Kobun Chino Otogawa, among others. He was a founding member of the Providence Zen Center and is a former resident teacher of the Cambridge Buddhist Association and former guiding teacher of the Institute for Meditation and Psychotherapy.
Jian David Klinger Roshi is a senior teacher in the Single Flower Sangha and also a supporting teacher to Cloud Zendo. He is available for consultation and guidance in personal practice. Jian began formal koan study in 1978 with Zen Master Seung Sahn and lived in the Kwan Um School of Zen community in Providence Rhode Island during its formative years. He took Bodhisattva Monk Precepts in 1980. He continues his koan practice with, and received Dharma transmission in 2023 from, Zen Master Bo Mun of Single Flower Sangha. Please make inquiries for formal practice and personal Zoom meetings with Jian via his email: debay512@gmail.com
Joshu Jeff Hunter is a senior Dharma student in the Cloud Zendo lineage. He received Bodhisattva Precepts from Zen Master Bo Mun in 2015. He has been practicing with Cloud Zendo for more than a decade. His practice has included koan study with Danan, Bo Mun and Jian. For almost a decade he also has attended monthly one-day sittings and studied Soto Zen with Tenshin Reb Anderson Roshi at No Abode Hermitage near San Francisco.