Best Zen Monasteries for Lay Retreats
Zen offers the lay visitor something rare: not a lecture about stillness but a few days living inside it. Before you choose a place, it helps to know the two great streams of Japanese Zen. Rinzai, descended from the Chinese master Linji, works with the kōan — a paradoxical phrase such as "the sound of one hand" — turned over in seated meditation and tested in private interview with a teacher. Sōtō, shaped in Japan by the thirteenth-century master Dōgen, teaches shikantaza, "just sitting": zazen not as a means to enlightenment but as its very expression, often practised facing a blank wall.
Zazen itself is simply seated meditation, upright and still, attention resting on breath and posture. A sesshin is an intensive retreat, typically several days of many hours of zazen a day, its name suggesting a gathering or touching of the mind. Overlapping all of this is the older Japanese tradition of shukubō, temple lodging, in which a guest sleeps within the precinct and shares the daily round.
What a lay guest can realistically expect is discipline rather than pampering: rising well before dawn, long stretches of silence, samu or work practice such as sweeping and gardening, and simple vegetarian shōjin ryōri, cooked without meat, fish, or often even onion and garlic. The reward is a rhythm that most modern lives never touch.
Eiheiji, Japan
Eiheiji, the "Temple of Eternal Peace," was founded by Dōgen in 1244 in the forested mountains of Echizen, in present-day Fukui Prefecture, and remains one of the two head temples of Sōtō Zen. It is a genuine working monastery where more than a hundred unsui, novice monks, train under an exacting schedule. Lay visitors can arrange a sanrō stay to experience the monastic day directly: pre-dawn zazen, morning sutra chanting, formal meals, and silence. It is among the most authentic entry points anywhere into traditional Sōtō practice, and correspondingly demanding.
Sōji-ji, Japan
Sōji-ji is the other head temple of the Sōtō school, associated with the great patriarch Keizan Jōkin, who did much to spread Dōgen's teaching across Japan. Long centred on the Noto Peninsula, the main temple relocated to Tsurumi in Yokohama in the early twentieth century after fire destroyed the original complex, which is why its practice now unfolds in a large urban setting rather than a remote valley. The temple holds regular zazen sessions open to the public and offers introductory experiences that let a lay visitor sit, chant, and glimpse the training life without committing to a full monastic stay.
The Zen Temples of Kyoto, Japan
Kyoto is the historic heart of Rinzai Zen, home to head temples including Myōshin-ji, Daitoku-ji, Nanzen-ji, and Kennin-ji, the last founded in 1202 by Eisai and counted as the city's oldest Zen temple. Many of these vast complexes are ringed by tacchū, small subtemples, and a few of these welcome lay guests for zazen or overnight shukubō. Shunkō-in, within the Myōshin-ji precinct, is well known for offering meditation instruction and lodging in English, making it an unusually approachable introduction. Sitting zazen in a Kyoto subtemple, with its raked gravel and moss, gives a strong sense of Zen's aesthetic roots.
Mount Kōya, Japan
Mount Kōya, or Kōyasan, is the most famous temple-lodging destination in Japan, and honesty requires noting that it is not Zen at all: it is the mountain headquarters of Shingon, the esoteric school founded by Kūkai in the early ninth century. Of its more than a hundred temples, around fifty operate shukubō, hosting guests in tatami rooms, serving elaborate shōjin ryōri, and inviting them to the pre-dawn goma fire ritual and morning prayers. Many visitors also walk the lantern-lit paths of Okunoin, the great cemetery leading to Kūkai's mausoleum. It belongs in any guide to Buddhist retreats, provided you understand you are meeting Shingon rather than Zen.
Haeinsa and the Korean Templestay Programme
Korea offers one of the most accessible routes into monastic life through its Templestay programme, launched in 2002 and now running at scores of temples of the Jogye Order, the mainstream of Korean Seon, the Korean form of Zen. Haeinsa, in the Gayasan mountains, is among the most revered, guardian of the Tripitaka Koreana, the complete Buddhist canon carved onto more than eighty thousand woodblocks and housed in centuries-old halls. A typical stay includes Seon meditation, the 108 prostrations, formal barugongyang meals eaten from nested bowls, and tea with a monk. The atmosphere is quieter and often warmer than a Japanese training temple.
Plum Village, France
Plum Village, in the Dordogne region of southwest France, was founded in 1982 by the Vietnamese Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh and his colleague Sister Chân Không, and it may be the most accessible Zen community in the world for newcomers. Its practice, rooted in Vietnamese Zen and engaged Buddhism, emphasises mindfulness in ordinary acts: walking meditation, eating in silence, and stopping whenever the bell is invited to sound. Retreats and "Days of Mindfulness" run through the year across several hamlets, in English and other languages, welcoming families and complete beginners. Since Thich Nhat Hanh's death in 2022 the monastic community has carried on his teaching.
San Francisco Zen Center and Tassajara, USA
The San Francisco Zen Center, founded in 1962 around the Sōtō teacher Shunryū Suzuki, whose talks became the classic Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, is one of the most influential Buddhist institutions outside Asia. In 1967 it established Tassajara, deep in the Ventana Wilderness beyond Big Sur, widely regarded as the first Zen training monastery founded outside Asia. During the winter practice periods Tassajara closes to focus on intensive training, but each summer it opens as a guest retreat, famous for its hot springs and its remarkable vegetarian kitchen. The Center's Green Gulch Farm and City Center offer easier, shorter introductions.
Upaya Zen Center, USA
Upaya Zen Center sits in the hills above Santa Fe, New Mexico, and was founded in 1990 by Roshi Joan Halifax, an anthropologist and Zen teacher known for her work with the dying. Its practice stands in the Sōtō lineage but leans strongly toward socially engaged Buddhism, contemplative care, and Buddhist chaplaincy training. Guests can join daily zazen, take part in themed retreats, or arrange a personal residency that folds them into the temple schedule of meditation, service, and work practice. It suits those drawn to Zen as a foundation for compassionate action in the world.
Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey, United Kingdom
Throssel Hole Buddhist Abbey, in the hills of Northumberland in northern England, is a Sōtō Zen monastery founded in 1972 and belonging to the Order of Buddhist Contemplatives. That order was established by Rev. Master Jiyu-Kennett, an Englishwoman who trained at Sōji-ji in Japan and adapted the liturgy into English, giving the abbey a distinctive Western monastic character. It runs introductory retreats for newcomers alongside longer stays, with instruction in seated meditation, the ceremonial forms, and the quiet of shared work. For British and European visitors it is one of the most welcoming traditional Zen settings within easy reach.
Dai Bosatsu Zendo, USA
Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji stands beside a lake in the Catskill Mountains of New York State and is run by the Zen Studies Society, whose roots reach back to early Rinzai pioneers in America. Opened in 1976, it is often described as the first authentic Rinzai training monastery built in the United States, with a hall and schedule modelled closely on Japanese practice. It holds regular sesshin and kessei training periods, and welcomes lay retreatants who wish to sit intensively, work with kōan practice, and share the monastic routine. The setting is remote, wooded, and deliberately austere.
Whichever tradition draws you, the way to begin is not to read more but to sit — and you can find these communities, and many others, plotted on our interactive map.