Each Sunday night a small group of European-American Zen practitioners sits cross-legged in a large open space beneath a cathedral ceiling in the heart of North Carolina's largest city.  These weekly meetings of the Charlotte Zen Mediation Society (CZMS), which congregates on the third floor of a large white house used by the Therapuetic Massage Institute,  include two thirty-minute periods of zazen and ten minutes of kinhin. The evening ends with reading and discussion. No permanent spiritual leader presides over the weekly sessions, but most members look for guidance to the Reverend Teijo Munnich, who travels from the Zen Center of Asheville every ninety days to offer instruction. Some members in the Charlotte group, which was founded in 1990, look to other Soto teachers around the state and the nation--including Shohaku Okumura of Sanshin Zen Community, who has co-taught with Teijo Munnich at the Southern Dharma Retreat Center. Although attendance at CZMS's weekly sessions rarely is more than fifteen, it can rise to more than one hundred when Munnich or some other teacher visits the group.
 

NP and JW

Updated 11-14-06