ADDRESS: 5 Ravenscroft Dr., Asheville, NC 28816
(mailing address:  P.O. Box 17274, Asheville, NC 28816)
PHONE/EMAIL: (828) 398-4212;  contact@zcasheville.org
CONTACT: The Reverend Teijo Munnich
LINEAGE: Soto Zen
AFFILIATION: Minnesota Zen Meditation Center (Ganshoji)
WEBSITE: http://www.zcasheville.org/
NEWSLETTER: Zen Center of Asheville Bulletin. Circulation: 400.

At six o'clock on Saturday morning the world outside is quiet. Most Asheville residents are in their beds, recovering from a long week of work. But in a modest house on the city's west side members of the Zen Center of Asheville are already awake and sitting zazen. That center  was founded in 1995 and moved to its current location the same year. (During the preceding two years members had met in private residences.) The current congregation consists of both Buddhist converts as well as sympathizers who also practice Christianity or Judaism. Members range from young adults to senior citizens, and they are from several different ethnic groups--European-American, African-American, Korean,  and Japanese. The average attendance at a zazen session ranges from five to ten people; however, all-day sittings often attract more. 

The Center offers both morning and evening practice five days a week. Special services and lectures are also offered regularly. A typical meditation session consists of one 10-minute session of kinhin in between two forty-minute periods of zazen. After sitting and walking meditation, participants chant the Heart and Robe Sutras and perform a series of prostrations. 

The Reverend Teijo Munnich is the guiding light of the Zen Center of Asheville. She was introduced to Zen practice at the San Francisco Zen Center in the early 1970s. There she met Katagiri Roshi, whom she followed to his center in Minnesota in 1975. She received formal training under Katagiri Roshi, who died in 1990, and also studied in Obama, Japan, and at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California. At the Zen center that Teijo Munnich leads in Asheville residents of North Carolina's mountain region gather--sometimes before most of the city has stirred--to incorporate an ancient practice into their daily lives. 
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(last updated 11/14/06)