About Robe & Bowl: A Hollow Bones Rinzai Zen Sangha

We are a Hollow Bones Rinzai Zen community in San Francisco founded by Daju Huihai Suzanne Friedman and led by Choan Tim Cook and Bodhi William Prince , ordained Zen priests in the Hollow Bones Rinzai Zen lineage. Junpo Denis Kelly Roshi is the Abbot of Hollow Bones Rinzai Zen and the creator of  the Mondo Zen koan dialogue process. We offer:
  • Zen meditation (for extreme beginners through experienced meditators)
  • Zen services (including sutra chanting)
  • Qigong ("chi-gung") exercises from the Shaolin Buddhist Temple 
  • Meditation retreats & mini-retreats 
  • Mondo Zen process work (one-on-one and group retreats)
  • Service & Community Outreach (charitable work & donations)
  • Workshops (Intro to Meditation, Qigong, Text Study)
  • Health & Healing to the public (through InnerMedicine)

Please visit our Meetup page which always contains the most up-to-date listings of our offerings and special events.
Our Order is unique in that we utilize five essential training elements or mirrors to enhance wisdom and compassion and transform our daily lives. Our training mirrors help you to wake up, grow up, and show up. They are:
  1. Sacred Stewardship– Be conscious of all you consume or purchase. Give more back to this sacred earth than you take.
  2. Philosophical Reorientation– Your current philosophical understanding may be blocking your realization. We call this a  "thinking problem" that can prevent awakening and integration. This is where the Mondo Zen koan process begins. 
  3. Emotional Maturity and Integrity – Your experience and understanding of your emotions may be creating unnecessary suffering in your life and the lives of those around you. From the perspective of meditative or nondual mind, emotions are no different from your other senses; they bring information to your consciousness. Learn how to bring your practice into your daily life and interactions. 
  4. Conscious Embodiment– Practice an internal martial art or energy movement form like aikido, qigong, tai chi or yoga, for example. The pain and lack of flexibility within your body is trying to reveal something to you. Find out what the message is.
  5. Genuine Insight – Practice meditation. A lack of genuine insight is the only reason people don’t realize their true selfless nature. The practice of meditative mindfulness enables us to experience the absolute purity of our deepest nature and to hold this transpersonal truth in the complexity of our personal lives.

                                                        "There is not one instant awake or asleep when you are not a Buddha."
                                                                                                                   -Bankei