Ch'an Meditation Center

Our Founder Master Sheng Yen “The Dharma is so good, yet so few people know about it and so many people misunderstand it.” It was based on this simple belief that Venerable Master Sheng Yen founded Dharma Drum Mountain. Named as one of the fifty most influential people in Taiwan during the past four hundred years, Venerable Master Sheng Yen called himself “an itinerant monk pressing ahead through the wind and snow,” and has had a life full of miseries, deprivations, tests, and turning points. The Chan Meditation Center, located in Elmhurst (Queens), New York, was founded by Chan Master Sheng Yen in 1977 with the purpose of bringing Chinese Chan [Zen] Buddhism to the Western world.

The Chan Meditation Center is open year round. The organization runs various programs to teach the doctrine and practice of Chan Buddhism, to promote the purification of human life, and to preserve traditional Chinese culture. We also publish the quarterly Chan Magazine in English, and are associated with Dharma Drum Publications, which has published a series of books by Master Sheng Yen, and the Dharma Drum Retreat Center in Pine Bush, NY. The Center is also a small monastery where bhikshus and bhikshunis (fully ordained monks and nuns) live and practice the traditional precepts. Among the activities offered at the Chan Meditation Center are: Beginners’ and Intermediate meditation classes, Dharma classes, Tai-Chi classes, Dharma teacher training programs, Sunday Buddhist services and Dharma talks, Monday evening chanting ceremonies, and group meditations on both Tuesday evening and all day Saturday. We welcome all those interested in meditation and the study and practice of Buddhism, regardless of background, age, religion or ethnic origin.

Our Origin The Chan Meditation Center had its origins in a meditation group that began in May 1976 at the Temple of Enlightenment in the Bronx, New York. The Buddhist Association of the United States had invited Chan Master Sheng Yen to come to the U.S. to spread the Buddha Dharma; his first class consisted of four students. They met for 14 weeks, learning a series of meditation methods. Within just two years, more than 200 students had learned from Master Sheng Yen. In May 1977, he held the first seven-day intensive Chan retreat on Long Island. Another seven-day retreat was held in June 1978, followed by two more in April and May 1979. It was soon after the first retreat that the group published its first issue of Chan Magazine. Master Sheng Yen continued to teach his students in the Bronx and at Columbia University.

In 1978, it was decided that the time was right for the group to have a place of its own dedicated to the practice of Chan meditation. But it was just at this time that Master Sheng Yen had to return to Taiwan—his teacher, Master Dongchu, had passed away, leaving him in charge of the Nung Chan Monastery. His responsibilities delayed the establishment of the Center in New York, but ended up establishing the pattern that would continue for the next three decades: each year he would spend six months in the States and six months in Taiwan. The First Chan Meditation Center In December 1979, a building was purchased at 90-31 Corona Avenue in Elmhurst, Queens. Over many months, the group waited for the tenants’ leases to expire before the entire building was empty. Then repairs and renovations were carried out by both members and professionals. The first floor (formerly a machine shop) became the meditation hall.