New Zen Meditation Center for Contemplative Care

What We Do

Twenty-six hundred years ago Shakyamuni Buddha established a practice to address suffering, old age, sickness, and death. In 2007, Zen Buddhist monks Koshin Paley Ellison and Robert Chodo Campbell established the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care, in the heart of New York City. We offer training in contemplative care so that people can learn to care in mindful and compassionate ways in hospitals, hospices, and homes, as well as, their everyday relationships. We do this work in order to create a more courageous and harmonious world.

Fully-accredited, Year-long Training Programs

Recognized as true pioneers and leaders in the field of Contemplative Care, the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care is creatively transforming spiritual care in the United States. We are the first and only Buddhist organization to be fully-accredited by the Association of Clinical Pastoral Education as a CPE Clinical Chaplaincy Training Center in America. NYZCCC integrates Buddhist contemplative practices with professional training, creating a dynamic program that is interfaith and experience-based, geared toward developing professionals and those seeking to deepen their spiritual, caregiving practice.

NYZCCC also offers a year-long Foundations in Contemplative Care Training Program. Students fulfill the program requirements through class participation, 100 hours of contemplative care volunteering, rigorous reading and writing exercises, and an end-of-year project.

Sensei Robert Chodo Campbell

Sensei Robert Chodo Campbell co-founded the New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care. The organization delivers contemplative approaches to care through education, direct service and meditation practice. In order to bring the work to a broader audience, he co-developed the Foundations in Contemplative Care Training Program. Chodo is part of the core faculty for the Buddhist Track in the Master in Pastoral Care and Counseling at NYZCCC’s education partner, New York Theological Seminary. He teaches in the University of Arizona Medical School’s Center for Integrative Medicine’s Integrative Medicine Fellowship. Chodo is a dynamic, earthy, and visionary leader and teacher, Chodo has travelled extensively in the U.S teaching in various institutions as well as bearing witness to the suffering of HIV/AIDS in Zimbabwe and South Africa. His public programs have introduced thousands to the practices of mindful and compassionate care of the living and dying. 30,000 people listen to his podcasts each year. His passion lies in bereavement counseling and advocating for change in the way our healthcare institutions work with the dying. He is a Senior Soto Zen priest and Soto Zen Teacher.