Upaya Zen Center

Welcome! Upaya Zen Center is a Zen Buddhist practice, service, and training center. Our vision focuses on the integration of practice and social action, bringing together wisdom and compassion.Our mission is to provide a context for community practice, education in Buddhism and social service in the areas of death and dying, prison work, the environment, women’s rights, and peacework. It endeavors to fulfill the vision of the Five Buddha Family Mandala, by understanding the integration of all of its functions.

The Five Buddha Family Mandala is based on the Five Meditation Buddhas of traditional Buddhism from. It is a vision of Buddhism that is integrated, interconnected, and process oriented and is based on the integration of our spirituality, education, livelihood, service, and community into a whole cloth.

VISION

Upaya is a Zen Buddhist practice and educational center dedicated to the development of the relationship between traditional Buddhism and compassionate engagement with our world.

MISSION

Upaya Zen Center is model of socially engaged Buddhism. It brings together many projects focused on social transformation, including work in prisons, end-of-life care, serving the homeless, training of chaplains in socially engaged practice, peace and non-violence work, training of clinicians all over the world in compassionate care, and delivering healthcare in remote regions of the Himalayas.

Upaya is a global community for those working to create racial, economic, and environmental justice, compassionate care for the most vulnerable, and a place of committed, daily contemplative practice and learning through its retreats, trainings, and programs, free Dharma podcasts and community services. STRATEGY

Upaya realizes its vision by being a refuge to the many who come through its temple doors and offering mature programs – traditional, experimental, and systems-based – that meet the needs of people, society, and the environment.