Reporter: Matthew Grayson
Chosen Monastery for Report: Great Tree Zen Women’s Temple
Link to source: https://www.greattreetemple.org/about
Address: 679 Lower Flat Creek Rd, Alexander, NC 28701
Great Tree Zen Women’s Temple is located a short 20 minute drive from Asheville in the Appalachian Mountains. It fosters a community of adherents to the Soto Zen School that offers meditation opportunities in the form of daily practice to month-long retreats. The Temple was founded by Reverend Teijo Munnich who “began to envision the establishment of a residential center for women in 1983.” While the vision centers on offering a safe communal environment for women devoted to following the Soto Zen School, the Temple offers classes to all sexes with the only exclusion being residential stays at the temple being exclusive to women. The explicit purpose of the Temple is “to provide opportunities to enter more deeply into the practice of self-reflection in order to learn to live in peace and harmony with all beings.” The Great Tree is an image that brings to mind a beacon of growth, stability, and life that branches out to nourish all living beings.
Reverend Teijo Munnich is the disciple and dharma heir of Dainin Katagiri Roshi, a master whom she studied with for 15 years while also receiving formal training in “Hokyoji (Catching the Moon Zen Mountain Center) in Minnesota, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in California and Hosshinji in Obama, Japan.” “Dharma heir” refers to the concept of dharma transmission, by which a Zen (or Chan) master brings about the true awakening of a disciple through tutelage designed for that specific student. It is this concept which is traced back through history to determine the legitimacy of the teachings of each master in the chain, with each later master deferring for authority to each prior master. One can see the significance of Rev. Munnich’s vision when one recalls that, historically speaking, Zen masters have been to a significant degree largely male. When tracing the lineage of Zen practice and thought into modernity it makes clear sense that it should spread to be available to both sexes (and, one hopes, all genders), and Rev. Munnich’s vision is a noteworthy step in this direction. (For more detail, see an interview with the Rev. here: https://www.greattreetemple.org/teijo-s-vision.)
Great Tree Zen is associated with other monasteries both in terms of its lineage as well as in regards to its founder, who has had a hand in establishing or teaching at two other centers for Buddhist practice. These communities include one in Asheville, called the Zen Center of Asheville (ZCA), and one in Charlotte called the Charlotte Zen Meditation Society. Dainin Katagiri Roshi, Rev. Munnich’s master, founded a monastery in Minneapolis in 1972 where Rev. Munnich studied and received recognition as a dharma heir. This is a source of historical relation between Rev. Munnich and her former community as well as a basis for tracing the lineage back to Dogen, the founder of the Zen Soto School. Beyond this, the Temple shares relationships with the ZCA as a basis of connection for those interested in pursuing meditation further, in particular the elderly and women.
The Temple identifies “the main focus of [their] spiritual practice” as (seated) meditation, referred to as zazen. Specifically, Shikantaza, or “just sitting,” is a form of meditative practice “without technique or expectation” that draws explicitly from the Zen master Dogen’s thought that to access one’s Buddha nature one must forgo both the body and the mind, allowing them to “drop away” so that one’s buddha nature remains. Within Zen thought, we are all buddhas. As Dogen offered: “only Buddhas become Buddhas,” meaning that the idea of enlightenment as one becoming a Buddha is not quite right. Rather it is the case that the buddha nature within, as that which is already present within us, must be shown. It is the case, however, that our buddha-natures are hindered by our minds and bodies that provide distractions and cover up the radiant expression of the buddha nature. Regarding the Great Tree Temple itself, they explicitly endorse the view of Dogen and preserve their lineage in the school he started but do not offer an immense amount of detail as to the distinct nature of the Dogen’s Zen Soto School (as opposed to other traditions).
One thing that is strikingly clear, however, is the significance and frequency of meditative practice. Examining a daily schedule for retreats held at Great Tree Temple reveals 5 zazen meditation sessions taking 3 hours as well as 4 kinhin (walking) meditation sessions which take place each day interspersed among Temple maintenance work, meals, chanting the Heart Sutra (a central Mahayana sutra), and dharma talks (meetings in which the master gives insight into dharma). This doesn’t cover the youth and family monthly activities and retreats, the opportunity for practice sessions which last 3 months, summer internships which last 1 to 2 months, the daily open zazen meditation practices, as well as the numerous guest lectures, study groups, discussions, and other miscellaneous activities occurring throughout the many months the Temple is open. In addition to these activities the Temple also celebrates Dogen’s birthday, the (western/Gregorian standard calendar) New Year, and a memorial all-day sitting ceremony for Dogen and Keizan (the “second founder” or “Great Patriarch” of the Soto Zen School). The Temple is a very active space that draws from its founder and other teachers as well as outsiders to the community in an effort to spread its vision of the dharma year-round.
The community’s constituency is a little hard to get a firm grasp of. It would be very surprising to find an intensive study or analysis of any temple, let alone one that publishes a well documented and up-to-date report of its constituents. As this is expected, the best thing we have to go off of is a collection of photos used to increase the aesthetic appeal of the website which do not include large-scale shots of those in the community and are rather designed to show usually one person at a time for specific purposes. Further investigation brings one to their youtube channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCh9iFQatg7bFoXN6AW8swjw/videos), which contains more information about the demographics of those operating at the temple. It seems, in short, that the body of people most likely to appear in their published media are older white women. There is diversity amongst the staff at Great Tree Temple, but this is also in part due to the very small number of people running the space (not counting the rotating board of directors). Beyond this there is a presence of children in a handful of photos, indicating the temple to be a welcoming space for all ages and those already dedicated to a life beyond the practice of the teachings of Soto Zen.
This constituency is expected and seemingly the target audience for Great Tree Temple. While it does embed ritual and a sense of formality into its more intensive retreats, it prepares the inexperienced ahead of time with youtube tutorials explaining certain customs (i.e. the use of Oryoki bowls for dining: https://youtu.be/n5avmXnVhIU) as well as papers and materials to be aware of before spending time at the monastery (which can be found here: https://www.greattreetemple.org/ritual-chanting-the-sutra). It focuses on providing resources for those well outside of the practice of the tradition (as well as a more informal one-of-the-community type of feeling) while aiming to maintain a certain level of custom that respects the origin of the practice and tradition within that context.
The community seems to be funded largely by donations, opportunities for which are provided on their website. It does seem, however, that they tend to ask for somewhat reasonable amounts of money for their time and provision of expertise, food, and shelter to those who wish to partake. A message on bringing kids to the annual youth summer retreat says: “we want to make sure that all who want to participate will have the opportunity.” It charges $75 for the first child and $25 for each following. Prices for most activities seem to be reasonable (to my knowledge) and can be found here for more detail: https://www.greattreetemple.org/fee-schedule. The last thing to note is that there are clear plans to more fully develop the land on which the Temple rests, and I (without any reason beyond my intuition) suspect that the standard donations for retreats will not suffice. Perhaps donations are offered specifically for this end, or they are covered by community labor efforts as well as the general intake of donations.
A last item of interest to explore here is the depiction of this particular sangha as a Buddhist community. As discussed before, the constituency of this community and its appeal to an older, inexperienced audience demonstrates a particular leaning towards Buddhist thought being teaching accessible to all who seek it. The dharma, one could say, has no boundaries of accessibility, and so all those willing to come and learn (and, of course, come and sit) are welcome. It portrays Buddhism in a very accessible Americanized format, offering programs to cater to students leading lives beyond the Temple as well as welcoming shifts to zoom and other modern influences. As opposed to Buddhist sanghas that outsiders could see as representing a statistical minority’s religious expression, the Great Tree Temple is oriented not towards the expression of an established sangha’s identity, but rather to the broadening and collection of new community members into a new sangha—one that happens to draw from the statistical majority of its surroundings. This community represents Buddhism as an expression of a great teaching that manifests itself in practice and is fundamentally accessible to all who seek it.