Johanneshof
Baker-roshi's residential center in the Black Forest of Germany
Cuke Podcast on A Month with Dharma Sangha Germany 🔊
Zentatsu passes the mantle on to Tatsudo: Stepping Down and Mountain Seat Ceremonies, Sept. 2024
Dharma Sangha Europe | Johanneshof page on Dharma Sangha Europe website
Johanneshof is a center of the Dharma-Sangha Europe, a community gathered around Zentatsu Baker-roshi, the Dharma-heir of Suzuki Shunryu-roshi. At the same time, it is a center open for all interested in Zen-Buddhist practice. The core of the practice is Zazen (sitting meditation) and mindfulness in everyday life. Residents and visitors alike follow a schedule which was developed from a traditional monastic schedule and adapted to the needs of a center in the West.
Johanneshof provides a range of possibilities for practice: sesshins (one-week-periods of intensive Zazen and silence), practice weeks (a mixture of Zazen, talks by Roshi about a Buddhist text and discussions), practice weekends (two days of Zazen), seminars (talks by Roshi), or just sharing the residents' everyday life.
With the purchase of the Johanneshof in 1996, a long-standing wish of a number of European lay-practitioners was fulfilled: the wish for a monastic center as a base, as a link between monastic - and lay-life, as a building for building a world of more wisdom and compassion, a more Buddhist world.
Through the spiritual guidance of Zentatsu Baker-roshi, the personal engagement of the two precious persons, Gisela and Gerald Weischede - pupils of Baker-roshi since 1986, both ordained -, and the help of many others, the vision of transforming one's life according to Zen-Buddhist teachings became more vivid, and found a concrete base in Johanneshof.