ABOUT US
Mission
Prairie Mountain Zen Center offers the Buddhist practices of meditation, dharma discussion and sangha (community). We provide meditation opportunities in Longmont and Fort Collins, Colorado. During the pandemic, please join us via Zoom!
History
Our history traces to 1989 when founder Jodo Cliff Clusin moved to Boulder, Colorado, after practicing with Dainin Katagiri Roshi in Minneapolis for 12 years. At first, Cliff practiced with many different Zen groups in Boulder. After his priest ordination with Shoken Winecoff Roshi in 1995, Cliff began to offer practice opportunities in the Soto Zen tradition, under the name Prairie Mountain Zendo.
The name came to Cliff while sitting in the foothills above Boulder, gazing east across the vast expanse of prairie towards the Great Plains. Prairie symbolizes diversity, the many details of our lives, and mountain symbolizes oneness, the panoramic view of life that is open to all.
Reverend Jodo Cliff Clusin
At that time, Shoken visited Colorado once a year to lead weekend retreats, and other practice events were held throughout the year. In 2002, students who had been coming to Longmont from Fort Collins to sit with Prairie Mountain, decided to establish a weekly practice at Plymouth Congregational Church in Fort Collins. This weekly practice has continued uninterrupted since that time.
In 2010, in order to create our own practice space in Longmont, PMZC opened The Meditation Place. Sharing a practice space with other groups and teachers became our means of financially supporting an ideal Zen practice space. We added both a regular Sunday morning schedule and early weekday morning sitting in Longmont and increased our weekend retreat opportunities.
Participation has grown slowly over the years, and now we have a 9-member PMZC board of directors.. We offer two online meetings each week and welcome a wide variety of guest speakers. We maintain the leases on our practice spaces in Longmont and Fort Collins, in order that we can someday resume our Zen practice in person, while continuing to offer our ongoing online connections.