Online Offerings

Embark on a Life-Changing Journey with Our Online Zen Courses

Discover the transformative power of Zen with our exclusive online coures, thoughtfully crafted by Roshi Robert Joshin Althouse, our esteemed Abbot and Zen Master with over three decades of teaching experience. These self-paced classes offer a unique opportunity to explore the profound wisdom of Zen from the comfort of your own home.

Designed for modern seekers, our courses are rooted in inclusive, practical, and accessible mindfulness teachings that will guide you on a path of self-discovery and personal growth. As you progress through each lesson, you’ll gain invaluable insights and tools to cultivate a deeper sense of meaning, purpose, joy, and gratitude in your daily life.

Whether you’re new to Zen or a seasoned practioner, these courses will help you develop a strong foundation in mindfulness practices, empowering you to navigate life’s challenges with greater ease, resilience, and clarity. With Roshi Althouse’s expert guidance, you’ll learn to integrate Zen principles into your everyday experiences, fostering a more authentic, fulfilling, and connected way of being.

Invest in your spiritual well-being and unlock the door to profound personal transformation. Enroll in our online Zen courses today and embark on a journey that will forever change the way you perceive and engage with the world around you. Don’t miss this opportunity to learn from a true Zen Master and take a step towards a more enlightened compassionate, and purposeful life.

This Special Online Series includes Three Self-paced Courses

FOUNDATIONS OF MINDFULNESS
HEALING, GROUNDING, OPENING
PATH OF ZEN
CLARIFYING, CONNECTING, LIBERATING
SIX PARAMITAS: Courage & Grace Under Fire
SERVING, BEARING WITNESS, ENGAGING

Roshi Robert Althouse

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Curriculum Overview

FOUNDATIONS OF MINDFULNESS
This four-part introduction to Zen is founded on sane and reliable Mindfulness practices that are practical and down-to-earth. You’ll discover how the practice of mindfulness can help you be more resilient and grounded. The course will give you a comprehensive context from neuroscience, psychology, and Buddhism, and the many benefits this practice can bring to your wellness journey. You’ll learn how to move past what gets in the way and how to harness your intention to change habits that no longer serve you. By trusting the wisdom of your embodied experience you’ll reach the first milestone on the Zen Spiritual path–an open, joyful heart that approaches your life with more resilience, gratitude and grace.

What does it mean to live our daily lives according to Zen principles? This class will dispel misconceptions about mindfulness and meditation. You’ll learn how mindfulness can benefit many areas of your life. It will get you started with the practice of meditation.
What gets in the way of meditation from the inside out? This class will help you overcome some of the crippling effects of shame that prevent you from trusting your own direct experience, which is the basis for meditation practice.
You’ll learn the nuts and bolts of how to meditate in this class, including breathing and posture. Learn how this meditation can improve the quality of your attention which can have a profound impact on your over-all well-being.
Opening to life is allowing the inconsistencies and ambiguities to be a part of your daily experience. We all suffer in many ways, but opening to our suffering is the way forward to opening our broken hearts.

PATH OF ZEN
In this four-part series of classes, you’ll learn about the nature of the genuine spiritual path of Zen, and how you can enter the way through these clear, concise, and down-to-earth teachings from an experienced Zen Master. You’ll learn about the inflection point that turns mindfulness practice towards a deeper spiritual calling. You’ll learn how the construct of self or ego is the root cause of suffering and how to begin moving beyond the prison of self-referential obsessions, by trusting a new source of wisdom. You finish by learning about the power of living your life by vow, and how such a large spiritual commitment can re-orient and radically transform your life towards one of greater joy, meaning, and service.

This class will introduce you to an elegant teaching of Buddha describing the arc of the overall spiritual path called the “Four Foundations of Mindfulness”.
This class goes to the heart of our Zen teachings addressing the root cause of suffering, the self that we construct.
In this class you’ll learn about a more dynamic approach to mindfulness meditation called “Open Awareness”.
It’s time to find out what we mean by “Zen-inspired living”. Trusting your own deepest aspirations will set you clearly on the spiritual path that will take you forward, meeting whatever challenges life throws your way.

SIX PARAMITAS: Courage and Grace Under Fire
In this series of eight comprehensive classes, you’ll learn about the Six Paramitas, which are an ancient wisdom teaching of Buddhism about how to transverse the path of a Spiritual Warrior (Bodhisattva). You’ll learn how to find your footing in a time of chaos, violence, discord, dysfunction, and disruption. Drawing on these teachings and the new set of tools you’ll learn here, you’ll be able to exercise your own courage in a surprisingly new way. You’ll discover you are a larger container that is resourceful, with access to increased confidence, joy, sanity, and courage.

This class explores the nature of the genuine spiritual path of Zen built on a sane foundation of seeing self and reality (dharma) clearly. This trusting of the dharma becomes the touchstone upon which all further progress on the path depends.
Everything follows from a clear intention or commitment. Taking the Bodhisattva Vow arises from your own experience of your own vulnerability - your soft and tender heart. This is a source of great strength and resilience on the spiritual path.
Once you commit to living a larger life this first Dana Paramita of Generosity presents itself to you as a further way of letting go, of surrendering and trusting a larger self, a larger world.
The spiritual path of Zen requires strong personal integrity and discipline. This class will explore the traditional teachings about this according to this Second Sila Paramita
Aggression is one of the most difficult sufferings to uproot in ourselves, so this Kashanti Paramita of Patience can help us begin to take small steps to work with our everyday irritations and our own anger.
The spiritual path of Zen requires energy and exertion, but we have to learn how to do this without becoming attached to an outcome. This Paramita helps support a strong determination to keep going, even when we are discouraged.
This Dhyana Paramita is a higher level of meditation. Here meditation has become a part of your life, and it’s rippling into every aspect of your daily experience.
This last Paramita really integrates all the others and bring a profound experience of presence and intimacy to our lives. We learn to trust this new kind of intelligence or wisdom which doesn’t solidify the self.

MEET YOUR TEACHER

Roshi Robert Joshin Althouse

Roshi Robert Joshin Althouse is a fully empowered Zen teacher in the White Plum lineage and a fully ordained Zen Buddhist Priest. Roshi and his wife, Roshi June Ryushin Tanoue, co-founded the Zen Life & Meditation Center. Roshi is the Abbot of the Zen Center and its primary teacher and meditation instructor.

He and his wife moved to California in 2001 to work for the Peacemaker Community with Bernie Glassman where Althouse served as the Director of the Zen Peacemaker Order for two years. He also served on the Board of Directors of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship for three years.

Althouse has been practicing in the Zen and Vajrayana traditions for over 40 years. He's been teaching for over 20 years. His root teachers were Taizan Maezumi Roshi and Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. He received Transmission from Roshi Nicolee Jikyo McMahon in the White Plum lineage tradition of Zen. He has a Bachelor's in Sociology from the University of Redlands.

He is also an artist and painter. He’s been doing digital paintings on his computer for the last 10 years. You can view his work at his site for Robert Althouse Fine Arts at www.althouseart.com.