-Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, author of Opening the Hand of Thought

Commit-to-Sit: A 90-Day Commitment to Practice

Thursday, January 17th - Tuesday, April 16th, 2019

Celebrate the New Year with an energetic commitment to begin or to deepen your meditation practice. Join an extended community from across the country and around the world for NYZCCC’s fourth annual 90-Day Practice Period.

Each morning for 90 days, participants will receive an email with a reflection drawn from the beloved book, Opening the Hand of Thought by the Japanese Zen Master Kosho Uchiyama Roshi, one of the teachers instrumental in bringing Zen to America. The emails will include a thought-provoking reflection to challenge, encourage, and support your commitment to a daily meditation practice.

Participants will also have access to two live-streamed Dharma talks each month and be invited to participate in a once a month online Q&A discussion with NYZCCC’s Guiding Teachers, Sensei Robert Chodo Campbell and Sensei Koshin Paley Ellison.

Each Commit-to-Sit registration supports the non-profit direct care and educational work of New York Zen Center for Contemplative Care.

Here is what past Commit to Sit participants said about their experience:

-"Thank you so much for these daily reminders to be alive, be awake, to be..."

-"Thank you! Having this over the winter has been a real boost."


-"Thank you for this 90 day co-journeying. I am a Canadian from Toronto and have been on the road across the United States for the whole period of this Commit To Sit email program. This has anchored my daily practice when I have been away from consistent Buddhist meditation community. Along the way, I have shared select quotations with friends and family, which has in turn impacted their practice. I want to offer this testimony so that you know the ripples have spread widely."


-"My wife and I participated and practiced in this Zen ango [practice period] together. It was a wonderful offering. It really helped to stay grounded in all of the difficulty taking place in the world and especially within our American society right now. This could not have come along at a better time to sit and give pause. To remember foster compassion, kindness, and humility towards self and other. Thank you for making this available in this online format as it is not easy for us to get away from our jobs as teachers and into the formal setting. From a lay-family we offer humble bows of gratitude and well-wishes for everyone."


-"Thank you very much for this extraordinary addition to my days. I appreciate how it informed my practice, gave me food for thought every day. Thank you, thank you, thank you ... three deep bows to you. I will miss this daily aid to my practice."


-"Commit to Sit has been so hugely important to me. It came into my life at just the right time, as I settled into a new living and working place, in a new town, and started a new business. Such changes are quite stressful for me, and the sitting helped focus me on the whole universe and calm my mind and body. In short, it has changed my life for good. I now experience my whole day as part of my practice, and I plan to do so for the rest of my life. Having been in several spiritual practices before, I find this way to be the best for me. Thank you so much for making it available."


-"I loved this Journey. I learned a lot about myself, and with a busy schedule a 13 yr. old and 8 yr. old it was so nice to invest in me for 20 minutes in silence focusing on my growth. Thank for you for the wonderful opportunity."


-"As this "Commit to Sit" comes to an end, I want to express my deep gratitude and appreciation for all the work that goes into creating a sequence like this - the reading, the research, and the reflections and putting it all together. Of course, as I suspect others as well found, some of them spoke more deeply to me than others but almost without exception, I found relevance in my daily life and took them with me to the cushion."