Mount Baldy Zen Center

Mount Baldy Zen Center (MBZC) is a Rinzai Zen monastery of the Nyorai-nyokyo sect, located in the San Gabriel Mountains of the Angeles National Forest region on 4.5 acres (18,000 m²) and founded in 1971 by Kyozan Joshu Sasaki. The monastery — once a Boy Scout camp — became famous when musician Leonard Cohen joined the community in 1994. The monastery served as residence for Sasaki, and is the training center for monastics in his lineage. Other centers in Sasaki's network, including Rinzai-ji, offer the opportunity to practice Zen to laypeople in the lineage. Sasaki died in 2014 at the age of 107.

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Zen center

The phrase Zen center was coined by American students of Shunryu Suzuki in the mid-twentieth century, and the San Francisco Zen Center became the first Zen center, incorporating in 1962. Neither temples nor monasteries (although at times operating such facilities), Zen centers occupy a unique place in the historical development of Zen Buddhism and of Buddhism in the United States. As Zen practice has expanded throughout the United States over the last fifty years, the variety of Zen centers has increased. While some are now the homes of wealthy communities in major cities (such as Zen Center of Los Angeles), and some are in traditional mountain settings (such as Yokoji Zen Mountain Center), other Zen centers have either humble or no permanent physical location - meeting in members private homes, university classrooms, and Quaker Meeting Houses to name but a few examples. While large and established Zen centers may serve as the residence of priests, monks, and lay people, smaller and more rural Zen centers may have no ordained members. Although some recent studies have been made regarding Zen in America, the area remains under researched, and still quite heterogeneous.