Body-Mind Temple
Body-Mind Zen Temple (ShinJinJi from Dogen’s Shobogenzo), joins its sister temple, Peaceful Dragon (AnRyuJi), at Two Streams Zen Farm in Westhampton, Massachusetts. This former urban temple, is now being embraced by tall trees, the sounds of crickets, birds, chipmunks, and the occasional visits of bears in the woods of rural New England.
Prior to the founding of Two Streams Zen, Body-Mind Zen Temple was part of The Zen Center on Main Street in Northampton, Massachusetts where the temple gazed down upon the comings and goings on Main Street, Northampton, sat with traffic noises, street musicians and the conversations of passers by. In it previous incarnation, ‘Zen on Main’ was an affiliate of The Village Zendo in New York City, pioneering the only dedicated sitting meditation space in Northampton for many years.
Guiding Teacher
Dr. Catherine Anraku Hondorp, Sensei is an authorized Zen teacher in the White Plum lineage of Maezumi Roshi, a Soto Zen Buddhist Priest and co-founder with her spouse Ryūmon Hilda Baldoquín Sensei of Two Streams Zen.
Anraku Sensei’s passion for social justice stems from growing up White in a northeastern U.S. urban Black ghetto. Born to a Dutch Reformed Church minister and an Early Childhood educator parents, in a multiracial family, during the times of the Civil Rights Movement, the racial inequities were painfully apparent. Seeking to make sense of the world around her and her place in it along with an emerging identity as a queer, artist and social activist ignited spiritual questioning and eventually brought her to the path of Zen.
She began Zen studies with John Daido Loori Roshi at Zen Mountain Monastery in 1987 taking Jukai and receiving the Dharma Name Eishun (Eternal Spring) in 1990. In 1996 she became a student of Enkyo O’Hara Roshi receiving Shukke Tokudo and the priest name Anraku (Peaceful Bliss) in August 2000. In December 2009 Anraku Sensei received Dharma Transmission from Roshi O’Hara at Wisdom House in Litchfield, Connecticut.
Anraku holds an MFA in dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Logan College of Chiropractic. She is a master of Network Spinal Analysis, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner®, and a certified Internal Family Systems Practitioner.
She is a lover of all things four legged, a perpetually hopeful gardener, writer of prose who appreciates a good detective mystery, an experiential learner who can usually figure it out and a persistent questioner of life.