Two Arrows Zen

10/28/2026

TAZ Fundraiser Spotlight: Matt Stella

A Practice That Changes Lives. A Community Worth Sustaining.

As Two Arrows Zen celebrates 20 years of teaching and practice, we're highlighting the dedicated practitioners helping carry this community into its next chapter.

Meet Matt Stella a Monk and member of TAZ Team Tiger, whose journey with Two Arrows Zen has been deeply transformative.

Matt shares that sitting meditation, the guidance of his teachers, and the connections he's formed with fellow practitioners have changed his life in profound ways.

He sees TAZ as a precious refuge, especially in challenging times—a place where awareness, wisdom, compassion, and meaningful connection can flourish.

Matt captures the spirit of this fundraising effort beautifully:

"The benefit I’ve received from Two Arrows Zen Center is beyond price, yet it does cost money to keep the lights on."

Through his participation in our 20th Anniversary Sit-a-Thon fundraiser, Matt is helping ensure that this refuge, its teachings, and its community remain available for generations to come.

Please join us in supporting Matt and the future of Two Arrows Zen. Every gift, no matter the size, is an expression of generosity that makes this work possible.

Matt's personal fundraising link is in the comments below.

10/28/2026

**Celebrating 20 Years of Teaching and Practice**

Join Two Arrows Zen for 1000 Years of Practice: An Evening of Art, Music & Generosity, a special gathering celebrating two decades of Zen teaching, practice, and community.

The evening features an intimate performance by internationally acclaimed sitar artist **Arjun K. Verma**, accompanied by tabla player Debanjan Bhattacharya. Together, they will create a rich musical experience through the melodic beauty of the sitar and the intricate rhythms of the tabla, inviting deep listening and contemplation.

Guests will also enjoy a reception, silent auction, and access to the galleries of the Utah Museum of Contemporary Art.

Saturday, November 21, 2026
5:00–8:30 PM
Utah Museum of Contemporary Art | Salt Lake City

Join us for an evening celebrating art, music, generosity, and the enduring spirit of Zen practice.

Event details and tickets: https://twoarrowszen.org/events/1000-years-of-practice-event/

10/26/2026

Thanks to friends, practitioners, and supporters, Two Arrows Zen has raised $33,000 toward its $60,000 20th Anniversary Fundraising Goal! We’re inviting the community to help raise the remaining $27,000 by November 22.

Every contribution helps sustain a welcoming Zen community where people can slow down, look inward, cultivate compassion, and learn to meet suffering with wisdom. Through its centers in Salt Lake City and Torrey, Utah, and its online sangha, Two Arrows Zen makes Buddhist teachings, meditation, and supportive practice available to people around the world.

On Sunday, November 22, Two Arrows Zen will host a worldwide 20-hour Sit-A-Thon dedicated to world peace and the benefit of all sentient beings.

The Sit-A-Thon is free and open to everyone. No previous meditation experience is needed, and there is no obligation to donate. Join online from anywhere in the world for twenty minutes, an hour, or as much of the gathering as you wish.

This is an opportunity to encounter the Dharma, practice together, and support the teachings through sitting, donating, sponsoring others, or sharing the invitation. In Buddhism, generosity is more than a financial transaction: intentional giving plants seeds of beneficial karma and connects us to the well-being of others.

As the beloved Joe McQueen used to say, “You don’t got to give. You get to give.”

Whether you give five dollars, twenty-five dollars, a hundred, or whatever feels right, every act of generosity matters. Small acts of goodness accumulate, creating ripples far beyond what we can see.

JOIN THE WORLDWIDE SIT-A-THON — FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE

Sunday, November 22, 2026
Midnight – 8:00 p.m. Mountain Time
Online via Zoom

https://twoarrowszen.app.neoncrm.com/forms/taz-sit-a-thon-sign-up

DONATE TO THE TWO ARROWS ZEN 20TH ANNIVERSARY FUNDRAISER

https://twoarrowszen.app.neoncrm.com/campaigns/two-arrows-zen-sit-a-thon-2026

20 YEARS. 20 HOURS. ONE WORLDWIDE SANGHA.

Together in meditation, generosity, and gratitude, for world peace and the benefit of all sentient beings.

Join us! Two Arrows Zen is excited to sponsor our first Sit-A-Thon to celebrate our 20th anniversary. For twenty years, Two Arrows Zen has offered a place to sit, practice, study, and discover what becomes possible when we meet our lives with greate

10/23/2026

Thanks to the generosity of our community, Two Arrows Zen has raised $30,000 toward our $60,000 anniversary fundraising goal! People are stepping forward to support a community built on compassion, wisdom, and the practice of awakening. We are deeply grateful and invite you to be part of this growing momentum.

This year marks twenty years since our founding teachers, Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi and Michael Mugaku Zimmerman Roshi, received Dharma transmission. What began in Utah has grown into an international community connected through meditation, retreats, study, and friendship.

On Sunday, November 22, we’re celebrating with a worldwide 20-hour Sit-A-Thon, dedicated to the benefit of all sentient beings.

Whether you’ve practiced with us in Salt Lake City or Torrey, attended an online class or retreat, or simply followed our journey through social media, you are invited to join us.

You don’t have to be Buddhist, sit for twenty hours, or make a donation to participate.

Just come sit with us.

For two decades, the dedication of teachers, students, and supporters has sustained Two Arrows Zen. In gratitude for what we’ve received, we have an opportunity to help carry these teachings forward.

Altruism is real. When you do it, you feel it.

Your contributions support meditation, retreats, scholarships, and the future of Two Arrows Zen. But this gathering is about more than fundraising. It’s an opportunity to reconnect with old friends, welcome new practitioners, and experience the collective strength of our sangha.

If Two Arrows Zen has touched your life, please share this invitation with someone who might benefit from the practice.

PARTICIPATE • DONATE • SPONSOR

REGISTER TO SIT — FREE AND OPEN TO EVERYONE

https://twoarrowszen.app.neoncrm.com/forms/taz-sit-a-thon-sign-up

HELP US REACH OUR $60,000 GOAL

https://twoarrowszen.app.neoncrm.com/campaigns/two-arrows-zen-sit-a-thon-2026

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2026

Midnight – 8:00 p.m. Mountain Time

Worldwide via Zoom

Together in gratitude and generosity, for the benefit of all beings.

10/22/2026

On October 21, 1969, American novelist and poet Jack Kerouac died in St. Petersburg, Florida, at the age of 47. Although best remembered for On the Road (1957), Kerouac also played an important role in introducing Buddhist philosophy to American literary culture. His writings on suffering, impermanence, meditation, emptiness, and awakening became part of the broader encounter between Buddhism and the Beat Generation during the 1950s.

Born in Lowell, Massachusetts, in 1922, Kerouac was raised in a French-Canadian Catholic family. During the 1950s, he began an intensive study of Buddhism, reading Buddhist scriptures, D. T. Suzuki’s writings on Zen, and A Buddhist Bible, the influential anthology edited by Dwight Goddard. His interests extended beyond Zen to Mahayana and early Buddhist teachings, particularly the Four Noble Truths, the nature of suffering, impermanence, and liberation from attachment. Kerouac’s Catholic upbringing remained important throughout his life, and his Buddhist writings frequently combined concepts from both religious traditions.

His Buddhist studies produced Some of the Dharma, an extensive collection of notebooks written primarily between 1953 and 1956 and published posthumously in 1997. The work combines passages from Buddhist scriptures, reflections on meditation, prayers, poetry, and personal observations. It provides a detailed record of Kerouac’s attempt to understand Buddhist teachings and incorporate them into his daily life. Unlike a conventional Buddhist commentary, the manuscript moves freely between religious study, literary experimentation, and autobiography.

Kerouac was particularly interested in the Buddhist teaching of dukkha, commonly translated as suffering or unsatisfactoriness. The First Noble Truth, which recognizes suffering as a fundamental characteristic of conditioned existence, became a recurring subject in his writing. He also explored impermanence, compassion, and the possibility of liberation through meditation and insight. His interpretations were sometimes highly personal and did not always correspond to established Buddhist doctrine.

These interests became widely known through The Dharma Bums (1958), a novel based on his friendships with the poets Gary Snyder, Allen Ginsberg, and Philip Whalen. Its principal characters, Ray Smith and Japhy Ryder, were modeled on Kerouac and Snyder. The novel describes meditation, Buddhist study, mountain climbing, poetry, and attempts to live simply outside conventional American society. Snyder’s knowledge of Chinese and Japanese Buddhism, together with his developing commitment to Zen practice, provided an important influence on Kerouac’s understanding of Buddhist life.

Another significant work, Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha, was written in 1955 but not published until 2008. Drawing upon Buddhist scriptures and traditional accounts of Siddhartha Gautama’s life, Kerouac retold the Buddha’s search for liberation and the teachings that followed his awakening. The manuscript demonstrates that his interest in Buddhism involved sustained engagement with Buddhist texts rather than merely adopting the religious language of the counterculture.

Kerouac’s Buddhist interests also shaped his poetry. Influenced by Japanese haiku, R. H. Blyth’s translations, and conversations with Gary Snyder, he developed a form he called American haiku. Rather than strictly following the Japanese seventeen-syllable convention, he emphasized brevity, clarity, direct observation, and the presentation of a moment of experience. His Book of Haikus, edited by Regina Weinreich and published in 2003, preserves hundreds of these experiments. Although haiku is not exclusively a Buddhist literary form, Kerouac’s approach reflects his interest in attention, immediacy, and the relationship between perception and language.

His short work The Scripture of the Golden Eternity, written in 1956 and published in 1960, represents another explicitly Buddhist dimension of his literary practice. Composed as a series of brief prose meditations, the work draws upon Mahayana ideas concerning emptiness, nonduality, and the nature of reality. Its language frequently resembles religious scripture, although it remains Kerouac’s own literary interpretation rather than an authoritative Buddhist teaching. Mexico City Blues (1959), a collection of 242 poetic choruses, similarly combines Buddhist references, jazz improvisation, personal experience, and spontaneous composition.

Kerouac’s relationship with Buddhism was complex. Unlike Gary Snyder and Philip Whalen, who pursued formal Zen training, Kerouac did not establish himself within a sustained Zen monastic lineage. His engagement was primarily expressed through personal study, periods of meditation, writing, and conversations with Buddhist practitioners. His Catholic faith, struggles with alcohol, and changing religious commitments remained part of his life. These distinctions are important in understanding his place in Buddhist history: Kerouac was not a Zen teacher, but a writer whose encounter with Buddhist teachings influenced the development of American Buddhist literature.

His influence continued after his death. In 1974, Allen Ginsberg, Anne Waldman, and Diane di Prima established the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. Naropa was founded that year by Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche, a Tibetan Buddhist teacher who envisioned an educational institution bringing contemplative practice into conversation with Western intellectual and artistic traditions.

The school developed an approach to literary education that included poetry, performance, improvisation, meditation, and the study of language. Its faculty and visiting artists included John Cage, Philip Whalen, Gregory Corso, William S. Burroughs, and other figures associated with experimental literature and contemplative practice. Naropa’s Tibetan Buddhist foundations were distinct from the Zen traditions studied by several Beat writers, but the institution became an important meeting place for these different Buddhist and artistic communities.

Anne Waldman has explained that the word disembodied reflected the continuing influence of poets who were no longer physically present. Their writings remained available to succeeding generations, creating a form of literary continuity that the school’s founders understood through the language of lineage and transmission.

Kerouac’s place in American Buddhist history therefore extends beyond The Dharma Bums. Through his Buddhist notebooks, his retelling of the Buddha’s life, his experiments with haiku, and his explorations of emptiness and impermanence, he helped bring Buddhist teachings into American literature at a time when formal Buddhist institutions remained relatively unfamiliar to much of the American public.

His work also documents the complexities of that encounter: the differences between religious study and formal training, between literary interpretations and traditional doctrine, and between the influence of Buddhist ideas and the sustained practice of Buddhism itself.

Reading and Resources

Jack Kerouac — The Dharma Bums (1958)

Jack Kerouac — Some of the Dharma (1997)
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/330143/some-of-the-dharma-by-jack-kerouac/

Jack Kerouac — Book of Haikus, edited by Regina Weinreich (2003)
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/288771/book-of-haikus-by-jack-kerouac/

Jack Kerouac — Wake Up: A Life of the Buddha (2008)
https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/302999/wake-up-by-jack-kerouac/9781440662355/

Jack Kerouac — The Scripture of the Golden Eternity (1960)

Jack Kerouac — Mexico City Blues (1959)

Dwight Goddard, editor — A Buddhist Bible (1932)

National Park Service — Jack Kerouac Biography
https://www.nps.gov/lowe/learn/historyculture/jackkerouac.htm

Naropa University — Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics
https://www.naropa.edu/academics/schools-centers/jack-kerouac-school-of-disembodied-poetics/

Naropa University — History of the Summer Writing Program
https://www.naropa.edu/academics/swp/history/

Naropa University — Interview with Anne Waldman on the School’s Founding
https://www.naropa.edu/magazine/interview-with-anne-waldman/

Naropa University — Digital Audio Archives
https://archives.naropa.edu/

10/21/2026

Today ( Oct 21, 2026 ), Two Arrows Zen celebrates the 83rd birthday of Michael Mugaku Zimmerman Roshi, Zen teacher, former Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court, and co-founder of Two Arrows Zen. His life represents an unusual intersection of American jurisprudence, Buddhist philosophy, and the transmission of Zen practice in the West.

Born in Chicago in 1943, Mugaku Roshi moved to Arizona as a teenager before attending the University of Utah, where he completed his undergraduate and legal education. His career included a judicial clerkship in Washington, D.C., private legal practice, and service on the Utah Supreme Court from 1984 to 2000, including four years as Chief Justice from 1994 to 1998. He subsequently returned to private practice, establishing Zimmerman Booher, an appellate law firm, in 2011.

Mugaku Roshi’s introduction to meditation began in 1993, during his first wife Lynne’s struggle with terminal cancer. During her illness, the couple was offered an opportunity to participate in a mindfulness meditation class drawing upon the work of Jon Kabat-Zinn, whose development of Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction helped introduce contemplative practices into modern medicine and healthcare.

The experience introduced Mugaku Roshi to meditation during one of the most difficult periods of his life. When Lynne died in January 1994, shortly after he became Chief Justice of the Utah Supreme Court, he was left raising their three young daughters while continuing his judicial responsibilities.

In the weeks following her death, he began rising before dawn to meditate on the porch of their Salt Lake City home. What began as a way to find stability amid grief and uncertainty gradually developed into a sustained exploration of Buddhist practice.

Later, a colleague suggested that he meet Diane Hamilton, who was serving as the first director of the Utah Judiciary’s Office of Alternative Dispute Resolution. Hamilton, now Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi, had already spent more than a decade studying Buddhist teachings, beginning at Naropa University in 1983 under Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche.

Their shared interest in meditation became the foundation of a relationship that would shape both their personal lives and their future work as Zen teachers. Hamilton introduced him to Buddhist literature, shared teachings and recordings, and encouraged him to attend an introductory class at Kanzeon Zen Center in Salt Lake City in early 1997.

During that class, a Zen monk made a statement that would become central to his understanding of Buddhist practice:

“In Buddhism, there is no hope.”

For Mugaku Roshi, the statement did not suggest despair or resignation. Rather, it pointed toward freedom from attachment to expectations and imagined futures. Instead of seeking refuge in how life might become different, Zen offered the possibility of meeting reality directly, as it is.

Together, Michael and Diane began studying under Genpo Merzel Roshi at Kanzeon Zen Center, becoming part of the White Plum lineage established by Taizan Maezumi Roshi. Their shared training would eventually lead to ordination, Dharma transmission, and the founding of Two Arrows Zen.

Mugaku Roshi’s formal training included intensive meditation, retreats, Buddhist study, and the traditional practice of kōan introspection.

Kōans, the often paradoxical encounters and questions preserved in Zen literature, are not intended to be solved through ordinary intellectual reasoning. They challenge habitual assumptions about identity, perception, and the distinction between subject and object. For someone whose professional life had been devoted to reasoning, analysis, and legal interpretation, kōan practice offered a fundamentally different approach to understanding experience.

A 2004 Deseret News profile documented Mugaku Roshi working with Zen teacher Daniel Doen Silberberg on a traditional kōan involving a buffalo passing through a window. Their exchange explored the relationship between the relative and absolute, the apparent separation of individuals, and the inseparability of personal liberation from the liberation of all beings.

His formal training progressed through several important stages. In 1998, he received Jukai, formally taking the Buddhist precepts. That same year, he and Diane Hamilton were married by Genpo Roshi.

In 2003, Mugaku Roshi and Musho Roshi received Shukke Tokudo together, becoming ordained Zen monks in the Sōtō tradition. During the spring practice period of 2005, they served together as Shushos, head students undergoing an intensive period of leadership and training.

In early 2006, Mugaku Roshi received Denkai, the transmission of the precepts, followed by Dharma transmission (Shiho) from Genpo Merzel Roshi on December 9, 2006, seven months after Musho Roshi received her transmission. The ceremony formally recognized him as a successor in the Zen teaching lineage.

In 2018, he received Inka, the final seal of recognition, from Sidney Musai Walter Roshi, another successor in the White Plum lineage of Taizan Maezumi Roshi.

His Buddhist name, Mugaku, meaning “no learning,” reflects an important distinction in Zen between intellectual knowledge and direct realization. It does not reject scholarship or study but points toward an understanding that cannot be reached through concepts alone.

Throughout his teaching, Mugaku Roshi has emphasized the fluidity of perspective, the impermanence of fixed identities, and the relationship between wisdom and compassion. His writings describe Zen as a process of recognizing the limitations of our assumptions and learning to respond to life without becoming confined by them.

This understanding has informed his work beyond the zendo. Alongside Musho Roshi, he has presented programs on meditation, mindfulness, and conflict resolution for members of the legal profession, bringing Buddhist insights into conversations about professional responsibility and human relationships.

Following their Dharma transmission in 2006, Mugaku Roshi and Musho Roshi began developing the teaching community that became Two Arrows Zen. Their early retreats in Torrey, Utah, eventually led to the establishment of a permanent zendo near Capitol Reef National Park. By 2010, Mugaku Roshi was also teaching Zen in the basement of their Salt Lake City home, and in 2011 the community opened the Artspace Zendo.

Today, Two Arrows Zen provides meditation, traditional Zen training, Dharma study, retreats, and online opportunities for practitioners throughout the world. Its approach maintains the forms and disciplines of Zen while recognizing that spiritual practice must also be integrated into family life, professional responsibilities, and the ordinary circumstances of being human.

This year marks the twentieth anniversary of Mugaku Roshi’s Dharma transmission, an occasion that recognizes his continued commitment to teaching and the generations of practitioners who have contributed to the growth of Two Arrows Zen.

On his 83rd birthday, we extend our gratitude to Mugaku Roshi for his dedication to the Dharma, his years of teaching, and his service to the sangha.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, MUGAKU ROSHI!

As we celebrate Mugaku Roshi’s birthday and twenty years of teaching, we invite our community to honor this milestone by contributing to the Two Arrows Zen 20th Anniversary Fundraiser. Your generosity will help sustain our practice, support our teachers, and ensure that the teachings remain available to future generations.

Two Arrows Zen has reached the halfway point of its $60,000 anniversary fundraising goal. On November 22, practitioners and friends around the world will gather for a 20-hour Sit-A-Thon dedicated to the benefit of all sentient beings.

For those wishing to honor Mugaku Roshi’s birthday, please consider making a donation to help sustain the practice, programs, retreats, and teachings of Two Arrows Zen.

https://twoarrowszen.app.neoncrm.com/campaigns/two-arrows-zen-sit-a-thon-2026

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SOURCES AND FURTHER READING

Michael Mugaku Zimmerman Roshi — Two Arrows Zen

https://twoarrowszen.org/teachers/michael-mugaku-zimerman-roshi/

Our History — Two Arrows Zen

https://twoarrowszen.org/about/history/

Sitting Judge: Retired Utah Chief Justice Finds His Way as a Buddhist Monk — Deseret News, April 24, 2004

https://www.deseret.com/2004/4/24/19824855/sitting-judge-retired-utah-chief-justice-finds-his-way-as-a-buddhist-monk/

Utah Justice Now Zen Teacher — Deseret News, December 16, 2006

https://www.deseret.com/2006/12/16/19991282/utah-justice-now-zen-teacher/

Michael Mugaku Zimmerman Roshi — White Plum Asanga

https://whiteplum.org/membership-list-public/user/225/

10/21/2026

Something wonderful is happening within the Two Arrows Zen community. Through the generosity of our friends, students, practitioners, and supporters, we’ve reached the halfway point of our $60,000 fundraising goal. And we’re just getting started.

To everyone who has contributed, thank you. Your generosity is more than financial support. It is an expression of gratitude for the teachings we’ve received, the community we’ve built, and our shared commitment to making the Dharma available to others.

In Buddhism, dāna, or generosity, is one of the foundational practices on the path to awakening. Jizō Bodhisattva embodies this spirit through his boundless compassion and unwavering commitment to relieving suffering. His example reminds us that generosity is not measured only by what we give, but by our willingness to participate in the well-being of others.

That spirit of generosity is already moving through our community, and we invite you to be part of it.

For those who may not know what we’re celebrating, 2026 marks twenty years since our founding teachers, Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi and Michael Mugaku Zimmerman Roshi, received Dharma transmission. To honor their twenty years of teaching and the community that has grown around their practice, we’re gathering for a worldwide 20-hour Sit-A-Thon on Sunday, November 22.

Whether you’ve practiced with us in Salt Lake City or Torrey, joined our online meditation sessions or classes, attended retreats, or simply followed our journey through social media, you are part of the larger Two Arrows Zen community. We would love to have you participate.

You can join us on Zoom from anywhere in the world, sit for as long as you wish, sponsor a participant, or make a contribution. The Sit-A-Thon is free and open to everyone, regardless of meditation experience.

We’ve raised $30,000 because people believe in sustaining this practice. Now we’re inviting others to help us carry that generosity forward.

Our goal is to raise the remaining $30,000 to support the future of Two Arrows Zen, including our meditation programs, retreats, scholarships, and educational offerings.

For twenty years, the generosity of teachers, students, and supporters has sustained Two Arrows Zen. In gratitude for what we have received, we practice generosity so that others may receive these teachings for generations to come.

This is the living expression of the Bodhisattva Vow: receiving what has been freely offered and extending it to others.

Every contribution matters. Every person who participates matters. And every act of generosity strengthens the community we share.

Please join us in celebrating twenty years of teaching, practice, and service to all beings.

PARTICIPATE • DONATE • SPONSOR

REGISTER FOR THE NOVEMBER 22 SIT-A-THON — FREE

https://twoarrowszen.app.neoncrm.com/forms/taz-sit-a-thon-sign-up

MAKE A DONATION AND HELP US REACH $60,000

https://twoarrowszen.app.neoncrm.com/campaigns/two-arrows-zen-sit-a-thon-2026

SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 22, 2026

Midnight – 8:00 p.m. Mountain Time

Online via Zoom | Open Worldwide

Twenty years of teaching. Twenty hours of meditation. A community united in gratitude and generosity for the benefit of all beings.

10/15/2026

This year marks an important milestone for Two Arrows Zen.

In 2006, Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi and Michael Mugaku Zimmerman Roshi received Dharma Transmission, formally recognizing them as Zen teachers. This year marks 20 years of their teaching. In 2007, they opened Two Arrows Zen, which means the Zen Center itself will celebrate its 20th anniversary next year.

Over those years, Two Arrows Zen has grown into a year-round practice community with locations in Salt Lake City and Torrey, Utah, along with online classes, retreats, study, and practice opportunities that connect people across the country and around the world.

As we celebrate these milestones, we are also looking toward the future and working to sustain the spaces, teachers, scholarships, retreats, programs, and online offerings that make this practice available.

We’re grateful to share that the community has now raised $27,302.63 toward our $60,000 goal.

On November 22, we will gather for a 20-hour Sit-A-Thon, sitting in honor of the practice and for the benefit of all beings. Participants can join for one hour or many. No previous meditation experience is required, and you do not need to be Buddhist to take part.

If Two Arrows Zen has been meaningful to you, we invite you to participate in whatever way feels right — sit with us, sponsor a participant, share the campaign, or make a contribution.

Thank you to everyone who has helped us reach this point.

20-Hour Sit-A-Thon
November 22, 2026
Fundraising goal: $60,000

Sign up to sit:
https://twoarrowszen.app.neoncrm.com/forms/taz-sit-a-thon-sign-up

Donate or sponsor a participant:
https://twoarrowszen.app.neoncrm.com/campaigns/two-arrows-zen-sit-a-thon-2026

Join us! Two Arrows Zen is excited to sponsor our first Sit-A-Thon to celebrate our 20th anniversary. Generous donors are offering $11,000 in matching funds for donations made by October 15, building momentum toward our $60,000 Sit-A-Thon goal. Help

10/14/2026

Twenty years ago, in 2006, Diane Musho Hamilton Roshi and Michael Mugaku Zimmerman Roshi each received Dharma Transmission, formally recognizing them as Zen teachers.

What followed was not simply twenty years of teaching, but twenty years of building and sustaining a practice community.

Over those years, Two Arrows Zen has grown through daily zazen, Days of Zen, sesshin, study, ritual, retreats, teacher development and the countless ordinary moments of practice that make a sangha possible. Today that community extends from Salt Lake City and Torrey to practitioners joining online from across the country and around the world.

This week, we begin celebrating that milestone together.

From Thursday, October 15 through Sunday, October 18, the Two Arrows Zen sangha will gather at the Torrey Zendo for a special 20th-anniversary weekend of practice and community.

The retreat will include three days of zazen, daily ritual practice honoring the Zen lineage, shared meals, time caring for the retreat center together, outings in the landscape of southern Utah, and a celebratory gathering Saturday evening.

Whether you have practiced with Two Arrows for many years, are new to Zen, or are simply a friend of the practice, you are welcome.

This anniversary is an opportunity to honor Musho Roshi and Mugaku Roshi, the teachers and ancestors who came before them, and the many students, practitioners, volunteers and friends who have helped sustain Two Arrows Zen over these twenty years.

It is also an opportunity to sit together and look toward what comes next.

Celebrating 20 Years of Practice in Torrey
October 15–18, 2026
Torrey Zendo
Torrey, Utah

For more information:
https://twoarrowszen.org/celebrating-20-years-zen-practice/

May this practice continue for the benefit of all beings.