Vision
Our Mission
We are a residential Zen community of lay and ordained practitioners aspiring to awaken presence, wisdom, and kindness upon this Earth. We are committed to maintaining the essential wisdom teachings, practices, and forms of our Zen Buddhist lineage while manifesting the Bodhisattva Vow of compassion through a deeply ecological lens and modeling a healthy lifestyle that supports physical, psychological, and social wellbeing.
May the function of this living bring benefit to its every creation.
Offerings
Bell’s Mountain Dharma Center is in its formative phase. We envision a forest refuge & dharma center for deep contemplative practice, a place to connect and heal together with the natural world, and a place to find the support of healthy community.
We plan to offer:
Residential full-time Zen monastic training with weekly programs/classes and monthly sesshin (silent Zen meditation retreats) open to the public.
Onsite residence for practitioners maintaining their families and careers.
Backpacking meditation retreats (on-site and wilderness immersion).
Pedestrian trails and gardens open to the public.
An example of low-impact, sustainable living.
Hermitages for private retreatants.
Music, art, yoga, craft, hiking, running, foraging, and other classes and workshops aimed to promote personal and communal health and wellbeing.
To continue the extant offerings of original Bells Mountain Mission including Natural Organic Reduction (natural burial), forest and habitat restoration, and regenerative agriculture. See the previous Bell’s Mountain website here.
Where we go
and how we get there,
are inseparable.
Teachers
Shinei
Shinei Sara Monial began practicing meditation intensively in 2007. She practiced under Satya Vayu of Touching Earth Sangha in Portland, OR from 2007-2012. Next, she practiced and was ordained under Chozen and Hogen Bays, Roshis, at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, OR from 2012-2020. She also lived and practiced for 8 months at Tahoma Monastery in 2010. She is a Dharma Holder and Preceptor in the white plum lineage and has been teaching and co-leading sesshin since 2016.
Soten
Soten Danney Lynch has been practicing meditation intensively since 2006. He practiced and was ordained under Chozen and Hogen Bays, Roshis, at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, OR from 2010-2020. He also lived and practiced at Sogenji monastery in Japan with Shodo Harada Roshi for 3 months in 2015. He is a Dharma Holder and Preceptor in the white plum lineage and has been teaching and co-leading sesshin since 2016.
Lineage
We are in the lineage of Taizan Maezumi Roshi and the White Plum Asanga. Chozen and Hogen Bays of Great Vow Zen Monastery are Shinei and Soten’s ordination teachers. They are Dharma Holders and Preceptors in this lineage. Chozen and Hogen Bays’ other teachers include Shodo Harada Roshi and Phillip Kapleau Roshi.
Dharma Grandparents
-
Taizan Maezumi, Roshi
“Practice is this life, and realization is this life, and this life is revealed right here and now.”
(1931-1995)
-
Shodo Harada, Roshi
“We see the flowers and the mountains, we hear the bell ringing, and we know it all as ourself. The river is ourself, and so is the other. We see that from the origin we are all one and the same. This experience is Zen.”
(1940- )
-
Philip Kapleau, Roshi
“Zen comes as a reminder that if we do not learn to perceive the mystery and beauty of our present life, our present hour, we shall not perceive the worth of any life, of any hour.”
(1912-2004)
Dharma Parents
-
Jan Chozen Bays, Roshi
“Magic is constantly happening all around us, we simply have to learn to notice.”
(1945- )
-
Hogen Bays, Roshi
“If we light the way for others, our path with always be lit.”
(1949-)
Other Teachers
-
Abby Mushin Terris
“Yeah, that’s their dharma, but what’s yours?”
(1945- )
-
Satya Vayu
“Creaking wood floor with tin patches
brilliantly expounds the Dharma,
while the crackling fire of the cook stove
sings of the place beyond hot and cold.”(1969- )
Our Story
The Land
“I, together with this Great Earth,
and all that lives upon Her,
simultaneously attain the Way.”
How then shall we live?
Bells Mountain
Bells Mountain is a small mountain in the foothills of the Cascades. Its western slope climbs 2000 feet, summiting with views of Mt. Adams and Mt. St. Helens. Positioned in the Salmon Creek watershed, cold water springs on top of Bells Mountain flow into year round streams across the land. Downstream of the confluence with Rock Creek, this water system enters Salmon Creek, which winds its way southwest, eventually entering Lake River. Lake River enters the Columbia River shortly thereafter near the town of Ridgefield, WA.
Bells Mountain is also accessible from the Bells Mountain trail in Yacolt, and part of the aspiring 300 mile Chinook Trail loop.
The land is beautiful, and diverse, encompassing a large array of habitats and their inhabitants. Wetlands, riparian areas, mature forests, alpine meadows, and established oak savannas are thriving and teaming with verdant plant and animal communities. Much of the land has also suffered from generations of resource extraction. Through educated and informed stewardship, we hope to protect and support the land and its more-than-human inhabitants, help nurture the development of these ecosystems, and live in a way that honors their wisdom and beauty.
Located in a rural area 10 minutes drive outside the city of Battle Ground, WA in Clark County, the land is surrounded on three sides by State Forest lands and sits to the south of Moulton Falls State Park. Bells Mountain is about 40 minutes by car from Portland, OR and 2.5 hours from Seattle, WA.
The land, along with its two houses, and their affiliated non-profit, Remember Land, are now stewarded by Shinei and Soten, assisted by many good friends. The land came to them via donation, with a wish for the flourishing of the Dharma and the wellbeing of the land itself, its wild habitats, and their inhabitants.
We Acknowledge Our History
Peoples of the Multnomah, Wasco, Cowlitz, Klickitat, Bands of Chinook, Kathlamet, Clackamas, Tualatin, Kalapuya, Molalla, and many other tribes have made their homes along the Columbia River and its tributaries. We acknowledge that we make our lives and livelihoods on these traditional village sites.
Thriving communities were destroyed following the arrival of settlers. People were violently removed from their traditional homelands, disease was rampant, and Native American parents and elders were forced to submit their children to settler schools, attempting to assimilate the children into white settler culture. We steward these lands knowing that our presence occurs within the aftermath of this cultural genocide.
We honor and respect the descendants of the traditional stewards of these lands, many of whom are still here in what we now call southwest Washington.