Shasta Abbey Competitors

For more than 300 years, Yale University has inspired the minds that inspire the world. Based in New Haven, Connecticut, Yale brings people and ideas together for positive impact around the globe. A research university that focuses on students and encourages learning as an essential way of life, Yale is a place for connection, creativity, and innovation among cultures and across disciplines.

San Francisco Zen Center was established in 1962 by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi (1904-1971) and his American students. Suzuki Roshi is known to countless readers as the author of the modern spiritual classic, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. The purpose of San Francisco Zen Center is to make accessible and embody the wisdom and compassion of the Buddha as expressed in the Soto Zen tradition established by Dogen Zenji in 13th-century Japan and conveyed to us by Suzuki Roshi and other Buddhist teachers. Our practice flows from the insight that all beings are Buddha, and that sitting in meditation is itself the realization of Buddha nature, or enlightenment. Today, San Francisco Zen Center is one of the largest Buddhist sanghas outside Asia. It has three practice places: City Center, in the vibrant heart of San Francisco; Green Gulch Farm, whose organic fields meet the ocean in Marin County; and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center—the first Zen training monastery in the West—in the Ventana Wilderness inland from Big Sur. These three complementary practice centers offer daily meditation, regular monastic retreats and practice periods, classes, lectures, and workshops. Zen Center is a practice place for a diverse population of students, visitors, lay people, priests, and monks guided by teachers who follow in Suzuki Roshi's style of warm hand and heart to warm hand and heart. All are welcome. Zen Center programs also reach out to the community, helping prisoners, the homeless, and those in recovery; protecting the environment; and working for peace. See our outreach program for details. Suzuki Roshi's disciples and students of his disciples now lead dharma groups around the country.

Founded in 1983, the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies is one of the world’s leading independent environmental research organizations. Areas of expertise include freshwater, the ecology of infectious diseases, environmental chemistry, invasive species, and climate change. Studies by our scientists have been instrumental in informing the Clean Air Act, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and environmental management practices throughout the Northeast, including the Hudson River, New York’s Catskill and Adirondack forests, and the watershed of Baltimore, Maryland. Hallmark projects include studies of the impact of acid rain on forests and freshwater ecosystems, unraveling the relationship between biodiversity loss and emerging infectious diseases, and tracking how climate change influences the spread of invasive species. The Cary Institute’s Goals: •Advance understanding about the structure and function of ecological systems. •Provide the scientific knowledge needed to solve environmental problems. •Enhance the ecological literacy of students, decision makers, and the public. •Train the next generation of ecologists and resource managers.