Just to be alive is enough.
Each of you is perfect the way you are…and you can use a little improvement.
In your everyday life, you always have a chance to have enlightenment.
Whatever you do.
Everything is a teaching for us: the colour of a mountain, the sound of a river…each one is a teaching of the Buddha.
Always have a new, fresh experience of your true self, here and now.
- Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

Originally known as Belfast Meditation Centre, we came together in the year 2000, and launched Black Mountain Zen Centre in 2004 . The opening ceremony was presided over by our Teacher, Ryushin Paul Haller Roshi, also Abbot of San Francisco Zen Centre and Tassajara Zen Mountain Monastery.

The practice of Black Mountain Zen Centre is Soto Zen in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, our founder in the West, and we are affiliated to San Francisco Zen Center. We are guided in our practice of the Buddha Way by Ryushin Haller Roshi, an authorised Dharma Heir of Suzuki Roshi's lineage.

We emphasize the practice of ZaZen (Sitting Zen) as the essence of Shakyamuni Buddha's practice,
together with the practice of Precepts (ethics) and the cultivation of Compassion and Wisdom (Prajna).
In India this practice of meditation was known as Dhyana (Sanskrit), later being pronounced Ch'an in China, and Zen in Japan.

"The zazen I speak of is not learning meditation.
It is simply the Dharma gate of repose and bliss,
the practice-realization of totally culminated enlightenment.
It is the manifestation of ultimate reality...
Once its heart is grasped, you are like the dragon when he gains the water, like the tiger when she enters the mountain."
-Great Master Eihei Dogen.

We also offer dharma discussion evenings, yoga evenings, day long events and regular retreats/sesshins. 




Black Mountain Zen Centre has local affiliated groups in Belfast, Larne, Coleraine, Ballymena, and Newcastle, and is willing to give help and advice to anyone wishing to set up a similar group in their own area.

Please see the 'Local Groups' page for details.

Any other groups wishing to use the Belfast premises for their own events may contact us.




Black Mountain Zen Centre also offers a venue where mindfulness meditation and practice can be encouraged, offering these beneficial practices to the wider community.

Mindfulness Meditation is a method of becoming more fully aware and alive to each moment of existence. Practiced regularly, it has considerable therapeutic, personal benefits and we are committed to providing training in 'Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction' in conjunction with Ryushin Haller Roshi to the community at large and particularly to marginalized groups.