Meet Clear Lake Zen

Serving Bridgeport

Fairfield County

Connecticut

Clear Lake is a Bridgeport based Zen training center and community of The Zen Garland Order for Zen practice, education, healing, and service. Zen Garland currently has centers in the USA, Germany, and South Africa.

Clear Lake is mentored community supervised by Zen Garland co-founder Roshi Paul Genki Kahn. Clear Lake provides a warm, safe, and welcoming learning and practice environment. We are actively working to develop a multicultural and diverse community here in Bridgeport.

Location

We are grateful to our local host Groundwork Bridgeport for their generosity offering a space to hold zazen and yoga. The Downtown Bridgeport Arcade Mall presents a stunning turn-of-the-century gem of vaulted Victorian architecture giving the space an ambiance of confidence in progress, technology and beauty in new materials and style. The Mall also supports many local businesses in it including a cafe, salon, and shopping options. Come support location business and build your community!

The Place of Practice

Clear Lake brings the Zen Garland Way to Bridgeport, a thorough, holistic, and modern approach to Zen training. Our teachers guide each student to apply Zen skills and perspectives to their personal lives – their goals, motivations, relationships, work, and play. Our teachings are carefully crafted and integrated, reflecting the venerable tradition of Zen complemented by modern psychology, science, and philosophy and expressed in language and practices appropriate to our present moment.

The Path

We provide multiple levels of training programs serving beginners to advanced practitioners, including initiation, ordination, and teacher training. We offer our curriculum in person and online through personal discussion, classes, workshops, regularly scheduled practice times, retreats, and social service projects. Zen Garland teachers are thoroughly trained, caring, responsible, and devoted to their students’ growth.

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Clear Lake Teacher & Coordinator

Roshi Paul Genki Kahn

One of the living Zen masters of our time, Roshi Genki augments traditional Zen practices with modern psychology, philosophy, science, and socially engaged service to marginalized and disadvantaged communities. Roshi Genki is a Dharma Successor and full Zen Priest in the Japanese Soto Zen lineage of Taizan Maezumi Roshi and Zen Master Bernie Glassman. He served as personal attendant (Jisha) to both.

Roshi Genki has developed a thorough and profound holistic approach to Zen practice that offers personal and inter-relational development for skillful living in the world with love, service and joy. Roshi Genki describes this approach to spirituality as The Practice of Presence and Reclaiming the World As Sacred. Roshi Genki emphasizes that the Zen training hall is our daily life, our way of being in the world with ourselves, our intimate circle, our work and our communities.

Kai Hoshiko Starn is a Zen student of Roshi Paul Genki Kahn and an active member of the Zen Garland Order. He is the Clear Lake Zen Coordinator, offering public Zazen periods, Introduction to Zen Practice, and yoga. When not exploring the woods, rivers, and cliffs around New England with his wife and son, Hoshiko works with an architectural consulting firm implementing green practices for buildings that support the environment and human health.

Hoshiko has completed 500 hour Advanced Teacher Training at the Kripalu School of Yoga. Since 2018, his yoga and aikido practice have provided a personally meaningful way of being that supports his busy, modern family life. New life experiences prompted him to seek spiritual guidance with a teacher and community, which subsequently led to becoming a student of Roshi Paul Genki Kahn, Spiritual Director and Co-Founder with Roshi Monika Genmitsu Kahn of the Zen Garland Order. Kai Starn took the Zen Garland Order Vows with Roshi Genki in 2024, and received the Zen Dharma Name Hoshiko, which means “Lake Floating Star.”