Mind Training. No Barriers.
Greater Portland, Maine
Join the waitlist ↓The sangha
Zen is training in the full encounter with reality, everything and everyone included, beyond our preferences. Our mission is to transform separation and suffering into clarity and compassion, connection and skill. A good life isn’t built alone — and realizing the truth of things requires other people. Everyone is welcome. You don’t have to be “good” and you don’t need to know anything about meditation. (Zen is not meditation.) We train together in welcome, openness, and simplicity.
The training
The mind of training. The mind of competition. Intention, breath, awareness, self-regulation, visualization, working with fear, ethics, and more. Grounded in Zen and spiritual disciplines, competitive athletics/MMA, science, and combat training. We hold the Marine martial training’s Dual Life Value: every life — both self and others — has intrinsic value and is to be protected — including the life of your opponent. I host, we train this together. All are welcome.
More to come. Join the waitlist below. Additional writing on ethics and training to come soon.
A figure in an old sutra bowed to everyone he met. He saw their inherent dignity. Some people felt him an idiot and threw stones. When they drove him off, he kept bowing from a distance. We train to see like this — to have this confidence — and to bow like this.
I’m Jonas. I’ve trained in Zen and related spiritual and mental disciplines for over 20 years, including several years living in monasteries. I’m a vowed novice in the Japanese Sōtō Zen tradition, ordained at Bread Loaf Mountain Zen Community, where I train with Joshin Byrnes. At Bread Loaf, we practice accompaniment and provide transitional housing. I’m also a member of the Parish of the Holy Eucharist here in Cumberland County. A long time ago, I coached executives in Silicon Valley.
I was a national-class competitive cyclist and rower, and spent my 30s in boxing gyms in San Francisco and Oakland. I’m 50 now and just started training BJJ. I’ve also trained in defensive techniques with former police and military.
I’ve served and participated in group work in prisons, in recovery rooms, and with the dying and the homeless. I may be the host here, but I train with you. In our tradition, training is continuous and never complete.
I live in Freeport with my wife, Jessica, and our dog, Monk.
Put your name down and I’ll write to you with the day, the time, and the place.