About Us

We are practitioners of the Way of Awakening in the Soto Zen Buddhist lineage of Taizan Maezumi Roshi. It is a vocation of attention, gratitude and love, a life of communication and participation with all beings.

This vocation is founded on the practice of sitting meditation and the intimate intuition of our unity, diversity and interdependence with all of life.

In partnership with other associations, we participate in the building of a society of solidarity, which will allow each and everyone to find their place and make their contribution. This vocation towards socially engaged work is free of any form of proselytism and is part of a tradition of unconditional hospitality towards all excluded or marginalized people. Above all it’s about responding in service and being totally at one with one’s engaged action.

ZEN – A WAY OF THE HEART supports and practices the Three Principles of Zen Peacemakers::

1. Plunging into the Unknown – giving up fixed ideas about ourselves and the world
2. Bearing witness to the joy and suffering of the world
3. Loving actions towards ourselves and others

We take part in preparing and distributing meals with the humanitarian association l’Un Est l’Autre, and we organise festive meals and Cercles de Parole et d’Ecoute (talking and listening circles) for people in precarious situations, particularly in emergency accommodation centres run by the Salvation Army Foundation.