Roko Sherry Chayat
| Sherry Chayat | |
|---|---|
 |
|
| Religion | Zen Buddhism |
| School | Rinzai |
| Education | Vassar College |
| Personal | |
| Born | 1943 Brooklyn, New York |
| Senior posting | |
| Based in |
Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji Zen Center of Syracuse |
| Predecessor | Eido Tai Shimano |
Shinge-shitsu Roko Sherry Chayat (born 1943) is the current abbot of the Zen Studies Society, based at the International Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji monastery, outside Livingston Manor, NY, and at the New York Zendo Shobo-Ji on the Upper east Side of Manhattan. She is also the abbot of the Zen Center of Syracuse Hoen-ji. Chayat is an advocate for the use of meditation in medical settings, with Hoen-ji running the program Well/Being Contemplative Practices for Healing for healthcare professionals.
Sherry Chayat was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1943 and grew up in New Mexico and New Jersey.
She read her first book on Zen Buddhism while in the eighth grade, and decided she would one day study it abroad. During the 1960s, while attending college at Vassar College, she began an informal study of Buddhism by reading works by D.T. Suzuki, Alan Watts, and many others. She studied art at the New York Studio School for Drawing and Painting.
In 1967 she joined the Zen Studies Society in New York City, training under Eido Tai Shimano, Haku'un Yasutani and Soen Nakagawa—and was married to Lou Nordstrom by Shimano and Yasutani. She received the Dharma name Roko (meaning sparkling dew). The couple moved to Syracuse and Sherry Chayat left Zen Studies Society in the middle seventies. She joined a small sitting group that had been founded in 1972 by some Syracuse University graduate students and later became the group's leader.
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