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Join the Zen Peacemakers Resident Program in Socially Engaged Buddhism.

Appalachia Zen House

  • Description
  • Programs
  • Upcoming Events
  • Who We Are

Mission

appabout

To share spiritual development through Zen training and multi-faith cooperation, expressed through service to the underserved populations and the natural environment of the central Appalachian Mountain region of Pennsylvania.

Description

Appalachian Zen House is based at Ahimsa Village in the rural mountains of Julian, PA, and is an integrated group of projects that addresses rural poverty and environmental challenges in our own region of central Pennsylvania.

woods_rd

Here in the mountains and countryside of central Pennsylvania, the Appalachian Zen House comprises four main projects—

     * The first,“Green Appalachia,” is based at Ahimsa Village and consists of No Harm Farm, Bald Eagle Biofuels, Transition Town Bald Eagle Valley, and the Earth Education Program, including the Ahimsa Summer Camp and the Summer Lunch Program at the Miles Trailer Park (Port Matilda, PA).
     * The second, “Floating Lotus Meditation Group,” offers Zen training through Zen meditation and council circle.
     * The third, “Speak Your Peace,” provides workshops on:– getting all needs met in situations of conflict using Non-Violent Communication; speaking and listening from the heart in Council Circle; questioning stressful patterns of thought as influenced by Byron Katie’s “The Work”; and workshops based on the work of Joanna Macy
     * The fourth, “Many Paths, One Heart,” focuses on multi-faith initiatives. We are a member congregation and have board representation on State College Area Interfaith Mission which is comprised of 24 Christian and two Jewish congregations in addition to Appalachian Zen House.

Please contact us at appzenhouse@gmail.com to volunteer or to be added to our email list

  • Green Appalachia
  • Many Paths, One Heart
  • Floating Lotus Meditation Group
  • Speak Your Peace
  • Bald Eagle Biofuels
  • Earth Education
  • No Harm Farm
  • Gardens-to-Gro
  • Transition Town Bald Eagle Valley
  • Green Appalachian Eco-Tours

Bald Eagle Biofuels is a planned enterprise for converting blue collar to green collar jobs in Bald Eagle Valley, by retrofitting home heating systems from conventional heating oil to biofuel. Currently in planning phase, we hope to produce our own biofuels.

lunch

Earth Education is a program in environmental education and human interrelationships offered to low-income children in the region.

This is conducted in partnership with Ahimsa Village, an intentional  community in the Bald Eagle Valley, near Julian, PA. The program will be expanded to a year-round project from an existing summer program, and will serve 15 children between the ages of 8 and 15 and employ 3 local economically disadvantaged adults as staff and mentors.

It will provide children with opportunities for contemplative intimacy with the natural world, and experiences in moving through the seasons – for example, maple sugaring in the spring, camping in the summer, harvesting a garden in the fall.

Highly experiential, it will offer also art, science, storytelling, construction projects, wilderness survival skills, and strategies for resisting consumerism, as well as skills in Non-Violent Communication and conflict resolution.

noharmfarm

No Harm Farm is a planned community-sustained agriculture (CSA) initiative in partnership with Ahimsa Village that will provide healthy, organic food to local subscribers while donating surplus vegetables and fruit to homeless shelters, group homes, and women’s shelters, and teaching low-income people in the area how to grow their own organic food cheaply and efficiently.

No Harm Farm eventually will employ several low-income people as staff members and laborers, and may receive help – particularly in the summer months – from Zen Peacemakers interns, Montague Farm Zendo volunteers, and Harvard Divinity School students engaged in field education placements.

Gardens-to-Gro delivers information and components for growing raised-bed gardens to impoverished and homebound people as a rural equivalent to community gardens. This program will improve nutrition and health of participants and provide an available secure supply of free food. Check out our first completed garden!

Transition Town Bald Eagle Valley is an officially recognized transition town initiative. We serve the Bald Eagle Valley of Centre County from the small towns of Port Matilda to Milesburg. The purpose of the transition movement is to develop a plan to drastically reduce our dependence on fossil fuels. The focus in our valley has been on local food.

handsfrog

Green Appalachian Eco-Tours will be a for-profit business that will offer day hikes, bicycle tours, and kayaking in a region that includes trails through beautiful old-growth forests; a nearly 80-mile scenic bicycle trail acclaimed as one of the best in the United States; and the waterways of Pine Creek and the Susquehanna River.

The packaged outings, led by trained guides, will offer engagement with the natural world in a context that – while generally not promoted as explicitly “Buddhist” – will emphasize qualities of aware presence, watchful silence, and recognition of the oneness of life, while also providing education about wildlife, habitat, and ecological interrelationships.

Many Paths, One Heart is a multi-faith initiative, consisting of partnerships with area churches and synagogues serving those in need. We are a member of State College Area Interfaith Mission and have board representation along with Christian and Jewish congregations. Interfaith Mission is a member of Centre County United Way.

Interfaith Mission conducts a furniture and appliance recycling program, and provides emergency basic needs for low-income residents in: rental, security deposits, and mortgage assistance to the homeless or those facing eviction; utilities or heating payment to those facing termination of services; emergency medical, dental, and prescription needs; gas vouchers and bus tickets for transportation; and one-night motel stays for the homeless and transients. Interfaith Mission also provides short-term, low-interest loans to low-income applicants who are unable to obtain emergency small loans through more conventional avenues.

Floating Lotus Meditation Group is affiliated with the Zen Peacemakers Sangha. The group meets weekly for silent meditation, walking meditation and council circle. Beginners instruction is available. Contact Kelle Kersten, AZH Director, at 814-355-0850 or magicjubilee@yahoo.com for more information.

azhcircle

Speak Your Peace is a program of training and workshops in communication skills vital for growing sustainable communities. These include meeting all needs in situations of conflict using Non-Violent Communication, speaking and listening from the heart in Council Circle, and questioning stressful patterns of thought as influenced by Byron Katie’s Loving What Is. Sunny Rehler coordinates this program. Sunny can be reached at livingpotentials@hotmail.com or 814-353-8582

Floating Lotus Meditation Group

Meditation is offered on most Monday evenings starting at 7pm.  New participants are asked to come at 6:45pm for a brief orientation.  Please contact Kelle Kersten at 814-355-0850 or appzenhouse@gmail.com to confirm that we are meeting and to be added to our email list.

The schedule is generally as follows:

  • 20 minute silent meditation

  • Walking meditation

  • 20 minute silent meditation

  • 1 hour council circle

 

Youth Summer Camp

Summer Lunch Program

We are currently coordinating the garden for the Bald Eagle School District's Summer Lunch Program located at the Miles Trailer Park near Port Matilda, PA. The program is targeted towards low-income children in the school district. Volunteers built a raised bed garden. The children planted it and are maintaining it. We are responsible for Wednesday's activity (which is working with the garden).

Transition Town Bald Eagle Valley

Several members of Appalachian Zen House were involved in the establishment of Transition Town Bald Eagle Valley. The Transition movement is a vibrant, international, grassroots initiative that seeks to build sustainable community as we face the inevitable challenges of climate change, oil depletion, and economic instability. The Transition movement confronts the reality that these issues can only be resolved by eliminating our dependence on fossil fuels. This initiative is in the beginning stages. Please contact us if you would like to get involved.

Volunteering

We are actively seeking volunteers to get involved in our service projects. Please contact us at appzenhouse@gmail.com or call 814-355-0850 to get involved. We are also open to new service projects that fit the mission of the Appalachian Zen House.

  • Staff
  • Founders

Appalachia Zen House Director: Kelle Kersten

Kelle Kersten

Kelle Kersten, M.Ed, is a humane educator, organic farmer and inspector, youth worker, and activist for sustainable communities. For many years Kelle participated as an educator in the Sierra Club’s True Cost of Food Campaign, which is a consumer education program aimed at promoting sustainable food choices. She organized a day of workshops on topics related to sustainable agriculture for high school students at the Pennsylvania Association for Sustainable Agriculture’s 2009 and 2010 Farming for the Future Conferences. For the past three years Kelle has run a summer camp for children and youth with the purpose of enhancing the connection of young people with the earth, plants, animals, and each other and of teaching ways of maintaining these interconnections in the midst of materialistic and individualistic influences. Kelle has over 15 years experience as an organic farmer and currently manages a small market garden. Since 2004 she has been an organic farm inspector. In 2008 she began to inspect organic processors. Kelle has over 9 years of experience working with troubled children and youth. She worked as a tutor at a state juvenile justice youth camp for teenage boys in the mountains of western Maryland and presented lessons on plants, animals, and ecology. Kelle worked as a child care worker/counselor at a group home for adolescent boys near Allentown, PA, where she coordinated an organic gardening program with the Rodale Institute for three years and served as Cub Scout leader for two years. She regularly planned environmental education activities for the boys. Currently she works as a relief counselor at Centre County Youth Services Bureau’s residential facilities in State College, PA. For the past three years Kelle has served as a board member of the School of Living, which is an educational organization and community land trust that supports the development of sustainable communities. She is also co-founder of Ahimsa Village Community, an evolving residential community and educational center for sustainable and compassionate living. In addition, she is on the steering committee of the newly formed Transition Centre Initiative that is working to create sustainable communities in Centre County, PA, using the Transition Town process.

Bob Flatley

Bob Flatley

Bob is a librarian by trade. He has been involved with the Sierra Club for many years serving in various leadership positions, he is a founding member of the Mid-Atlantic Renewable Energy Association (MAREA) and helped organize the first Pennsylvania Renewable Energy and Sustainable Living Festival. His interests include environmental and social justice, intentional community, vegetarianism and animal welfare, renewable energy and sustainable living. He is married to Kelle Kersten, AZH Director, and both are involved in starting Ahimsa Village, an intentional community and permaculture demostration site near State College, PA

Founder: Steve Kanji Ruhl

steve_ruhl

Steve Kanji Ruhl — whose dharma name means "Indomitable Spirit" — is a novice Zen House Minister in the Zen Peacemakers and a graduate of the Maezumi Institute's Zen House Seminary for Socially Engaged Buddhism. He is a longtime Zen practitioner with experience in both shikantaza and koan work. He has trained in Japan at Taiyo-ji Soto Zen temple with Watanabe Roshi; at Zen Mountain Monastery in New York with John Daido Loori Roshi; at Mount Equity Zendo in Pennsylvania with Dai-En Bennage Roshi; and at Springwater Meditation Center in New York with Toni Packer. Currently he trains with Zen Master Bernie Glassman and with Sensei Eve Myonen Marko of the Zen Peacemakers. Kanji grew up in the Appalachian Mountain region of central Pennsylvania, home to his family of farmers and mill workers for many generations. In 2008 he received his Master of Divinity degree from Harvard University, where he co-chaired the Harvard Buddhist Community. In 2005 he received his B.A. in Religious Studies, with high distinction and Phi Beta Kappa, from the Schreyer Honors College of the Pennsylvania State University. He is also a published and award-winning poet, journalist, and writer of lyrical nonfiction.

In April, 2009, Kanji with the help of Rosalind Jiko McIntosh opened the first Zen House in the Appalachian region of central Pennsylvania. He is currently Zen Peacemaker's Director of Residence Training in Montague, MA.

Co-Founder: Rosalind Jiko Kisan McIntosh

rosalind_mcintosh

Rosalind Jiko Kisan McIntosh — whose dharma names mean "Compassionate Light" and "Mountain Spirit" — is a graduate of the Zen Peacemaker Zen House Seminary for Socially Engaged Buddhism. She grew up in New Zealand, and received her Ph.D. from Cambridge University in England. She had 9 years full-time training and practice as a monastic at Zen Mountain Monastery, Mount Tremper, NY, after a 35-year international career as a medical researcher, professor and consultant. She has been personal assistant to Zen Master Bernie Glassman. Mother of two grown children, she ran a lay Zen group in New Zealand for 8 years, and has experience as a dancer, photographer, and solo wilderness enthusiast.