The 300-Year-Old Monastery in Japan That’s Full of Westerners
January 6, 2025
In the rural mountains of Okayama sits Songenji — a 300-year old Zen temple that is both a pillar of Japanese discipline and tradition and a maverick of globalism and progress. It’s a place where women live and study Zen side-by-side with men as coeds (something once unheard of), and the sangha (monastic order) is mostly Western foreigners.