Zen Center Dusseldorf

Beginning in 1987, German students of the American Zen Master Dennis Genpo Merzel, Roshi, met regularly in Dresden and Düsseldorf, in Krefeld, Cologne, Mainz, and Meissen to sit zazen. These “sitting groups” joined together to form the informal “Kanzeon Zen Circle” and from their midst Kanzeon Sangha Deutschland e.V. was founded in 1996 as an umbrella for their activities.
The Düsseldorf sitting group of the Kanzeon Zen Circle had begun in 1989 in a private apartment as a weekly meeting place. Soon they moved to the old dance house in Börnestraße (“Werkstatt”) to accommodate the growing crowd of meditators. From here it went in 1994 for some years to the Prinz-Georg-Straße 100 and from 1997 in sublease for four years to the Aikido school Frank Ostoff (today Aikido center Düsseldorf) on the Helmholtzstraße.
As we organized more and more events and now offered several zazen sessions in the mornings and evenings each week, the number of participants grew and with it the desire to have a meeting place that was always accessible in its own place: a center. We started looking for real estate and in early 2001 we found the space we called “Zen Zentrum Düsseldorf” on Bastionstraße 31 in Düsseldorf’s Carlstadt district, on the second floor of a quiet backyard.
In 2010 we moved our center to Franklinstraße 39 – the increasing operating costs in the beautiful Carlstadt could no longer be met safely. Since then, the Zen Center Düsseldorf has been based in Derendorf, both physically and online with its program.