Our local group of Zen practitioners welcomes you!

The Ocean Eyes Zen Center was founded in Huntington Beach on August 17, 1993 by Ven. Dr. Wonji Dharma and Zen Master Seung Sahn. The center now holds weekly practice Saturday mornings at the Huntington Beach Church of Religious Science, and is an affiliate Center in the Five Mountain Zen Order. We are an American Zen Organization in the Korean Sŏn lineage of Zen Master Seung Sahn as well as the Thien lineage of Ven. Dr. Thich Thien-An. The Sangha is focused on Zen practice incorporating meditation, Kong'an practice and expressing the Dharma within the circumstances of an everyday householder life.  Our approach is practice-centered, integrative and experiential.

Only the present moment is real and available to us. The peace we desire is not in some distant future, but is something we can realize in the present moment. To practice Buddhism does not mean to endure hardship now for the sake of peace and liberation in the future. The purpose of practice is not to be reborn in some paradise or Buddha Land after death. The purpose is to have peace for others and ourselves right now, while we are alive and breathing. Means and ends cannot be separated. Enlightened Beings are careful about causes, while ordinary people care more about effects, because Enlightened Beings see that cause and effect are one. Means are ends in themselves. There is no path to enlightenment; enlightenment is the path.


The mission of this unique religious organization of decentralized peers is to establish and maintain public practice and teachings in accordance with the principles of Zen Buddhism as transmitted through a lineage of masters too many to list here. 

The direction, however, involves a commitment, first and foremost, to the student, as well as a commitment to the teaching and education of that student that will enable he or she to carry on the tradition in an open and diverse manner yet staying true to the teaching that has been handed down for centuries. Zen Teachers, as a genre, spend far too little "face time" with their students. Many students are limited to between 5 and 20 minutes a month, and it seems that a majority get to see a teacher maybe once a month at best, hardly time to engage in the matters of life and death. 

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After much study and examination of the way the ancients taught their students, he decided that a Student Centric approach to Zen was in order. This means that teachers spend time, at least an hour a week working with each of their students. Of course, Five Mountain will be limited in its growth, because this is a huge commitment for the teacher. But Wonji feels this is a most effective way to transmit the Dharma and today we need more quality and less quantity.

Secondly, there is not a Buddhist Organization in the World that ordains individuals without their postulants attending and graduating from a formal Buddhist University, that is except in the West where almost every Zen Organization has adopted the "Bodhidharma Syndrome." This developed from a statement that is supposed to attributed to the great Zen Founder Bodhidharma. 

If you pass through this gate, 
do not give rise to thinking
not dependent on words and speech, 
a special transmission outside the scriptures.

Because of this, almost every Zen Organization in the West has abandoned any form of formal education. There are a few recent exceptions, the T'aego Order, the Fo Guang Order and the City of Ten Thousand Buddhas being a few of them. It should be noted that each of these exceptions are Asian Orders with large centers in the US. The others that have curricula are focused on single paths like Chaplaincy or Hospice Care. The fact is that every one of these Asian Teachers who came to the West had at least a Bachelors Degree if not an Advanced Masters or Doctorate degree in Buddhist Dharma. It was expected of them, and it should be expected of western practitioners as well. This is why the Five Mountain Zen Order has a Zen College and a Graduate School to augment the students studies with their individual teacher. Ultimately, the age-old principles of Zen will be carried on through the formal education and intuitive realization of the Order’s members as they seek to save all beings from suffering, through developing charity, love, compassion and awareness.

Our Order maintains no affiliations with other Zen organizations or religious denominations; however, membership in the Five Mountain Zen Order community does not preclude individual affiliation with other groups. Within Five Mountain Zen there is no hierarchy amongst Dharma successors. Zen Buddhism is universal; the medium and methods used to facilitate realization vary according to each individual’s circumstances. Dharma successors within the Five Mountain Zen Order may apply varied practice approaches and resolve on the structure of any construct that she or he may develop to facilitate practice. 

Our Dharma successors recognize they are ongoing students and that the value of their teaching derives from the quality of their practice. As continuing students, our teachers are dedicated to the openness and flexibility of practice, wherein the wisdom of the unconditional may be manifest in life. 

A vital component of the Five Mountain Zen Order community is the continuing examination and expansion of efficacious instruction approaches to ensure all-inclusive observation in every aspect of life.

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​Affiliated Sanghas

• Map of Zen Centers
  Locations on a Map

• United Buddhist Church
  (Kansas City, MO)  ​​​

Five Mountain Centers
​• Bayou Zen Center
  (Shreveport, LA)

• Burning River Zen Center
  (Cleveland Heights, OH)
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• Center for Clinical Mindfulness
  (Cincinnati, OH)

• Lotus Heart Zen
  (Oneida, NY)

• Meditación Budista Zen
  (Guadalajara, Jalisco, MX)

• Mountain Gate Zen Center
  (Berkeley, CA)

• Ocean Eyes Zen Center
  (Huntington Beach, CA)

• One Mind Zen Sangha
  (Northampton, MA)

• Original Mind Zen
  (Princeton, NJ)

• Single Flower Zen Center
   (Claremont, CA)

• True Nature Zen Center
  (Bar Harbor, ME) 

• Zen New York City
  (New York, NY) ​

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