Body-Mind Temple
ShinJinJi’s name comes from Eihei Dogen’s Shinjin Gakudo or Body and Mind Study of The Way. In this Dogen writes, “there are two approaches to studying the buddha way: to study with mind and to study with body”. Together with her sibling temple AnRyūJi (Peaceful Dragon Temple) they reside at Two Streams Zen Sanctuary on the unceded land of the Nipmuc and Potumcuk peoples in what is now called Westhampton, Massachusetts.
Guiding Teacher
Dr. Catherine Anraku Hondorp, Sensei
Dr. Catherine Anraku Hondorp, Sensei is an authorized Zen teacher in the White Plum lineage of Maezumi Roshi, a Soto Zen Buddhist Priest and co-founder with her spouse Ryūmon Hilda Baldoquín Sensei of Two Streams Zen. Anraku Sensei’s passion for social justice stems from growing up White in a northeastern U.S. urban Black ghetto. Born to a Dutch Reformed Church minister and an Early Childhood educator parents, in a multiracial family, during the times of the Civil Rights Movement, the racial inequities were painfully apparent. Discovering dance while seeking to make sense of the world around her and her place in it, along with an emerging identity as a queer, social activist artist, ignited a deep spiritual questioning and eventually brought her to the path of Zen.
She began Zen studies with John Daido Loori Roshi at Zen Mountain Monastery in 1987 taking Jukai and receiving the Dharma Name Eishun (Eternal Spring) in 1990. In 1996 she became a student of Enkyo O’Hara Roshi receiving Shukke Tokudo and the priest name Anraku (Peaceful Bliss) in August 2000. She was given Denkai in 2007, becoming a fully ordained Buddhist priest. In December 2009 Anraku Sensei received Dharma Transmission from Roshi O’Hara at Wisdom House in Litchfield, Connecticut and was authorized to teach.
Anraku holds an MFA in dance from NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts and a Doctor of Chiropractic degree from Logan College of Chiropractic. She has spent many years studying the body, mind and spirit, as a student and practitioner, particularly as a master of Network Spinal Analysis, a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner®, and a certified Internal Family Systems Practitioner and a Zen Teacher. A lover of all things four legged and winged, Anraku enjoys spending time writing, gardening, traveling and being with her wife and their 3 cats and 6 hens. Having recently retired from her in-person work, she is free to exploring more of what life has to offer.