Shinge-shitsu Roko Sherry Chayat was born on 1943 and is the former abbot of the Zen Studies Society, based at the International Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji monastery, outside Livingston Manor, NY, and at the New York Zendo Shobo-Ji on the Upper east Side of Manhattan.
11 Facts About Sherry Chayat
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Sherry Chayat is the abbot of the Zen Center of Syracuse Hoen-ji.
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Sherry Chayat was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1943 and grew up in New Mexico and New Jersey.
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Sherry Chayat read her first book on Zen Buddhism while in the eighth grade, and decided she would one day study it abroad.
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Sherry Chayat studied art at the New York Studio School for Drawing and Painting.
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The couple moved to Syracuse and Sherry Chayat left Zen Studies Society in the middle seventies.
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Sherry Chayat joined a small sitting group that had been founded in 1972 by some Syracuse University graduate students and later became the group's leader.
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Sherry Chayat was reordained by Eido Shimano Roshi in 1991.
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Sherry Chayat was the first American woman to receive transmission in the Rinzai school of Buddhism.
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Sherry Chayat was installed as the second Abbot of Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji on New Year's Day 2011.
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Sherry Chayat remained the Abbott of Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji until she retired in October 2023.