Founded in 2005 as the first Zen Center in Shunryu Suzuki’s lineage in New York, BZC embraces both Soto Zen tradition as well as the complex realities of practice in a diverse urban environment.
BZC offers programming at Boundless Mind Temple (BMT), which shares space at Christ Church Cobble Hill in Brooklyn, as well as online.
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest belonging to the Soto tradition, came to San Francisco in 1959 at the age of fifty-four. Already…
Read moreThe Practice Council cares for the general practice health of the community and discerns how to better support training and any challenges to a just and harmonious sangha.
The Council’s responsibilities include:
The Practice Council is currently made up of Sarah Dojin Emerson and Charlie Korin Pokorny, who regularly seek counsel from their teachers and elders in the lineage.
The Admin Council is responsible for:
Currently: Sarah Dojin Emerson (BMT Tanto), Charlie Korin Pokorny (President), facilitated by the Administrative Director; teachers and staff join the meeting as needed.
It is a great joy to practice the Buddha’s way in community with others. In the course of our practice together, conflict and disagreement will inevitably arise. The health of our sangha is not measured by the presence or absence of conflict, but rather by our collective willingness to find effective, responsible, and compassionate resolution when it arises. Each situation provides us an opportunity to manifest awakening and the practice of the Buddha way.
The Sixteen Bodhisattva Precepts are integral to upright conduct and sangha harmony in our lineage, and serve as our guide for our ethical conduct. If a sangha member experiences conflict or harm, we offer a range of possibilities for healing, including initiating a Formal Grievance Process. Given that our internal and social lives are shaped by white supremacy, patriarchy, and other forms of social harm, and that expectations of upright conduct increase alongside one’s responsibilities in the sangha, we will hold power relations at the forefront of our ethical considerations.
The Ethics Committee is currently working to develop a new Ethics Policy and Grievance Procedure for our organization. We are committed to ensuring this process is thoughtful and thorough.
Further details will be shared as they become available.
BOARD OF DIRECTORS STATEMENT REGARDING ALLEGATIONS OF UNETHICAL BEHAVIOR WITHIN THE SANGHA — July 7, 2026
After a long period of reflection and many internal and external discussions, the Board of Directors of the Brooklyn Zen Center (“BZC”) feels that it is important to offer its first public statement about the ethical violations at BZC, their impact, and where BZC is in its process of healing. This is only an initial statement; we still have a long way to go to fully unpack and address the harms that have surfaced over these last eighteen months. We cannot predict how this process will unfold or what issues will surface. We can and do, however, commit fully to this process as members of the Board and the Sangha. Further, in navigating these extremely challenging circumstances we also humbly acknowledge shortcomings and missteps as we have tried to carry out our duty as Board members and guide the sangha through this period.
In November 2024, two students came to the BZC Board with serious allegations of unethical behavior by Greg Snyder, a BZC co-founder then serving as priest and senior Dharma teacher. The Board immediately put Mr. Snyder on paid leave to allow time to carefully evaluate the allegations. We then engaged an outside organization, An Olive Branch Associates (see An Olive Branch Associates), to conduct a Listening Post (a structured process designed to explore the reported harm) and to help determine whether there were additional impacts within the sangha.
As it laid out in its lengthy report An Olive Branch concluded that there were credible allegations from three women, all students of Mr. Snyder, who described similar patterns of behavior by him: demands for secrecy, “special” treatment, and escalating physical, emotional and sexual boundary violations. An Olive Branch concluded that these behaviors both constituted a clear violation of his responsibilities toward these students as a dharma teacher and violated BZC’s ethical guidelines.
Mr. Snyder declined to engage in the Listening Post and resigned from his position at BZC. We invited him to tell An Olive Branch or the Board his version of events; he never did. We offered a Restorative Justice process, which Mr. Snyder initially engaged with but ultimately declined to complete. He has not participated in any formal accountability process.
Mr. Snyder is no longer authorized to teach at BZC, and BZC maintains no formal affiliation with him.
These events have been extremely painful for many in the community, and they continue to be so. Many students have benefited from Mr. Snyder’s teachings over the years, and we appreciate from our own lived experience that holding both of these truths at once is part of what makes this so difficult. We hope that Mr. Snyder will choose to engage with the BZC community in a meaningful way about what happened at some point in the future.
Our action today focuses on stating our full support of the three women who came forward; reporting their experiences was a deep gift of care to the sangha. The harm was not only to them; it touched all students who had relied on Mr. Snyder as their spiritual guide, and it affected the sangha as a whole.
This left us all at BZC in a place of profound reckoning. Acting on the belief that the path forward required both immediate action and a longer-term commitment to structural change, the Board took the following steps:
This process has unfolded slowly, with progress followed by standstill, and the unevenness that real healing often requires. We were cautious not to rush it and believe these actions have helped stabilize the sangha and bring us to a place where a deeper healing process can take root.
We understand that for many in the community, especially those who were harmed or who have left, this process has not been fast enough. There remains a great deal of work ahead to absorb what happened and rebuild trust. Further, in the Listening Post exercise, community members also came forward with accounts of harm rooted in race, gender identity, class and misuse of power. We must also attend to these harms. As Board members, we are committed to keeping the channels of communication open; to engaging with all members of our community, wherever they are in their relationship to BZC; to learning from all that has transpired as well as from harms that have yet to come to the forefront; and to helping build a culture of awareness and accountability that prevents future harm.
If you would like to communicate with us about this statement, please write to us at BZCBoard@BrooklynZen.org
