Zen Practice in the Heart of the Goldfields

An Australian Sangha

Castlemaine Zen is a thriving Zen community based in Central Victoria. We meet every Sunday Morning at The West End Hall (CNR View Street and Woodman Street, Castlemaine) for zazen (seated meditation), kinhin (walking meditation), teisho (dharma talks) and dokusan (dharma interviews). We also go on silent Zen walks (yatras) in the surrounding landscape. Please visit our Events Page for full details.

Our local teacher is Kynan Sutherland Roshi. Kynan was invited to teach in 2019 by Susan Murphy Roshi and was given full dharma transmission in October 2023. He is actively involved in multiple Zen sanghas across the country, including Zen Open Circle, the Melbourne Zen Group and Mountains and Rivers Zen. He offers regular dharma talks, dharma interviews and dharma events. You can access some of the recent recent talks via the Castlemaine Zen Podcast.

Our ritual and form is that of the Diamond Sangha, first established by Robert Aitken and Anne Hopkins Aitken in 1959. The Diamond Sangha is now recognised as one of the most dynamic and creative lay Zen traditions in the world. You can learn more about our Ritual and Form here.

Castlemaine Zen is passionate about realising the dharma in the flow of everyday life. You don’t need to be a Buddhist to join our activities, simply someone who longs for an earthy, settled and vital life.

Sangha Affiliation

Castlemaine Zen is formally affiliated with Zen Open Circle.

It also has strong connections with other Australian sanghas, including Melbourne Zen Group, Mountains and Rivers Zen and Sydney Zen Centre.

If you would like to learn more about our Zen community or hear about upcoming events, please contact us.

Diamond Sangha Statement

The Diamond Sangha is a lay Zen Buddhist lineage grounded in the heritage of our Chinese and Japanese traditions and drawing upon both major streams of Zen, Sōtō and Rinzai.

We work to further the way of practice and realization laid out by Chan and Zen masters down through the ages and especially by our founding teacher, Robert Aitken Rōshi.

Communities of the Diamond Sangha are functionally independent and diverse in many respects yet united in a commitment to penetrating inquiry into the great matter of life-and-death and to the welfare of all beings, including the mountains and rivers themselves.

We hold that practice and realization must be embodied not just in the way that we conduct ourselves at temples and training centers but also throughout our lives—in relationships personal and familial, social and environmental, economic and political.