Cloud-Water Sangha

“Cloud-Water” is a literal translation of “unsui,” the name used in Japan for a novice monk; clouds and water are much admired in Zen as models of adaptability and egolessness.

The “Cloud-Water Sangha” is made up of Zen centres around the world led by students of Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede, the abbot of the Rochester Zen Centre, founder of the Three Jewels Order, and a Dharma heir of the late Roshi Philip Kapleau.

The Auckland Zen Centre is part of the Cloud-Water Sangha. It was established in 2004 by two students of Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede, Roshi Amala Wrightson, a Zen teacher and priest of the Three Jewels Order, and her husband Richard von Sturmer, a lay member of the Order.

Amala-roshi and Richard are both Auckland-born, but both undertook extensive Zen training under Roshi Kjolhede, training for more than a decade at the Rochester Zen Center in upstate New York. Both completed the formal koan curriculum under Roshi Kjolhede, before returning to New Zealand in 2003. Amala-roshi was formally sanctioned as a Zen teacher in an August 2004 ceremony, while Richard has permission to offer daisan. In 2004 Amala-Roshi and Richard co-founded the Auckland Zen Centre.