Zen Mountain Monastery is an American Zen Buddhist monastery and training center for monastics and lay practitioners of the Mountain and Rivers Order. An introductory weekend of Zen training is offered each month, as well as a week-long silent intensive meditation retreat (sesshin). Throughout the year, the regular daily schedule is supplemented with retreats in the Zen arts, martial arts, Buddhist studies, and other areas thought to be relevant and supportive to practitioners.
The ZMM is located among 250 acres of fields and forest, most of which is set aside as a preserve. It lies at the confluence of the Esopus and the Beaverkill Rivers, nestled at the base of the Tremper Mountain and surrounded by thousands of acres of the Catskill Forest Preserve. The main architecture feature is the 'Mainhouse' (hondô), an extraordinary four-story structure built at the end of the 19th century by a Catholic priest and Norwegian craftpeople. It was constructed from locally-mined bluestone and white oak from the Catskills. The Mainhouse is now the home of the meditation, dining and liturgy halls, offices, library and dormitories. The building was recognized for its historic value with an historic landmark designation by the State of New York in 1995.
There is not information available on the garden, except that it was designed by Stephen Morrell.
Japan a great stone garden in the sea.
Echoes of hoes and weeding,
Centuries of leading hill-creeks down
To ditch and pool in fragile knee deep fields.
Leafy sunshine rustling on a man
Chipping a foot-square rough hinoki beam;
I thought I heard an axe chop in the woods
It broke the dream; and woke up dreaming on a train.
It must have been a thousand years ago
In some old mountain sawmill of Japan.
A horde of excess poets and unwed girls
And I that night prowled Tokyo like a bear
Tracking the human future
Of intelligence and despair.
http://www.mro.org/zmm/zmm.shtml