“In Zen, it’s about aliveness — about what aliveness is, or what it could be. We take a step back from our identities and learn to know ourselves as living, sentient beings. We bring our full attention to the processes of aliveness: breathing, standing, walking, sitting, and the subtle details of our feeling, thinking, and acting.”
Tatsudo Nicole Baden Roshi
Abbot of the Dharma Sangha & Founder of the Dharma Academy
What Is Craft of Zen
For Zen practice to work transformatively — to enable real, sustainable change — it requires a process that unfolds across multiple levels and is sustained over time. Historically, this has been the work of the monastic container.
Craft of Zen brings this practice into your daily life through four stages of transformative practice we call the four E’s: Examining (grasping ideas intellectually), Experiencing (feeling them in your body), Embodying (becoming them — when compassion or equanimity is no longer something you have but something you are), and Enacting (bringing the fruits of practice into your relationships, work, and the world).
The Four E's form a spiral path. With each chapter, you return to these same territories — but each time with more depth, moving gradually from intellectual understanding toward lived, embodied reality.
The journey is organized into three series: Essentials, Embodiment, and Realization. Each series consists of three chapters — forming a path of nine chapters in total.
Each chapter includes:
• weekly lectures
• guided practice
• study materials
• and connection with the online sangha
Who Participates in
Craft of Zen?
Craft of Zen brings together people from very different life contexts. What connects them is an interest in practice, embodiment, and a path that unfolds over time in lived experience.
A few examples:
Therapists & People in helping professions
People who work with others and see their own practice as a foundation for presence, self-awareness, and inner stability.
(Note: Craft of Zen is not a therapeutic training.)
People in leadership & decision-making roles
People who act in complexity and are looking for inner clarity, grounding, and orientation—beyond optimization or performance improvement.
People with meditation experience
People who already meditate and sense that practice can be more than a technique or method. They are looking for orientation, coherence, and deepening.
Artists & Designers
People who work with perception, expression, and openness — and want a practice that brings depth without turning creativity into a tool.
Parents & Caregivers
People whose daily life is shaped by relationships and responsibility — and who are looking for a practice that happens in the middle of life, not outside of it.
The Craft of Zen Series:
Essentials – Embodiment – Realization
In every step of Craft of Zen, you can find the four E stages of transformation, much like the flow of a spiral.
From thinking into feeling, becoming familiar with the subtlety of experience
Chapter 1: Essential Attitudes - Inhabiting Five Foundational Qualities
You will cultivate beginner’s mind, acceptance, and embodied sensory awareness, and learn to experience the suchness of things directly. This chapter establishes the inner orientation for a stable, compassionate, and awake practice in everyday life.
Chapter 2: Essentials of Meditation - Entering the Subtle Layers of Body and Mind
You will deepen your meditation practice through zazen and shikantaza and learn how attention, awareness, and identity arise from a Buddhist perspective. Learning to practice with the five skandhas opens new fields of experience beyond habitual patterns of thinking and reacting.
Chapter 3: Essential Experiential Shifts - Entering the Yogic World
You will cultivate the Four Brahmaviharas — loving-kindness, sympathetic joy, compassion, and equanimity — and learn to anchor them in the body and in daily life. An introduction to the teaching of the Three Worlds provides orientation for the next steps on the path.
From feeling to being – through repetition, deepening, and time
Chapter 4: The Why, What, How of Embodiment
You will shift the focus of your practice from understanding to direct experience, and learn to consciously embody presence. The feeling body becomes the central locus of perception, orientation, and action.
Chapter 5: Gates of Embodiment - Grounding, Centering, Connecting
You will deepen your embodied practice by consciously turning your attention to gravity, hara, and your sensing body in a living world. You will learn to shift your attention from your head to your body, to anchor yourself in the suchness of the moment, and to remain clear and capable of acting in everyday life from a place of grounding, centering, and connecting field of presence.
Chapter 6: Realization of Embodiment - Body, Speech, and Mind
You will deepen your practice of embodiment through the Three Gates of Zen: body, speech, and mind. You will explore the body as an awakened form (mudra), develop a speech of suchness grounded in stillness, and open the mind as a mandala — a vast space in which experience is received, held, and transformed into wisdom.
From embodiment to concrete action in everyday life and in the world
Chapter 7: Realization Within - The Inner World
You will explore your habitual patterns, inner drives, and unconscious imprints. Embodiment is translated into the subtle details of your everyday life.
Chapter 8: Mutual Realization - The Shared World
You will practice through your relationships: staying present in contact, even amidst tension and differences. You will practice living connectedness without losing yourself or others.
Chapter 9: Realization Everywhere - The Entire World
You will broaden your perspective to encompass the social and ecological challenges of our time. You will explore Bodhisattva action as a concrete practice of responsibility, compassion, and participation in a complex world.
What awaits you?
As the foundational layer in the Craft of Zen training program, the “Essentials” series looks at how the fundamentals of Zen practice integrate within our everyday life.
It is a foundational teaching in Zen that the 'essentials' embody the very core of practice from the start. In this respect, this program is suitable both for beginners and as a way for experienced practitioners to deepen their practice.
Weekly Live Talks
➔ Inspiring talks with Baden Roshi
➔ Lifetime access to recorded talks so you can access them again at your own time and pace
Weekly Practice Inspirations for Everyday Life
➔ Weekly practice inspirations and tips, informed by the lectures
➔ Support your daily practice at home
Accompanying Study Material
➔ A structured guide to support your practice
Daily Online Meditation
➔ Online Zendos from the centers
Q&A Sessions with Tatsudo Roshi
Live, interactive sessions once a month on Wednesdays.
Community Forum
Participants are warmly invited to connect, share experiences, and even initiate their own practice-deepening group activities, creating a supportive and inspiring space.
Access to the Dharma Academy Library
A digital library of Dharma talks and study materials
"When I first saw and heard Nicole speak, something about her resonated with me. I felt an immediate connection and innate trust in her wisdom and compassion. I was drawn in by this experience of what she later termed “shared aliveness.”
- Debra M.
Tatsudo Nicole Baden Roshi
is the Dharma successor of Zentatsu Richard Baker Roshi. She has been practicing with the Dharma Sangha since 2001.
Nicole studied psychology at the University of Oldenburg and simultaneously completed training in the body-oriented therapy method Body Mind Centering©, completing her studies in 2009. She then lived for four years at the Crestone Mountain Zen Center in Colorado, USA, and has been at the Zen Buddhist Center Black Forest since 2013.
In September 2024, Tatsudo Nicole Baden officially succeeded Zentatsu Baker Roshi and has since led the spiritual direction of the Dharma Sangha as abbess. She founded the Dharma Academy in 2025.
FAQs
Do I need prior knowledge of Zen to participate?
No. The program is aimed at both beginners and experienced practitioners who wish to deepen their practice.
Are the Essentials only aimed at beginners?
No. In Zen, the Essentials already carry the essence of the whole path. They provide a stable foundation that experienced practitioners return to again and again—to clarify, deepen, and renew their practice.
For beginners, the Essentials offer a careful, down-to-earth introduction that supports everyday life. For experienced practitioners, they open new entry points, refinement, and a conscious reconnection to the roots of practice.
Depending on prior experience, it may be possible to join later modules (e.g., the Embodiment series). Please contact Support if you’d like to explore this option.
Can I ask my questions in individual consultations?
Yes, individual consultations with Tatsudo Nicole Baden Roshi can be booked additionally and are offered on a donation basis.
When can I next join Craft of Zen?
Craft of Zen Chapter 1 will open as a live course starting the Fall of 2026. If you are interested, please join the waitlist and be notified as soon as new announcements are available.
Are there recordings of the lecture?
Yes. The lectures are available as recordings and can be accessed permanently in your course environment. You can listen to or watch them anytime and as often as you like.
How much time should I set aside for participation?
The time commitment is flexible and individual. As a rough guide: approximately 1 - 2 hours per week for lectures and study materials as well as additional time for your meditation practice. The course is designed to fit into your daily routine.
Is attendance at all live events mandatory?
No, the live sessions are optional. If you can’t attend, you’ll still have access to all the content through the recordings. The Craft of Zen is meant to support you in your practice – not put you under pressure.
Are there any remaining questions?
Or do you need help with the booking?
Zuzu Myers, Craft of Zen course support
Valerian Hauffe,
Dharma Academy Support
