in Israel, with its history linked to trips by Seung Sahn to Israel in the 1990s to teach at various alternative medicine centers. According to Lionel Obadia, "Revital Dan, currently heading the TAZC, followed Seung Sahn back to Korea and trained in the monastic style of retreat. Back in Israel with her Dharma-teacher degree, she founded a Zen group. The opening ceremony of the TAZC took place in January 1999. The activities of the Kwan Um School have received widespread media coverage and the number of attendees is increasing." The other three centers in Israel practicing in the KUSZ are the Hasharon Zen Center, the Ramat Gan Zen Group and the Pardes Hanna Zen Centre. Characteristics According to the book Religion and Public Life in the Pacific Northwest edited by Patricia O'Connell Killen and Mark Silk, As Mu Soeng indicates, one of the key tenets to practice is what Seung Sahn often called "together action." Many members actually live in the zen centers, and one of the rules is that personal biases must be set aside for the good of the community. At the time of his arrival in America, Seung Sahn's teachings were different from many Japanese Zen Masters who had arrived in the United States to teach Zen Buddhism to Americans. During the early days he did not place a strong emphasis on seated meditation, which is the core of most Japanese traditions of Zen, but rather on Koans. It was through the urging of some of his first students, some of whom had practiced in Japanese schools previously, that Seung Sahn came to place a stronger emphasis on sitting meditation. In addition to seated meditation, chanting and prostrations are very important forms of meditation for the school, aimed at clearing the mind of students. The school website says, "Prostrations could be likened to the 'emergency measure' for clearing the mind. They are a very powerful technique for seeing the karma of a situation because both the mind and the body are involved. Something that might take days of sitting to digest may be digested in a much shorter time with prostrations. The usual practice here is to do 1000 bows a day (actually 1080). This can be done all at once or as is usually the case, spread out through the day." The number of prostrations students often perform varies in part on their physical ability, though