How I Avoid Burnout: Buddhist Priest Daniel Soten Lynch

A Zen monastery is an ideal place to ride out a pandemic. “I’m in quarantine with two roshis”—roshi means “old teacher” in Japanese—“and a Tibetan lama, which is pretty cool,” says Buddhist priest Daniel Soten Lynch, who’s lived at Great Vow Zen Monastery in Clatskanie, Ore., since 2010. (Soten is his Zen name.)

Each day, he awakens at 4 a.m. for a two-and-a-half-hour meditation service; he ends the day with two or three more hours of meditation, until about 10 p.m. (Once a month, he completes a weeklong retreat during which he meditates for much of every day.) Otherwise, he spends business hours overseeing the monastery’s operations, managing its sprawling property, and, in pre-pandemic times, helping lead workshops for the public.