The Sutra Hall
"The chanting hall is like the more religious hall in the sense that this is where you have the principle alters where you're doing the sorts of practice where you're venerating and expressing gratitude to the ancestors and the patriarchs that brought you this practice that you're doing to liberate yourself and all beings from suffering. So the nice statues and stuff are in the Sutra Hall. The Sutra Hall is where we do our chanting practice in the morning. The Zen aspect of it is that you're supposed to embody the act of chanting. you're actually supposed to be very present in the activity of chanting. We chant in Sino-Japanese so we don't directly understand what we're chanting and that's actually the case in Japan too because it's not modern Japanese that we're chanting in, but there are Sutras that express some things about Zen insight and compassionate action and then in between the chanting that everybody does, there are chants that venerate the founders of the temple and the lineage of transmission...It's sort of affirming that you're a part of an ongoing tradition and it's about expressing gratitude for all the people that brought you this tradition. It ends with the four vows which basically state that your aim is to help liberate all of your sentient beings. So that's chanting practice. Later in the day there's Tesho, which is the teacher's dharma talk, or direct address directly expressing Zen insight sort of in a lecture form. And thenthere will also be ceremonies in the Sutra Hall. In more U.S. terms, the Sutra Hall is the church-ier hall. It's more religious. Zen doesn't really give you a sense of religiousness for the most part and that's the closest it gets" - Shika Dokan Martin