All beings fear danger, life is dear to all. – The Buddha
What is the Pet shrine?
The Pet Shrine is a place — grounded in Sōtō Zen practice — for animals to be blessed while they're here, and remembered once they're not.
1. All animals deserve to be honored.
They are family. They are our best friends.
They love us without conditions, and all they ask in return is to be loved back.
2. Zen has dedicated spaces for honoring pets.
In Japan, whole temples and cemeteries are built for pets — some for blessings while they're still with you, some for remembering them once they're not.
3. We honor through rituals, name cards, ihais and pet portraits.
Have your pet's name added to the shrine — at no cost. If you'd like something for your home, the shrine can send you their name card, ihai wooden memorial tablet, or a custom pet portrait.
Let´s start at the very roots.
Why I created the pet shrine.
I built the shrine because of a childhood spent believing something most people around me didn't: that animals feel as deeply as we do, and deserve to be honored the same way.
The friends who never needed words
I was a strange kid, more at ease with animals than with people. For a long time, they were the only friends I had — and what I felt for them was never something I had to explain or defend.
Drawing them as they left
When I lost pets to old age, and once to a neighbor's cruelty, I didn't have words for what I felt. So I drew them instead — a practice I started as a child and never really stopped.
Why the shrine exists
To me, it was never a question whether animals are as worthy as we are. I could never understand people who said otherwise — that animals don't suffer, that they have no soul. To me, they clearly do. And more and more, science agrees.
How it came to be.
This is the story of how a private ritual for one cat became a place other people found their way to.
The shrine did not start with a plan.
It started with a cat.
The Queen of the house
At fourteen, my cat Suki became chronically ill. She lost a lot of weight, but never her spirit — she showed all of us how to enjoy life and make the most of it, even while carrying something so heavy.
A tea house, one day early
Two months before we lost her, life led me to Shinko Andreas Hagn and Koryu Susanne Halbeisen of the Daijihi Soto Zen Temple in Vienna. They run a tea house called Shinkoko — and we wandered in a full day before it officially opened, because reading numbers has never been my strong suit.
Suki's name card,
the ritual coming home
I became part of the temple community soon after. When Suki died, they added her name card to their shrine — and the ritual meant so much to me that I recreated it at home.
how it grew
Not long after, a dear client asked if their dog's name could be added too. From there, the shrine found its way onto Threads and grew to 13,000 followers in just three months.
Today, we open the shrine to the public on weekends, and try, above all, to be a place of non-judgmental honoring.
Rooted in Sōtō Zen, the pet shrine aims to develop a European adaptation of traditional customs.
What the shrine does
Every name on these shelves is read aloud and blessed. This is what that looks like, in practice.
When a pet has passed, their name card stays on the shrine for seven weeks — the same span many Buddhist traditions mark as the transition passage between one life and the next. For pets who are still here, unwell, or missing, their name stays as long as it's needed.
It does not matter if your pet has left this realm today or years ago, you may still have their name added.
The Name card
A name card is a small, hand-lettered keepsake with your pet's name on it — made to send home, so you have something of what's kept at the shrine, right where you are. In Japanese tradition, a simple paper marker like this is often the first one made for someone who has died, long before anything more permanent.
The ihai
An ihai is a small wooden tablet, traditionally kept on a home altar and inscribed with the name of someone who has died. In Japanese Buddhist households, it's the object families return to again and again — not a photograph, but a physical place for that person, or that pet, to still belong.
The pet portrait
A pet portrait is hand-painted in sumi-e — the same ink-and-brush tradition Zen monks have used for centuries, not to copy what something looks like, but to capture what it feels like to see it. That's the aim here too: not a copy of a photo, but your companion's essence, held in honest brushstrokes.
How to support the shrine
The shrine stays open because people choose to help tend it — in whatever way fits you, a one-time gift or an ongoing part of the community.
