Shunryu Suzuki was a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher who helped popularize Zen Buddhism in the United States, and is renowned for founding the first Zen Buddhist monastery outside Asia. Suzuki founded San Francisco Zen Center which, along with its affiliate temples, comprises one of the most influential Zen organizations in the United States. A book of his teachings, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, is one of the most popular books on Zen and Buddhism in the West.
Philip Kapleau was a teacher of Zen Buddhism in the Sanbo Kyodan tradition, a blending of Japanese Sōtō and Rinzai schools. He also advocated strongly for Buddhist vegetarianism.
In Zen-Buddhism, dharma transmission is a custom in which a person is established as a "successor in an unbroken lineage of teachers and disciples, a spiritual 'bloodline' (kechimyaku) theoretically traced back to the Buddha himself." The dharma lineage reflects the importance of family-structures in ancient China, and forms a symbolic and ritual recreation of this system for the monastical "family".
Hakuyū Taizan Maezumi was a Japanese Zen Buddhist teacher and rōshi, and lineage holder in the Sōtō, Rinzai, and Sanbo Kyodan traditions of Zen. He combined the Rinzai use of kōans and the Sōtō emphasis on shikantaza in his teachings, influenced by his years studying under Hakuun Yasutani in Sanbo Kyodan. He founded or co-founded several institutions and practice centers, including the Zen Center of Los Angeles, White Plum Asanga, Yokoji Zen Mountain Center and the Zen Mountain Monastery.
Ven. Myokyo-ni was a Rinzai Zen Buddhist nun and head of the Zen Centre in London.
Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji, or International Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji, is a Rinzai monastery and retreat center located in the Catskill Mountains of upstate New York. Maintained by the Zen Studies Society, Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-ji is led by Shinge-Shitsu Roko Sherry Chayat Roshi. It is part of the Zen Studies Society, founded in 1956 to support the work of D.T. Suzuki.
Toni Packer was a teacher of "meditative inquiry", and the founder of Springwater Center. Packer was a former student in the Sanbo Kyodan lineage of Zen Buddhism, and was previously in line to be the successor of Phillip Kapleau at the Rochester Zen Center.
Hakuun Yasutani was a Sōtō rōshi, the founder of the Sanbo Kyodan organization of Japanese Zen.
Shihō (嗣法) refers to a series of ceremonies in Sōtō Zen Buddhism wherein a unsui receives Dharma transmission, becoming part of the dharma lineage of his or her teacher.
Zenkei Blanche Hartman was a Soto Zen teacher practicing in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki. From 1996 to 2002 she served two terms as co-abbess of the San Francisco Zen Center. She was the first woman to assume such a leadership position at the center. A member of the American Zen Teachers Association, Blanche was especially known for her expertise in the ancient ritual of sewing a kesa. Hartman became known for her attention to issues women face; she and her late husband Lou Hartman had four children, eight grandchildren, and a number of great-grandchildren.
Bodhin Kjolhede is a Sōtō/Rinzai Zen roshi and Abbot of the Rochester Zen Center (RZC), a position he assumed when Philip Kapleau retired from teaching in 1986. He was ordained as a priest in 1976 and received Dharma transmission in 1986. He has authorized six of his disciples as teachers in their own right: Sante Poromaa, Kanja Odland, Sevan Ross, Gerardo Gally, Amala Wrightson, and Robert Goldmann. Additionally, Kjolhede has been offered transmission in a Sōtō lineage, but has thus far chosen to decline.
Charles Tenshin Fletcher is a British-born American rōshi.
Zen master is a somewhat vague English term that arose in the first half of the 20th century, sometimes used to refer to an individual who teaches Zen Buddhist meditation and practices, usually implying longtime study and subsequent authorization to teach and transmit the tradition themselves.
Still Mind Zendo, a Zen meditation center formed in 1994, is in the Soto lineage of the late Taizan Maezumi Roshi and the White Plum Asanga. The founder and resident teacher of Still Mind Zendo, Sensei Janet Jiryu Abels, is a dharma successor of Roshi Robert Jinsen Kennedy as is Sensei Gregory Hosho Abels, the co-resident teacher at the center.
Merle Kodo Boyd is the first ever African-American woman to have received Dharma transmission in Zen Buddhism, as a Dharma heir of Wendy Egyoku Nakao in the White Plum Asanga. Receiving transmission in March 2006, she leads the Lincroft Zen Sangha in New Jersey that is currently part of the Zen Peacemaker Circle established by Tetsugen Bernard Glassman and his wife Sandra Jishu Holmes. Boyd was born and raised in Texas during the era of segregation. Her family, like most other African-American families of this period, suffered the pain and hardship of racial discrimination. Before coming to Zen, Boyd was a licensed psychotherapist. She first developed an interest in Zen Buddhism after viewing a 12th-century Chinese painting titled Solitary Angler in a book, depicting an angler fishing upon a wide-open sea. Boyd has written, "The painting called to me in my own voice. I immediately sought out more books and found instructions for sitting zazen. Using a bed pillow and blankets, I began the practice alone in a corner of my bedroom."
The Zen Peacemakers is a diverse network of socially engaged Buddhists, currently including the formal structures of the Zen Peacemakers International, the Zen Peacemaker Order and the Zen Peacemaker Circles, many affiliated individuals and groups, and communities formed by Dharma Successors of Roshi Bernie Glassman. It was founded by Bernie Glassman and his second wife Sandra Jishu Holmes in 1996, as a means of continuing the work begun with the Greyston Foundation in 1980 of expanding Zen practice into larger spheres of influence such as social services, business and ecology but with a greater emphasis on peace work. Eve Marko, Bernie Glassman’s third wife, is a founding teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order. Zen Peacemakers have developed from the White Plum Asanga lineage of Taizan Maezumi.
Sante Poromaa Roshi is a Zen Buddhist priest and teacher, in the lineage of Harada-Yasutani. He was born in 1958 in Kiruna, Sweden, and commenced his Zen training in the early eighties, as a student of Roshi Philip Kapleau. When Roshi Kapleau went into semi-retirement, he also became a student of Kapleau's successor, Roshi Bodhin Kjolhede.
Julian Daizan Skinner, is a British Rinzai Zen Buddhist Rōshi in the Zendo Kyodan lineage. He has also received Dharma Transmission in the Sōtō tradition of Zen. Daizan Roshi is the founder of the Zenways Sangha and resident teacher at Yugagyo Dojo in London, United Kingdom.
Zen institutions have an elaborate system of ranks and hierarchy, which determine one's position in the institution. Within this system, novices train to become a Zen priest, or a trainer of new novices.
Zen was introduced in the United States at the end of the 19th century by Japanese teachers who went to America to serve groups of Japanese immigrants and become acquainted with the American culture. After World War II, interest from non-Asian Americans grew rapidly. This resulted in the commencement of an indigenous American Zen tradition which also influences the larger western (Zen) world.
