1. "For those of us involved in practice while we are living in the world of words, it is very
important to have a clear insight into that world that is prior to words. But people who
remain fixated in the world of words, believing the world of words is basically the only
world, typically are those who have great fears relative to death. We commonly find
many people who are fixated in the world of words, believing that the world of words and
all that is associated with it is the only world. On that basis they want to achieve the most
luxurious and comfortable lifestyle and are not concerned very much with other people.
Such people inevitably are doomed to suffer. If we take the trouble to become sensitive to
our situation, we come to see that although the world of words appears fairly substantial,
it is actually a very conditional world subject to dissolution at any time. When we clarify
the whole matter of dissolution and what is prior to the world of words, we can live here
in tranquility."
From the book, The Zen of Myoshin-ji Comes to the West, 1987
Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Roshi has taken his strong – some would say severe – style of
Rinzai Zen to thousands of Western students, a sizeable network of training centers and
Zen organizations has grown up to facilitate practice and preserve the Rinzai tradition he
represents. Ironically, when he came to these shores Roshi did not expect to build a large
organization. "I had thought of having five or six students who really lived the life of Zen
and that would be it," he said in an interview last year. "I would die in America. I had no
plan to create temples or centers."
Many consider him to be the dean of Zen teachers in America, due to his seniority and
the vitality of his dharma, but he is easily among the oldest Zen priests in the world.
He is the foremost representative in America of a teaching method called Nyorai (or
Tathagata) Zen, which combines a rigorous analysis of dharma activity with realization.
Joshu Roshi teaches that in every moment we must manifest our true nature, emptiness or
zero, and realize dharma activity. Tathagata Zen teaching declares that the Dharmakaya,
perfect complete unity, is never fixed. It is always spontaneously dividing itself and
reuniting to realize a new Dharmakaya. The Dharmakaya divides itself into two primal
activities, Tathagata and Tathaagata, or expansion and contraction, and gives rise to the
three worlds of past, present, and future. Self, world, space, and time – everything – arise
from the Dharmakaya dividing itself and everything returns to the Dharmakaya as
expansion and contraction reunite. The aim of Tathagata Zen practice is to manifest our
true nature and realize dharma activity as our true self.
Joshu Roshi has kept a relatively low profile throughout his time in the US, preferring to
work with his monks and lay students while maintaining a rigorous monastic training
environment at Mount Baldy Zen Center in California. But he has mythic status in Zen
circles. He is the teacher with whom many other well-regarded Buddhist teachers come to
study. Shinzen Young, Genki Takabyashi Roshi, and George Bowman have all called
him their teacher.

2. Joshu Roshi has stated that most Americans don't grasp Japanese Rinzai Zen. Americans
have been taught that they cannot exist without God, he said.
''From the Buddhist point of view, God is not a living thing you can look upon,'' said
Roshi, who speaks in Japanese and uses an interpreter. ''God is not something you can
take as an object. Buddhism says there is no God, there is no absolute personified being
other than the manifestation of the complete self.''
The person who takes God as an object is the mistaken self, he said. Zen practice brings
people to their true selves. That is a dangerous concept in a country where most people
believe in God, he said. The goal of Zen is zero, or the state of emptiness. At that point,
Roshi said, there is no God and no need to take God as an object because a person is
experiencing God. ''That is God. That is the perfect self. There is no need to ask God for
help,'' he said. ''There is no need to want to see God.''
But he likes Americans, even if they have a hard time understanding Zen. They like to try
new things, and they have a strong will to make a new culture, he once said. ''I'm over 93
years old, so I don't really care if Zen is really born in America or not. I'm just here,
practicing with you,'' he said.
Over time, Joshu Roshi evolved his own koan system to teach American students. He
realized that most American Zen students lacked the background in Buddhism that is
assumed when a monk enters a monastery in Japan. Rather than starting his students with
a koan from the Mumonkan, Joshu Roshi developed a family of koans that forced his
American students to re-examine their own everyday activity, for example, “How do you
realize your true nature when driving a car?” or “Where is god when you see a flower?”
Joshu Roshi has avoided publishing his teaching, for the most part, because his teaching
methods are always evolving. In the past few years he has committed himself more
strongly than ever to rooting his Rinzai-ji network of Zen centers on a foundation of
dharma activity.
Joshu Roshi was born into a farming family in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan in April 1907. At
the age of fourteen, Roshi traveled five hundred miles to Sapporo in Hokkaido, northern
Japan, to become a zen student. There he was made a novice monk under Joten Soko
Miura Roshi, who went on to head Myoshin-ji, one of the two preeminent Rinzai temples
in Japan. Roshi was ordained an osho (priest) at the age of twenty-one, receiving the
name Kyozan. Between the ages of 21 and 40, Joshu Roshi lived as a priest at Myoshin-ji
in Kyoto, but in 1947 at the age of forty, he received his authority as a roshi and became
abbot of his own monastery. In 1953, Roshi became abbot of Shoju-an in Iiyama, Nagano
Prefecture. Shoju-an, the temple founded by Hakuin's master was in disrepair, and Roshi
set about restoring it. Roshi taught at Shoju-an until 15 years later, when Joshu Roshi was
asked by the abbot at Myoshin-ji to relocate to America.
Dr. Robert Harmon and Gladys Weisbart were both members of the Joshu Zen Temple in
Little Tokyo, Los Angeles, and had been independently trying to bring a Rinzai Zen
monk to Los Angeles. Once they found out about each other's efforts, they began a united

3. campaign. In Joshu Roshi, Dr. Harmon found an interested candidate. After working out
the details by correspondence, the Kancho of Myoshin-ji, Daiko Furukawa Roshi,
formally requested Joshu Roshi to begin teaching Zen in the United States.
He arrived at Los Angeles International Airport on July 21, 1962, where he was met by
his sponsor, Dr. Robert Harmon. Both men remember that Roshi, who had but a
rudimentary commmand of English, carried with him both Japanese-English and English-
Japanese dictionaries. Dr. Harmon rented a small house on Mariposa St. in Gardena,
where Roshi took up residence. With few furnishings or amenities at first, the house was
Roshi's residence by day and a zendo at night.
Roshi conducted Zen meetings on weeknights and Sunday mornings, as well as weekly
meetings at the homes of some of his students. He served as jikijitsu, shoji and tenzo,
while also giving sanzen and leading the chants at the beginning of each meeting.
In November 1963, Roshi and his Zen students incorporated the Rinzai Zen Dojo
Association. Over the next few years, as Roshi's reputation spread throughout Southern
California, he led group zazen in homes in the Hollywood Hills, Laguna Beach and
Beverly Hills. When the Mariposa zendo outgrew its quarters in 1966, the group started
holding zazen in office space donated by Harmon.
Around the same time Roshi ordained his first monks, among them Kodo Ron Olsen,
who had studied with him since 1964. Kodo, who is married to Myosen Marcia Olsen,
now is abbot of Joshu Zen Temple in Redondo Beach, Calif.
In July 1967, Roshi decided to commemorate his fifth anniversary in the U.S. by
conducting his first seven- day Dai-sesshin in the mountain village of Idyllwild, Calif. In
January 1968, the organization's name was changed to Rinzai-ji, Inc., and it bought its
first property, Cimarron Zen Center.
A complex of buildings surrounded by high walls, Cimarron Zen Center needed
extensive renovation before it was formally dedicated on April 21,1968, and Roshi took
up residence there along with a group of students. Cimarron now is known as Rinzai-ji.
Three years later, Rinzai-ji's main training center, Mt. Baldy Zen Center, was opened
high in the San Gabriel Mountains east of Los Angeles. Formerly an abandoned Boy
Scout camp located in the middle of a national forest, Mt. Baldy operates under a 99-year
lease from the government. Rinzai-ji has been refurbished to accommodate resident
monks and nuns, as well as visitors attending Dai- sesshin.
Mt. Baldy Zen Center has gained a reputation in American Zen circles for its rigorous
practice, which includes 19-hour-a-day sesshin schedules. Most of Rinzai-ji's monks and
nuns have received some or all of their training there.
With the establishment of the Rinzai-ji and Mt. Baldy Zen Centers, Joshu Roshi had laid
the groundwork for a corps of ordained monks, nuns, and priests to help him carry out his
work. When a Mt. Baldy student named Michelle Martin asked Roshi to come to New
Mexico to conduct a dai-sesshin, he playfully replied, "You find hot springs, I come."

4. After she returned to New Mexico, Martin and a friend found an old Catholic monastery
for sale in Jemez Springs. They invited Roshi to inspect the facilities to see of they were
appropriate for a Zen community, and, in 1974, Jemez Bodhi Mandala was founded, now
known as Bodhi Manda Zen Center.
Centro Zen de Puerto Rico, Inc. was established in 1983 by the Puerto Rican students of
Rev. Joshu Sasaki Roshi. Roshi has been giving dai-sesshin in Puerto Rico since 1979
under the sponsorship of Dr. Oscar Moreno who organized several sesshins without
benefit of having an existing Center. In 1983, with the help of many people here, the
ACOPRO (Accion Comunitaria para el Progreso) center, built by Don Salvador Sendra,
was offered and acquired as Centro Zen.
Rev. Tando Jeffrey Bower was invited from California to help direct and develop the
Center and remained as director of Centro Zen until 2001. He was substituted by Rev.
Zengetsu Wanda Stewardson who became Kanju of Centro Zen until October 13, 2006
when Rev. Gentatsu Oscar Pereira was appointed Vice Abbot by Kyozan Joshu Sasaki
Roshi.
_____________________________________________________________________
Rinzai (Lin-Ji) Lineage of Joshu Sasaki Roshi
Tang Dynasty
Hui-neng 638-713
Nan-yueh Huai-jang (Nangaku Ejo) 677-744
Ma-Tzu (Baso) 709-788
Pai-chang (Hyakujo) 749-814
Huang-po (Obaku) d.850
Lin-chi (Rinzai) d.866
Sung Dynasty
Hsing-hua Ts'ung-chiang (Koke Zonsho) 830-888
Nan-yuan Hui-yung (Nan'in) d. 930
Feng-hsueh Yen-chao (Fuketsu Ensho) 896-973
Shou-shan Shen-nien (Shuzan Shonen) 926-993
Fen-yang (Fun'yo Zensho) 942-1024
Shih-shuang (Sekiso Soen) 986-1039
Yang-ch'i Fang-hui (Yogi Hoe) 992-1049
* this is the beginning of the Yogi line of Zen
Pai-yun Shou-tuan (Hakuun Shutan) 1025-1072
Wu-tsu Fa-yen (Goso Hoen) 1024-1104
Yuan-wu (Engo) 1063-1135
* beginning of the Engo line

5. Hu-ch'iu (Kukyu) 1077-1163
Ying-an (Oan) 1103-1163
Mi-an (Mittan) 1118-1186
Sung-yuan (Shogen Sogaku) 1139-1209
Last Zen Master in the Mumon kan
Yun-an P'u-yen (Un'an Fugan) 1156-1226
Hsu-t'sang Chih-yu (Kido Chigu) 1189-1269
• After Hsu-t'sang transmits to Shomyo, Ch'an begins a severe decline in China. The Mongol
rule begins and Confucianism & Taoism are injected into the lineages. Later in the Ming
dynasty Pure Land is merged with Ch'an.
Pure Kanna (Koan) Zen goes to Japan
Shomyo (Daio Kokushi) 1235-1309
Myocho Shuho (Daito Kokushi)
founded Daitoku-ji Temple
Kanzan Egen (Muso Daishi) 1277-1360
2nd Abbot Daitoku-ji Temple
1st abbot Myoshin-ji Temple
Juo Sohitsu 1296-1390
Muin Soin 1326-1410 *
Tozen Soshin (Sekko Soshin) 1408-1486 *
Toyo Eicho 1429-1504
Youzan Keiyou *dates unknown, listed in an old Japanese document.
Other names are possible.
Gudou Tosyoku (gudo kokushi) 1577-1661 *
*So far we have not been able to determine Gudou's teacher. He was a long term monk at Myoshin-ji and it's
accepted that he was an heir of this line. Youzan Keiyou shows up in an old Japanese lineage chart, but as yet I have
not found any information on him.
Shidou Bunan -- 1602-1676
Shoju Rojin (Dokyu Etan)
Hakuin
Gassan Jitou 1727-1797
Inzan Ien, Shoto Ensho (1751-1814)
Taigen Gisan, Taigen Shigen (1768-1837) [7][2]
Shoen Daisetsu, Daisetsu Jo'en, Daisetsu So'en (1797-1855)
Dokun Joshu, Ogino Dokuen, Doku'en Joju, (1819-1895)
Banryo Zenso
Joten Soko
Joshu Sasaki
Information compiled from several sources including a list from Roshi Sasaki, Zen in Japan--
Dumolin, Jikyu-an, and Shambala dictionary.