Évelyne Ekō de Smedt

Évelyne Ekō / Reiko de Smedt is a French Sōtō Zen nun in the Deshimaru lineage and one of Taisen Deshimaru's earliest female disciples. Listed on the Association Zen Internationale teacher roster as Maître Évelyne Reiko de Smedt — Ekō (慧光, "luminous wisdom") and Reiko being two forms of her dharma name — she was ordained by Deshimaru in the 1970s and became part of the small editorial circle around the master^[1].

Her most consequential contribution to Deshimaru's western mission was as a co-author. With Lucien Marchand she wrote Zen, religion de la vie quotidienne (Albin Michel, 1976) — among the very first French-language presentations of Zen as Deshimaru taught it, written contemporaneously with Deshimaru's own Paris mission and frequently reissued as a standard introductory text. She also collaborated with Deshimaru himself on L'Anneau de la Voie ("The Ring of the Way"), an early formal presentation of the kusen (oral teaching given during zazen) genre in French. Several of Deshimaru's most-cited posthumous books carry her preface — including the 1985 edition of Zen et vie quotidienne (Albin Michel), introduced by her^[2].

Within AZI she has led zazen and sesshin at Parisian dōjōs and at the temple La Gendronnière for several decades, and she co-authored with Pierre Dōkan Crépon the wider survey L'Esprit du Zen (Hachette, 2005). Her steady editorial presence across the AZI press is largely responsible for the way Deshimaru's spoken kusen became readable French text — and for the shape in which that teaching reached subsequent generations of European practitioners^[3].