Goto Zuigan

Gotō Zuigan (後藤瑞巌, 1879–1965) was a Japanese Rinzai Zen master in the Ōtōkan line through Engaku-ji, dharma heir of Tetsuō Sōkatsu, from whom he received transmission around 1916 after years of training in the Ryōmōkai lay sangha and at Engaku-ji^[1]. As a young monk he had accompanied Sōkatsu on the 1906 expedition to California, an experience that gave him uncommon comfort with English and Western interlocutors for his generation^[1].

In the post-war reorganisation of Rinzai institutional life Zuigan served successively as chief abbot of **Myōshin-ji** and then of **Daitoku-ji**, the two great head temples of the Ōtōkan branch, and as president of **Hanazono University** in Kyoto^[1]. He retired from the Daitoku-ji abbotship in 1955 in favour of his senior dharma successor **Oda Sessō**, but continued to teach until his death in 1965^[2].

Among his ordained successors the principal figures are Oda Sessō and **Morinaga Sōkō**, whom Zuigan ordained as a monk at Daishū-in in 1949 and entrusted to Oda for sōdō training^[3]; among his lay students the philosopher **Huston Smith** worked with him for roughly fifteen years and credited him as his root teacher^[1].