Jean-Pierre Genshū Faure

Jean-Pierre Genshū / Taiun Faure (born 1948) is a French Sōtō Zen monk in the Deshimaru lineage and the founding abbot of the Temple Zen Kanshōji in the Dordogne. He is listed on the Association Zen Internationale teacher directory as Maître Jean-Pierre Taiun Faure (Taiun being his official Sōtō dharma name; Genshū is the alternate form preserved in older AZI records). Faure began practice with Taisen Deshimaru in the 1970s, was ordained as a monk by him, and followed Deshimaru until his death in 1982^[1].

After Deshimaru's death Faure continued his training in Japan, deepening his ritual education within mainstream Sōtō. He served for years as godo at La Gendronnière — the AZI mother temple — where his teaching of Sōtō ceremonial and discipline shaped a wide network of European practitioners. Kanshōji, founded by Faure as a residential Sōtō practice temple in the rural Dordogne, is registered with the Sōtōshū Europe Office and recognised as one of the principal European Sōtō monasteries outside La Gendronnière and Ryūmon-ji^[2].

The surviving images on the Kanshōji website show him alongside Minamizawa Rōshi, the senior Eihei-ji master who has officiated at the temple's ojukai (lay ordination) ceremonies — a public marker of Faure's integration into both the Deshimaru-AZI lineage and the formal Japanese Sōtō institution. The temple's lay community spans France and the wider Francophone Buddhist world, and Faure has trained a number of younger AZI-lineage teachers^[3].