John Daido Loori

John Daido Loori (1931–2009) was a student of Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi who founded Zen Mountain Monastery in Mount Tremper, New York, and developed one of the most comprehensive residential Zen training programs in the West. Before coming to Zen, he had careers as a research chemist and a professional photographer, and both the scientific rigor and the artistic sensibility of those earlier vocations informed his approach to teaching. He received dharma transmission from Maezumi in 1986 and founded the Mountains and Rivers Order as the institutional vehicle for his teaching.

Loori's distinctive contribution was his integration of art practice — particularly photography — with formal Zen training, not as a recreational supplement but as a genuine path of awakening. He developed what he called the "Eight Gates of Zen," a comprehensive training matrix that included zazen, face-to-face teaching, liturgy, precepts, art practice, body practice, academic study, and work practice, each regarded as an equal and essential aspect of Zen training. His approach to environmental awareness, articulated through his commentary on Dōgen's "Mountains and Waters Sutra," anticipated much of the contemporary dialogue between Zen and ecology. His books, including "The Zen of Creativity" and "The Heart of Being," articulate a vision of Zen practice as the full engagement of the whole person — body, mind, and creative spirit — with the whole of reality.