Robert Livingston Roshi

Robert C. Livingston Roshi (28 January 1933 – 2 January 2021) was the senior American disciple of Taisen Deshimaru and the founder of the New Orleans Zen Temple — the principal Sōtō dōjō in the United States carrying the Deshimaru / AZI line. Born in New York City, educated at Cornell, and a U.S. Army veteran of the Japan-Korea theatre in the early 1950s, he spent more than a decade in Europe in international finance before retiring from business and becoming Deshimaru's close disciple in Paris in the 1970s. Before his death in 1982 Deshimaru asked Livingston to return to the United States and establish authentic Sōtō practice there; Livingston founded the American Zen Association in 1983 and opened the New Orleans Zen Temple at 748 Camp Street in 1991. He served as abbot until 2016, when he transmitted the dharma to Richard Reishin Collins; he had previously transmitted to Tony Bland in 2004^[1].