Shōhaku Okumura

Shōhaku Okumura, born 22 June 1948 in Osaka, is a Sōtō Zen priest, translator, and the principal English-language disciple of Kōshō Uchiyama-roshi of Antaiji. He has done as much as any living teacher to make the writings of Eihei Dōgen accessible in idiomatic, philologically careful English^[4].

Okumura traces his vocation to a high-school encounter with Uchiyama's book *Self*. He went on to study Buddhism at Komazawa University in Tokyo, and on 8 December 1970 was ordained at Antaiji under Uchiyama, with whom he practiced until his teacher's retirement in 1975^[1]. After Antaiji he co-founded Pioneer Valley Zendo in Massachusetts, where he taught until 1981, and later served as a teacher at Minnesota Zen Meditation Center (1993–1996, including a stint as interim abbot)^[1]. In 1996 he founded Sanshin Zen Community in Bloomington, Indiana, where he is abbot; the name *sanshin* (三心), "three minds," is taken from Dōgen's *Tenzo Kyōkun* — magnanimous mind, parental mind, and joyful mind^[2]. From 1997 to 2010 he simultaneously served as the founding director of the Sōtō Zen Buddhism International Center in San Francisco, the North American outpost of the Sōtō-shū^[1].

His bibliography as author and translator is substantial. As translator of Dōgen and Uchiyama, with frequent collaborator Taigen Dan Leighton, he produced *The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Eihei Dōgen's Bendōwa with Commentary by Kōshō Uchiyama* (Tuttle, 1997)^[1], *Dōgen's Pure Standards for the Zen Community: A Translation of Eihei Shingi* (SUNY Press, 1996)^[1], and the monumental *Dōgen's Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Kōroku* (Wisdom Publications, 2010), the first complete English rendering of Dōgen's nine-volume Eihei Kōroku^[3]. He was the principal translator of Uchiyama's *Opening the Hand of Thought: Foundations of Zen Buddhist Practice* (Wisdom, 2004), described as edited by Jishō Cary Warner and translated by Daitsū Tom Wright and Uchiyama's Dharma heir Shohaku Okumura. As an author in his own voice, his Wisdom Publications titles include *Realizing Genjokoan: The Key to Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō* (2010), *Living by Vow: A Practical Introduction to Eight Essential Zen Chants and Texts* (2012), and *Boundless Vows, Endless Practice* (2024)^[1].

Okumura's named successor at Sanshin is Hōkō Karnegis, designated in 2016; other priest disciples include Shōryū Bradley (Gyobutsuji Zen Monastery, Arkansas, 2011) and Densho Quintero (Comunidad Sōtō Zen de Colombia, Bogotá)^[2]. His teaching, like Uchiyama's, centers uncompromisingly on shikantaza — long silent sesshin "without toys," "14 hours of zazen per day with no ceremonies, work, or Dharma talks"^[2] — paired with rigorous textual study of the Shōbōgenzō through annual *genzō-e* retreats. The combination of plain, Sawaki-Uchiyama Sōtō practice and patient, scholarly translation work has made him one of the most influential transmitters of Dōgen's actual words to the contemporary English-speaking world.