John Daido Loori Roshi, Influential American Zen Teacher, Dies at 78

John Daido Loori Roshi, successor to Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi Roshi, founder of the Mountains and Rivers Order of Zen Buddhism, and abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery, and one of the most influential Zen masters in the West, died at the Monastery in Mount Tremper, New York on Friday, October 9th. He had been diagnosed with lung cancer eighteen months earlier.
Daido Roshi, who in a magazine interview conducted in the 90s referred to his style of Zen teaching as “radical conservatism,” was a dynamic religious figure whose depth of spiritual insight, fierce commitment to his students and the Buddhist tradition, personal charisma, business acumen and sharp organizational skills contributed to the creation of a well respected and wide ranging organization of Zen Buddhist temples and practice centers in the United States and abroad. His life-long work was recognized by Franklin Pierce University in May of this year with an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree.
Daido Roshi grew up in a working-class family in Jersey City, New Jersey, joined the Navy, and later worked for seventeen years as a physical chemist while nurturing a lifelong love of photography. He then underwent fourteen years of lay and monastic Zen training in New York and California. In 1980, Loori founded Zen Mountain Monastery, considered to be one of the leading Zen training centers in the United States.
As a Zen priest, Daido Roshi was a highly skilled and accurate reader of human nature, a trait that allowed him to guide the spiritual practice of students from widely varied walks of life—from prisoners in maximum security correctional facilities to wall street executives and ordained monastics. An avid environmentalist, he was just as much at home navigating the rapids of an Adirondack river during a wilderness retreat or sitting in a local diner discussing politics, as he was conducting an elaborate ceremony in full Zen robes or giving a lecture on the relationship between the Zen arts and social activism.
Daido Roshi’s commitment to formulating a distinctive style of teaching that was both based on authentic training and also relevant to contemporary lay and monastic practitioners was evident in all of his work. It was present in his environmental projects, his creative use of media as a vehicle for social change, and the creation of a national Buddhist prison program. It also shaped the development of the Mountains and Rivers Order, its sister organizations Dharma Communications, Fire Lotus Temple, the Zen Environmental Studies Institute, the Society of Mountains and Rivers, the National Buddhist Prison Sangha, and the order’s mainhouse, Zen Mountain Monastery.
One writer said that there is nothing that exemplifies Daido Roshi’s vision and personality more than Zen Mountain Monastery itself. Started as a Zen Arts Center, the Monastery is now a thriving monastic and lay community with a rigorous and innovative training program called the “Eight Gates of Zen,” a modern manifestation of the Buddha’s Eightfold Path.
“Daido tries to demonstrate that all of life is practice,” said Charles Prebish, author of Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America. For Roshi, there was nothing that could not be used as a mirror for self study. This was especially true of art, the way in which Daido Roshi was first introduced to Zen.
An avid photographer since the age of ten, as an adult Daido Roshi attended a workshop with the “Eastern guru of photography,” Minor White. White’s meditative approach to the art fascinated Roshi, and before long he found himself becoming increasingly interested in the spiritual aspect of White’s teaching until he eventually found his way to Dai Bosatsu monastery in upstate New York. Here he began his Zen studies with Soen Nakagawa Roshi and Eido Shimano Roshi. Within a few years, Daido Roshi moved to Los Angeles to study with Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi Roshi, became ordained under him, completed his training and finally received dharma transmission, becoming one of only three westerners to be recognized as lineage holders in both the vigorous school of koan Zen and the subtle teachings of Master Dogen’s Zen.
During the last three decades, Daido Roshi also established himself as an important commentator of Master Dogen’s teachings, most notably with his three photography books and the translation of and commentary on the Three Hundred Koan Shobogenzo, a work that took Daido Roshi over a decade to complete. Roshi’s love of Dogen’s teachings is evident in every aspect of the Mountains and River’s Order training, from the very title of the order to the monastic schedule, the rules and regulations, and the bi-annual Shobogenzo intensives Daido Roshi began leading in the mid-90s.
When paying tribute to a deeply loved teacher and pioneer whose work profoundly touched thousands of lives, it is not an easy task to pinpoint what exactly will be this man’s legacy for a generation of Buddhist practitioners. Yet Daido Roshi himself would probably have answered without hesitation, “It is what my teacher asked me to do—to create an American Shobogenzo.
Daido Roshi is succeeded by Bonnie Myotai Treace Sensei, Geoffrey Shugen Arnold Sensei, and Konrad Ryushin Marchaj Sensei.