He began Zen practice with his first teacher, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center in 1968. For ten years, Ryuten lived and trained at Zen Center: with Suzuki Roshi until his death in 1971, and subsequently with Suzuki Roshi’s successor and the Second Abbot of Zen Center, Zentatsu Baker Roshi. He served in a variety of positions at Tassajara, Green Gulch Farm and Temple and the San Francisco/Page Street Zen Center including Director and Head Monk. Ryuten received lay initiation from Suzuki Roshi in 1970 and priest ordination from Baker Roshi in January of 1975.
After a period working “in the world” in fields such as government, politics and non-profit management consulting, Ryuten resumed formal practice with his teacher, Zentatsu Baker Roshi, in 1995. Ryuten Roshi is a successor of Baker Roshi and received Dharma Transmission, authorization to teach, from him in August of 1999.
Ryuten’s practice and teaching is rooted in the fact that truth, the whole body, is continually presencing anew. When we drop the beliefs and preconceptions that keep us from attesting to this fact, we can know directly that each one of us, each being and thing, is unbounded aliveness. To practice is to be present in the unfolding of aliveness itself.
Ryuten Roshi is a teacher in the Dharma Sangha. Part of each year, he serves as Vice Abbot at Zen-Zentrum Johanneshof-Quellenweg located in the Black Forest in Germany. Ryuten also teaches at other centers throughout Germany, Austria and The Netherlands. He lives in San Anselmo, California.