Paul Haller
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Ryushin Paul Haller Roshi is a Soto Zen Buddhist teacher and the current Abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center in the U.S. state of California.
He was born Paul Haller in the Falls Road area of west Belfast, Northern Ireland in 1947. His father Adolf Haller, a German immigrant, ran a watch repair business there. Paul studied engineering at Queen's University in Belfast and worked on the construction of Northern Ireland’s M1 motorway.
Haller Roshi left home in 1972, lived in London where he worked as an engineer for some months, then travelled throughout Europe, the Middle East, Russia, and Afghanistan. He lived in Japan for a year and was introduced to Zen when he met a man studying to be a Zen Priest in a Tokyo coffee shop. He subsequently travelled throughout Southeast Asia and was ordained as a Theravadaan Buddhist monk in Thailand, where he spent six months living and meditating in a remote cave. In 1974 another monk loaned him Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind by Shunryu Suzuki-roshi, the founder of San Francisco Zen Center. After reading it Haller made an immediate decision to move to San Francisco. He lived at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the first Buddhist training monastery outside of Asia which is attached to SFZC. He was ordained as a priest by Zentatsu Richard Baker in 1980. Baker Roshi gave him the name Ryushin Zendo, "Dragon Heart, Zen Way". In 1993 he received Dharma Transmission from Sojun Mel Weitsman.
Haller Roshi is a former Director of Outreach at SFZC and has been particlularly active in inter-faith dialogue and hospice and prison work. Since 1999 he has developed an increasing interest in encouraging Zen practice and mindfulness meditation in his native Belfast where he usually leads two retreats a year and has ordained a number of students. His work in Ireland is in conjunction with the Black Mountain Zen Centre in Belfast where he is Director of Zen Practice. He married Melody Keane Haller, currently the President of Antenna Public Relations, in 1980. The couple, who subsequently separated, have two adult children.
