Ban Tetsugyu Soin

Ban Tetsugyu Soin (Hanamaki, 1910; Tokyo, 1996

Ban Tetsugyu Soin (Hanamaki, Japan, 4 June 1910 - Tokyo, Japan, 21 January 1996) was a Japanese Zen master. He was a disciple of the Soto Master Harada Daiun Sogaku, and one of the first Zen teachers to open his doctrine to western students.

Biography

Ban Tetsugyu Soin was ordained Soto Zen Monk in 1917, Fuchizawa, by master Engaku Chimyo, from who after some years would have received the Dharma transmission. From 1931 t0 1938 he trained himself in Hossin-ji, guided by Harada Daiun Sogaku, learning by him the particular way of teaching that combines the use of Rinzai koans with the forms of Soto traditions. Subsequently he studied at the university of Komozawa, where he graduated in 1941.

In 1947 he became Tanto, second rank behind the Roshi, of the monastery Hosshin-ji. One year after, he officiated the same chair in the Rinzai monastery Hoon-ji, Kyoto. Meanwhile, he received the Dharma transmission from Harada Daiun Sogaku, and became abbot of the Soto monastery Tosho-ji, Tokyo. In the following years, he grounded the Soto monasteries Kannon-ji in Iwate and the Tetsugyu-ji, Oita.

Tetsugyu Soin was one of the first Zen masters to open the doors of a Japanese Zen monastery to European and American disciples, who wanted to approach the Zen training. A well known the case was Maura Soshin O'Halloran, an Irish female Buddhist monk who wrote about a year spent in Tosho-ji in her diary Pure Heart, enlightened mind. Other similar cases are the stories of the American Zen teacher Paul Tesshin Silverman, who, succeeding at Tetsugyu Soin as abbot of Tetsugyu-ji, became in 1993 the first western abbot of a Japanese monastery, and the one of Carlo Zendo Tetsugen Serra, who, after some years of training in Tosho-ji, was sent as missionary of Zen in Italy, where he founded the center of Enso-ji in Milan and the monastery of Sanbo-ji, near Parma.

Tetsugyu Soin retired as Tosho-ji's abbot 1992, leaving his chair to the favorite heir Tetsujyo Deguchi, current abbot of the monastery in Tokyo. He died four years later, 87 years old, after a life dedicated to spreading Zen in Japan and beyond.

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