page_title: Keido Fukushima
section_title: Zen studies
hierarchical_section_title: Keido Fukushima / Biography / Zen studies
caption_attribution_description: English: Keidô Fukushima with his teacher Zenkei Shibayama in the USA, 1969.
context_page_description: Keidō Fukushima was a Japanese Rinzai Zen master, head abbot of Tōfuku-ji, centered in Kyoto, Japan. Because of openness to teaching Western students, he had considerable influence on the development of Rinzai Zen practice in the West.
context_section_description: Fukushima became an acolyte monk at the age of thirteen under his original teacher Kidō Okada, abbot of Hōfuku-ji monastery in Okayama, Japan. Fukushima graduated from Otani University’s Department of Buddhist Studies in 1956, following completion of Otani’s doctoral course. In 1961 he began monastic training with Zenkei Shibayama at Nanzen-ji Monastery in Kyoto. Fukushima’s main teacher, Zenkei Shibayama, was instrumental in helping to transplant Rinzai Zen to the West. He was one of the first Rinzai Zen masters to hold retreats in the United States, and to publish books in English: A Flower Does Not Talk, Ox-herding Pictures, and Zen Comments on the Mumonkan / Gateless Barrier. Shibayama made annual visits to the United States in the late 1960s. In 1969 he was accompanied by Fukushima (at that time senior monk at Nanzen-ji and known as Genshō). In 1973 Fukushima received a fellowship to study English at the Claremont Colleges where he conducted seminars on Zen and led zazen practice.
caption: Keidō Fukushima with his teacher Zenkei Shibayama in the USA, 1969.
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