Kosho Uchiyama

Kosho Uchiyama was born in Tokyo in 1912. He received a master’s degree in Western philosophy at Waseda University in 1937 and became a Zen priest three years later under Kodo Sawaki Roshi. Upon Sawaki’s death in 1965, he became abbot of Antaiji, a temple and monastery then located on the outskirts of Kyoto. Uchiyama Roshi developed the practice at Antaiji and occasionally traveled in Japan, lecturing and leading sesshins. The three pillars of his practice were his writings, his time spent guiding and talking with disciples and visitors, and zazen, the sitting practice itself. He retired from Antaiji in 1975 and lived with his wife at Noke-in, a small temple outside Kyoto, where he continued to write, publish, and meet with the many people who found their way to his door, until his death in 1998. He wrote over twenty books on Zen, including translations of Dogen Zenji in modern Japanese with commentaries, a few of which are available in English, as are various shorter essays. He was an origami master as well as a Zen master and published several books on origami.