Taïkan Jyoji

A flash of light at dawn!
The sound of the dew
Trickling through the bamboo trees.
Buson  (1716-1784)

Taïkan Jyoji is the representative for Europe of the Rinzai school of Zen (Myôshin-ji branch, Kyoto) . He was officially installed in this function by Yamada Mumon Rôshi in 1976. In 1989, he was given the title of Kaikyo-shi (Founding Master) for Europe. Since his return from Japan in 1975, Taïkan Jyoji has directed the Falaise Verte Zen Center he founded. It is attached to the Myoshin-ji headtemple.
Taïkan Jyoji travels periodically to Japan and Taitsu Kohno Rôshi, the present head of the Shofuku-ji monastery, visits the Falaise Verte Center regularly. Both sojourns allow to maintain close links.
In addition to the sesshins at the Center, Taïkan Jyoji also regularly leads sesshins in various European countries. He also coaches sesshins set up elsewhere in France by some of the Center’s students.
With a Fifth Dan in Kyudo (traditional Japanese archery) acquired in 1988, Taïkan Jyoji also teaches this discipline at the Falaise Verte Center. The Spirit of Kyudo, also called "standing Zen" (jap. ritsuzen) is a continuation of his experience with Zen.

Personal Itinerary

Born in 1941, Taïkan Jyoji went to Japan in 1964 to study Japanese traditional architecture. Upon his arrival, he taught French and used his free time to read extensively. In particular, André Breton’s "Manifestoes of Surrealism" gave him his first insight into absoluteness. During this phase of soul searching, a friend persuaded him to try zazen and suggested the Shofuku-ji monastery in Kobe: "I remember being immersed into a mist of ignorance – which would certainly not dissipate for years – and shivering in the scorching heat of the Japanese summer. I was freezing."

A few months later, after having overcome the hesitation that inevitably precedes a radical shift, Taïkan Jyoji, with suit, tie and luggage appeared at the gate of Shofuku-ji. He later described in his book (Itinerary of a Zen Master from the west): the shattering of his whole being he experienced during his first sesshin, the ever increasing wave of pain that he felt engulfed in. In spite of his feeling of internal collapse, the will to go ahead with the practice emerged. "I was resolved to stay and find a purpose beyond the pain."

His first years were basically dedicated to the apprenticeship of monastic life. One sesshin thus followed another, culminating in the formidable Rohatsu sesshin which takes place in the dead of the Japanese winter and which demands one to sit almost uninterruptedly for 7 seven days and nights in the wide open and freezing dojo. After two years spent at Shofuku-ji as a lay monk, Taïkan Jyoji asked Mumon Rôshi for his ordination. This took place on April 8, 1970. For five more years, he practiced unremittingly, writing down a daily and unvarnished account of his experience. Entitled the “Timeless Diary”, which constitutes the second part of the “Itinerary”. It tells of the daily efforts, of the bouts of utter dejection, of the victories, of the repeated hardships of monastic life and of the lightning-like confrontations with Mumon Rôshi during Sanzen: “Sit, sit and sit” and his ceaseless and insistent injunction: “Be one with emptiness”.

At the end of what might be compared to a “solo crossing” of the Zen monastic discipline, and during one of the very last Sanzen with Mumon Rôshi, Taïkan Jyoji was told: “Now that the knife has been ground, you must keep on sharpening it”. His Master then enjoined him to return to Europe in order to teach Zen along the lines of the experience he had acquired. Thus in 1975, the adventure of the transmission of Rinzai Zen to the West began, with the twofold aim of respecting its tradition of humility, simplicity and rigour without preventing a natural and inevitable adaptation to its new environment.