On 18 September, noted Zen teacher Kyogen Carlson suffered a heart attack, resulting in his untimely passing. Carlson was on his way to participate in an oryoki ritual (a meditative form of eating originating in Japan), when he suddenly collapsed.
Kyogen Carlson, nationally renowned Zen teacher.
From sweepingzen.com
A pioneer in the transmission of Zen to the West, Kyogen Carlson was the co-abbot of Dharma Rain Zen Center in Portland, Oregon. The Soto Zen temple offers training in Zen practice and Buddhist teachings, as well as providing the community with a place to share thoughts and meditate. The center is also well known for its Dharma School, and has various programs tailored to children. Its website states that Carlson had been involved with both the American Zen Teachers’ Association (as a board member) and the Soto Zen Buddhist Association (as board president).
Born on 8 October 1948 as Gary Alan Carlson, Carlson grew up in Orange County, California, and was an only child. He completed his bachelor’s degree at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1971, and after a spiritual awakening, joined the Zen monastery Shasta Abbey a year later. Ordained in 1972 by Roshi Jiyu-Kennett, Carlson received his Dharma Transmission and inka (formal legitimization in Zen Buddhism) after five years as a monk. He was also Roshi Kennett’s personal attendant for more than nine years.
“He was a good, generous, and kind man. A true exemplar of what can happen when one gives a lifetime to the Zen way. . . . The world is a bit sadder place for his death,” wrote James Ford in his blog for online religious site Patheos.
Carlson established Dharma Rain Zen Center in Portland with his wife, Gyokuko Carlson, who is the co-abbot of the center (and currently also its director). They married in 1982. He was a strong supporter of lay practice, although not at the expense of traditional Zen training, and was active in promoting interfaith dialogue in the Portland area, especially with the Evangelical Christian community. In 1994, he wrote the autobiographical book Zen in an American Grain, which, according to a 1995 review in Tricycle, “is important not only because of the deeper vision of life that it offers, but also for what it suggests about the present condition of Buddhism in North America.”
In a blog post about Carlson’s death, Adam Ko Shin Tebbe, editor at Sweeping Zen, reminisces about Carlson’s help in funding his documentary film Zen in America. He laments that Carlson’s death “is very sudden news, as death always is, and so it is a reminder of how little time we have here in life.”
Funeral services took place on Sunday afternoon.