Shores of Zen – No Zen in the West is the website of Soto Zen priest & teacher Jiryu Rutschman-Byler, featuring some of his projects & offerings.
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Talks
Audio and video recordings of many of Jiryu’s talks can be found at the SFZC Dharma App with the search term “Jiryu”.
TWO SHORES OF ZEN – THE BOOK
Two Shores of Zen: An American Monk’s Japan
by Jiryu Mark Rutschman-Byler
Read Two Shores of Zen excerpts here.
Read reviews and order paperback from Amazon.
Order ebook or paperback from lulu.com.
When a young American Buddhist monk can no longer bear the pop-psychology, sexual intrigue, and free-flowing peanut butter that he insists pollute his spiritual community, he sets out for Japan on an archetypal journey to find “True Zen.”
Arriving at an austere Japanese monastery and meeting a fierce old Zen Master, he feels confirmed in his suspicion that the Western Buddhist approach is a spineless imitation of authentic spiritual effort. However, over the course of a year and a half of bitter initiations, relentless meditation and labor, intense cold, brutal discipline, insanity, overwhelming lust, and false breakthroughs, he grows disenchanted with the Asian model as well. Two Shores of Zen weaves together scenes from Japanese and American Zen to offer a timely, compelling contribution to the ongoing conversation about Western Buddhism’s stark departures from Asian traditions.
SOTO ZEN IN MEIJI JAPAN – A STUDY
Sōtō Zen in Meiji Japan: The Life and Times of Nishiari Bokusan
by Jiryu Mark Rutschman-Byler
Purchase bound copy (at printing cost).
Meiji Japan (1868-1912), a period of radical transformation — and Westernization — of Buddhism, and the era of the birth of what is known today as the Soto Sect.
Nishiari Bokusan (1821-1910) — the most influential commentator on Dogen in the twentieth century, the teacher of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi’s teacher Kishizawa Ian, and the scholar-priest sometimes called the “father of the modern Soto Sect”— is largely ignored in English language writings on Zen despite his tremendous importance.
In this study, an edition of Jiryu’s 2014 MA thesis written under the guidance of the Group in Buddhist Studies at UC Berkeley, Nishiari Bokusan’s life story is presented for the first time in English. It is told in the context of the persecution and transformation of Buddhism in the Meiji Period, and against the backdrop of the history of the institutional birth of Soto Zen.
This edition includes a preface for the American Sangha.
Articles
Some articles from Jiryu.
Can a Chatbot Share True Dharma? Lion’s Roar, 2023
From Effort to Effortlessness: The Six Gates of Breath Meditation Buddhadharma, Summer 2018
Isn’t Buddhism Supposed to be Apolitical? Lion’s Roar, 2017
It’s Ok. Really. Buddhadharma, Fall 2011
Notes from an A-Bomb Tour Turning Wheel, Summer 2010
Do Not Call Winter the Beginning of Spring Puerto del Sol, 2006
Daikon Harvest Puerto del Sol, 2006
An American Monk’s Japan Buddhadharma, Winter 2005