Buddhadharma Fall 2019

SHUNDO AOYAMA 71

if they were tiny buddhas. We wondered who had

wandered in to help. Then the woman’s head turned

slightly. It was her.

To sit across from Aoyama Roshi and drink tea

is to sit with a mountain. She laughs occasionally,

teaching through her presence, and as she does, you

see the result. You feel the journey of a five-year-old

girl who became a Zen master—the hard work and

the struggle and the joy. She changed the landscape of

Zen. If you are a nun, you are acutely aware, in that

encounter, that she has done it all for you. She did it

for all of us.

TENKU RUFF, OSHO, ordained in Japan, where she trained under the

guidance of Aoyama Roshi. She is the guiding priest of Beacon Zen

Center in Beacon, New York, and president of the Soto Zen Buddhist

Association.

YUKO WAKAYAMA YAMADA, OSHO, is a disciple of Aoyama Roshi, a

Dogen scholar, and the vice-abbess of Shogakuji Temple in Tokyo.

WIT She is the first Soto Zen nun to be invited to teach at Eiheiji Monastery.

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