Daigaku Rumme

Daigaku Rumme  

Podcast with Daigaku 🔊 - That's a link to the podcast on Cuke Podcast home, Podbean. For links to the podcast on other platforms go to the Cuke Podcast page or search for “Cuke Audio Podcast” in your favorite podcast app.

His bio from Sweeping Zen.

An announcement from Daigaku on his 2023 translation:

Dear Friends in the Dharma,

It is a great honor and pleasure to announce the publication of The Formless Record of the Transmission of Illumination: A Contemporary Commentary on Keizan Zenji’s Denkoroku by Inoue Gien Roshi. This is the first volume of a projected four-volume series of a translation by Keiko Ohmae and me in which Inoue Roshi provides a masterly commentary on Keizan Zenji’s monumental work. In the Denkoroku, Keizan Zenji expounded on the essence of the Buddha’s enlightenment and its transmission through fifty-two generations of buddha-ancestors.

Volume I of this translation begins with Shakyamuni Buddha and goes through the twelfth ancestor, Asvaghosa. It examines the circumstances through which each ancestor met their teacher and attained realization. Keizan Zenji furthermore explored the way in which each of their stories was intimately connected to the practice of Zen. Inoue Roshi offers us a timely update in his commentary on this important work, assuring one and all that we, as we are now, are the same as the buddhas and that the practice of zazen is the way for each person to verify this for themselves.

Published by Dharma Spring Press. 274 pages. Available from Amazon. $18.95. - Amazon link

2024 is the 700th anniversary of Keizan Zenji’s death. There will surely be heightened interest in the coming year in Keizan Zenji’s accomplishments including his masterwork the Denkoroku.

Nine bows,

Daigaku Rummé
Confluence Zen Center
St. Louis, MO


Unfathomable Depths12-20-14 - Unfathomable Depths: Drawing Wisdom for Today from a Classical Zen Poem

By Sekkei Harada. Translated by: Daigaku Rumme

Simon and Shuster page | Amazon Link


In 2010 for the first time an American has the position we have always called Bishop of Soto Zen in North America - Daigaku Rummé, and he not being of Japanese decent also shows how very much the times have changed. Daigaku is a calligrapher as well. To me he has a characteristic Shunryu Suzuki called constancy and has earned the respect this position requires. I don't think I'm misrepresenting him when I say that he thinks we have a long way to go before Zen is truly established in this part of the world. Congratulations Daigaku and thanks for helping to bring Dogen's way this way. - DC

Here's an announcement DC requested:

On April 1st 2010, Rev. Daigaku Rummé was appointed as Director of the Soto Zen Buddhism North America Office. He succeeds Rev. Gengo Akiba who held this position for some thirteen years.

The Soto Zen Buddhism North America Office is the liaison office between the Japanese Sotoshu and the Association of Soto Zen Buddhists, a group of 55 Soto priests actively teaching in North America.

Since the North America Office was originally founded in 1939, the head priest of Zenshuji (a Soto temple primarily serving the Japanese-American community in the Los Angeles area) has served as the director of this office and this is true for Rev. Rummé as well.

Prior to taking this position as Director, Rev. Rummé worked for seven years at the Soto Zen Buddhism International Center located at Sokoji temple in San Francisco. Before that, he trained for 27 years at Hosshinji Monastery, a Soto training monastery located in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, under his master, Rev. Sekkei Harada who's the abbot of Hoshinji in Obama, Japan.

Video: Zen Priest, Daigaku Rumme, disusses Zen and the Zazen practice.

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