United by Our Common Vows: Tenku Ruff on Soto Zen in North America

By Justin Whitaker | | Buddhistdoor Global

Tenku Ruff, Osho, is a Soto Zen priest trained in Japan and the United States, and a professional chaplain with a Master of Divinity degree from Maitripa College in Portland Oregon. She is the president of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association (SZBA), which recently held its semi-annual conference at Zen Mountain Monastery in New York State. Buddhistdoor Global sat down with Ven. Ruff to learn more about her path and the state of Soto Zen in North America today. Buddhistdoor Global: Can you tell me about your background with Buddhism and your journey to becoming president of the SZBA? Tenku Ruff: I began practicing Zen Buddhism in Japan in the mid-1990s when I was living in Oita Prefecture and working as a high-school English teacher. I wanted to try an intensive silent retreat, or sesshin. It just happened that there was a tiny Soto Zen temple in the mountains not far from my home led by an American abbot, Paul Tesshin Silverman. At that time, Tesshin Osho was the only non-Japanese abbot of a Zen temple in Japan. After the first sesshin, I continued to participate in as many as I could until my teaching contract ended in 1999. By that time, I had decided to ordain as a Zen monk, but Paul was returning to the US and told me to find another teacher. After leaving Japan, I spent a year in Asia practicing in temples and monasteries and traveling, then five years in residence in American temples and monasteries as a layperson. I had hoped to find a teacher who was both a woman and an English-speaker, but in 2005 I found myself back in Japan happily being measured for robes by Tessai Yamamoto Roshi, Tesshin Osho’s Dharma brother. I trained for the next five years in Japanese temples and monasteries, going back and forth between the US and Japan. Ours is a koan tradition, so I worked my way through the Zen koans with my teacher while also spending compulsory training time in the Soto Zen training monastery. After returning to the US in 2010, I completed a Master of Divinity degree at Maitripa College in Portland, Oregon and spent a year as a chaplain resident at Providence Portland Medical Center. At the end of my residency in the hospital, I decided to honor the many people who had died in the hospital and in the 2011 tsunami in Japan by undertaking the Shikoku 88-temple pilgrimage, a 1,100 km route following in the footsteps of the ninth century Shingon monk Kukai, or Kobo Daishi. Soon thereafter, I was invited to join the SZBA board. Initially I said I would do it but wasn’t selected. When I was asked again, I felt I had to say no, as my work as a chaplain and my commitment to my Zen group had become very busy. However, in Zen we have a custom of being obligated to say yes after three asks, so I joined the board in 2014 and was later asked to be the board president.



Last Temple, Tenku Ruff’s Japan Pilgrimage in 2012. Image

courtesy of Tenku Ruff and Zen Mountain Monastery

BDG: The SZBA is still a relatively young organization. What are your hopes for its future? TR: In its initial stages the SZBA was focused primarily on organization building. The SZBA had to declare as a nonprofit, create bylaws, set a code of ethics, and decide on common minimum standards for membership. Some people wanted the SZBA to be nothing more than a group of like-minded priests and others wanted it to function more as a professional organization. The organization naturally moved toward more professionalism as it grew in size and continues along those lines today. Six weeks prior to my selection as board president in November 2017, the SZBA passed the SZBA Standards for Membership, by a significant margin and with a large majority of the membership participating in the polling. We held a board retreat in April of 2018 and set three initiatives for the coming years: 1. Diversity, equity, and inclusion. 2. Education and connection outside of biennial conferences, particularly in support of associate members. 3. Clarifying the role of Soto Zen lay teachers in relation to the SZBA. My dream is for people on the street to see a Soto Zen priest, recognize them as such, and feel a sense of relief and comfort in knowing what they represent. Members may have different ideas for how to achieve this dream, but we are united by our common vows and commitment to the Dharma. At this time, the SZBA has no plans to venture beyond North America, although we do have members in Europe, Asia, and South America. My hope is that we can offer what we’ve learned building the organization to others who want to build similar organizations in their own regions. Of course the Dharma manifests in different ways in different parts of the world, so what works for priests in North America may not necessarily work for priests in other parts of the world.