Guiding Teacher
Rev. Kokai Shinshu Roberts
Shinshu was ordained in 1988, completed her priest training Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and received Dharma transmission (full authorization as a Soto Zen teacher), in 2004 from Sojun Mel Weitzman, former abbot of San Francisco Zen Center and Berkeley Zen Center.
Shinshu was a resident at San Francisco Zen Center for 17 years. Upon completion of her training, she moved to Capitola, CA and opened Ocean Gate Zen in 2007 with Daijaku Kinst. In 2005 Shinshu was appointed Kokusaifukyoshi (International Teacher) by the Soto Zen School (Sotoshu) in Tokyo, Japan and holds the rank of Sei Kyoshi. As part of her training to become Kokusaifukyoshi she spent a month in Japan at the Japanese training monastery Jikoji on Shikoku. She is currently a board member of the Association of Soto Zen Buddhists, a Sotoshu organization of Kokusaifukyoshi in North America. She is also a full member of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association and is a member of the American Zen Teacher’s Association.
Shinshu has studied, written, and taught extensively on the teachings of Eihei Dogen, the founder of Soto Zen in Japan. In her dharma talks and her books, she brings the teachings of Dogen into dialogue with our ordinary life, and makes possible a deep, yet accessible, understanding of his work as well as those of other Soto Zen teachers.
Publications
Meeting the Myriad Things, Shambhala Publications, 2025.
A book-length commentary on Genjōkōan, Dōgen’s primer on how we wake up and realize our interconnected life with all beings, resulting in realized response to all aspects of our experience.
Being-Time: A Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen Zenji’s Shobogenzo Uji, Wisdom Publications. 2018.
This is a book-length commentary on Dōgen’s fascicle on time and being. It is an in-depth discussion and exploration of Dōgen’s understanding of how we experience our lives as discrete and universal moments leading to our awakened response to daily life.
“Moshan’s Mountain Summit”, Record of the Hidden Lamp: 100 Koans and Stories from 25 Centuries of Awakened Women, ed. Susan Moon. Wisdom Publications, 2013.
This essay is a short preview of Shinshu’s later book length commentary on Uji.
“Astride the Highest Mountain: Dogen’s Being/Time”, Receiving the Marrow: Teachings on Dogen by Soto Zen Women Priests, ed. Eido Frances Carney.Temple Ground Press 2012.
This essay is a short preview of Shinshu’s later book length commentary on Uji.
“[Meeting the Myriad Things] is an important book. Dōgen Zenji’s writing can be puzzling, as he seems to shift rapidly from speaking about the relative (aspects of daily life) to the absolute (the transcendent). However, Shinshu Roberts’s lucid writing and understanding of Dharma open up the treasure house of Dōgen’s teaching, making it accessible to all students of Zen. The addition of commentaries by two of Dōgen Zenji’s students, Senne and Kyōgō, is a rare glimpse into how students who lived with the master understood his teaching. Meeting the Myriad Things should be in the library of every teacher of Zen.”
