Wendy Egyoku Nakao Roshi is the abbot emeritus and head teacher of the

Zen Center of Los Angeles The Zen Center of Los Angeles (ZCLA), temple name Buddha Essence Temple, is a Zen center founded by Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi in 1967 that practices in the White Plum lineage. ZCLA observes a daily schedule of zazen, Buddhist services, and work pr ...

. She moved into the center in 1978 and later received

Dharma transmission In Chan Buddhism, Chan and Zen Buddhism, dharma transmission is a custom in which a person is established as a "successor in an unbroken Lineage (Buddhism), lineage of teachers and disciples, a spiritual 'bloodline' (''kechimyaku'') theoretica ...

and inka from

Bernard Glassman Bernie Glassman (January 18, 1939 – November 4, 2018) was an American Zen Buddhist roshi and founder of the Zen Peacemakers (previously the Zen Community of New York), an organization established in 1980. In 1996, he co-founded the Zen Peacem ...

. She assumed her abbotship in 1999. According to

James Ishmael Ford James Ishmael Ford (Zeno Myoun, Roshi) is an American Zen Buddhist priest and a retired Unitarian Universalist minister. He was born in Oakland, California on July 17, 1948. He earned a BA in psychology from Sonoma State University, as well as ...

, "Under her leadership, the center expanded its mission to be family-friendly and socially active, creating an important experiment in the development of Western Zen." Nakao also conferred Dharma transmission to the first ever

African-American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an Race and ethnicity in the United States, ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American ...

woman,

Merle Kodo Boyd Merle Kodo Boyd (December 23, 1944 – February 20, 2022) was an American Zen Buddhism, Zen Buddhist nun. She was the first African-American woman to receive Dharma transmission in Zen Buddhism, as a Dharma heir of Wendy Egyoku Nakao in the White ...

. Nakao is a member of the

American Zen Teachers Association The American Zen Teachers Association (AZTA) was founded in the late 1980s as the Second Generation Zen Teachers Group. It is a peer-group organization of ordained and lay Zen Buddhist teachers, all of whom have received either teaching authorizat ...

ref>Friedman, 339 In May 2019 Egyoku Nakao stepped down as abbot, but remains its head teacher, to devote herself to further developing ZCLA's teaching curriculum. She at that time installed Deborah Faith-Mind Thoresen as the ZCLA's fourth abbot. Her book of modern koans, co-written with rōshi

Eve Marko Eve (; ; ar, حَوَّاء, Ḥawwāʾ; el, Εὕα, Heúa; la, Eva, Heva; Syriac: romanized: ) is a figure in the Book of Genesis in the Hebrew Bible. According to the origin story, "Creation myths are symbolic stories describing how the ...

, was published in 2020.

Bibliography

Gallery

Image:Wendy Egyoku Nakao & Pat Enkyo O'Hara.jpg, with

Pat Enkyo O'Hara Enkyō Pat O'Hara is a Soto priest and teacher in the Harada-Yasutani lineage of Zen Buddhism. Biography Growing up as a young white girl in Tijuana, Mexico while attending Catholic School in the United States, O’Hara was far too familiar with ...

Notes

References

* * White Plum Asanga Zen Buddhist nuns American Zen Buddhists Living people Buddhist abbesses Year of birth missing (living people) {{Zen-bio-stub