Paula Jones

Paula Jones first became a student of Jikoji founder Kobun Chino when she attended the Santa Cruz Zendo in the mid-seventies. A year or two later, with her young daughter, she moved into the residence with a changing group of caretakers and friends, one of whom she later married. During and after that time she attended sesshins at Hidden Villa with Kobun's students from Los Altos, including Angie Boissevain, who, decades later, became her teacher.

After finishing her MA in Creative Writing, she began teaching poetry, literature and writing in colleges and private workshops in Santa Cruz, the Mojave Dessert, and San Diego, where she now lives with her husband, Balin. She has been able to attend sesshins at Jikoji again, and since receiving transmission from Angie, has participated as a teacher. She was a co-founder of Floating Zendo San Diego and has recently become one of the teachers at Floating Zendo in San Jose and a guiding teacher at Jikoji.

Dan Zigmond

Dan Zigmond is a writer, technologist, and Zen teacher. Dan was ordained as a priest at Jikoji by Kobun Chino Otagawa Roshi in 1998 and received Dharma transmission there from Shoho Michael Newhall in 2020. He currently serves on the board of directors of both Jikoji and the San Francisco Zen Center. He has also led teams at several successful technology companies, including Apple, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. His most recent book Buddha's Office: The Ancient Art of Waking Up While Working Well was published in 2019. You can find more about Dan at his website, www.shmonk.com.

Kobun chino Otogawa,
JIKOJI FOUNDER

The name Kobun means “to extend the way,” to extend culture, language, the word, to extend the dharma—fitting for someone bringing Zen to America. His dharma name was Ho-un Kobun. “Ho” means phoenix, firebird, and “un” is mystery, mystical, cloud. We could imagine the image: a bird flying in the clouds, just a wing-tip, a bit of the tail, fleetingly visible for a moment and then not—it’s so fitting from a student’s perspective. He traveled extensively, teaching in many places, always coming and going. He carried the forms elegantly and formlessly. He was often more than inscrutable, certainly not to be captured or contained by any preconception of what a Zen teacher was. Yet in his presence you felt you encountered someone complete. – From “Traces of Kobun” by Shoho Michael Newhall.

Transcriptions and audio recordings of talks by Kobun may be found here.

Angie Boissevain

Angie studied with Kobun while she was raising three sons, being a wife and writing poetry. He called her the enlightened housewife. During the last thirty-plus years of her practice with him she served as a teacher and was the first director at Jikoji, a retreat center she helped to establish for Kobun in the Santa Cruz mountains. She founded and served as head teacher for the Floating Zendo in San Jose until 2019.

Michael Newhall

Shoho Michael Newhall began practicing and studying with Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi in the early seventies, and was ordained by Kobun in the mid-eighties. In the early nineties he was director at Jikoji Zen Center. Throughout this time he taught visual arts at various schools and universities, including Naropa University, where he also taught meditation and Buddhism. Since that time, Mike has lived at Jikoji, serving as the Resident Teacher and chief priest.

Vanja Palmers

Vanja Palmers is an animal rights activist of many years, and a Dharma heir of the late Jikoji founder Kobun Chino Otogowa Roshi. Vanja spent 10 years as a monk at Green Gulch Farm and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. In 1981 he co-founded Buddhists Concerned for Animals (BCA), which now operates as Humane Farming Association (HFA.) In 1989 he co-founded Puregg, a house of interreligious dialogue, particularly between Christians and Buddhists, where Kobun led Sesshins for 15 years. In 1998, Vanja founded Stiftung Felsentor in Switzerland, a combined meditation center and animal sanctuary that runs a vegetarian garden restaurant.