James Ishmael Ford

James Ishmael Ford

Amercian Zen teacher and Unitarian Universalist minister, James Ishmael Ford (Zeno Myoun, Roshi), was born in Oakland, California on the 17th of July, 1948. He earned a BA in Psychology from Sonoma State University, as well as an MDiv and an MA in the Philosophy of Religion, both from the Pacific School of Religion.

Ford began his Zen studies in 1968 at the Berkeley Zendo under the direction of Mel Weitsman, later Weitsman, Roshi. He was ordained unsui and received Dharma transmission from the late Jiyu Kennett Roshi. After leaving Kennett Roshi's Shasta Abbey and for a brief time exploring other religious traditions including the Episcopal Church, the western Gnostic tradition and Inayat Khan Sufism, Ford pursued Zen koan introspection for nearly twenty years with the lay Harada-Yasutani Zen master Dr John Tarrant, with whom he completed formal training and from whom he received Inka Shomei in 2005.

Ford also began to be seriously involved in Unitarian Universalism at about the same time he began his work with Tarrant Roshi. After completing theological stuides he became a Unitarian Universalist minister, serving Unitarian Universalist congregations in Wisconsin and Arizona before becoming senior minister of the First Unitarian Society in Newton (MA).

He also maintained his relationships within the Soto community, and in 2004 Ford participated in the first Dharma Heritage ceremony of the forming North American Soto Zen Buddhist Association. This event designed to be the equivalent of the Japanese Soto Zuisse ceremony was a public acknowledgement of Ford (among others) as a senior member of the North American Zen community.

Ford is currently a teacher at Boundless Way Zen, a network of Zen meditation groups mostly in Eastern Massachusetts. He joins in this project with David Rynick, a Dharma successor of Zen Master George Bowman in the Korean lineage of Zen Master Seung Sahn and Rynick's wife and Ford's Dharma heir, Melissa Myozen Blacker. The Boundless Way appears to be the first Western Zen community to attempt to blend several lineages into a single organization.

Ford is co-editor of The Transient and Permanent in Liberal Religion and is the author of In This Very Moment: A Simple Guide to Zen Buddhism, both published by Skinner House Books. His study of Zen teachers and communities in North America, File:Zen Master Who? A Guide to the People and Stories of Zen is in the current Wisdom Publications catalogue.

Ford has become somewhat controversial for his blending of classic Zen Buddhism and its practices with the Western rationalist and humanistic understandings of contemporary Unitarian Universalism. (For a similar approach see Stephen Batchelor's Buddhism Without Beliefs) He is also concerned that spiritual insights lead to ethical and particularly social engagement. A number of his talks focus on what he calls "Engaged Spirituality" which seems identical with "Engaged Buddhism."