After years of practice at SF Zen Center, Taigen Dan Leighton received Dharma Transmission from Tenshin Reb Anderson in 2000. Taigen has authored ten books of comment and translation of Zen texts. From 2007 through mid-2024 Taigen was Guiding Teacher at Ancient Dragon Zen Gate in Chicago. Taigen has taught at many universities. He practiced through the 80s and mid 90s at City Center, Tassajara, and Green Gulch. Taigen had studied Buddhist sculptures and Zen gardens in Japan in 1970, and began formal Zen practice four years later with a Japanese Soto Zen priest in New York City. Taigen was priest ordained in Tenshin Roshi’s first priest group in 1986. He was Tassajara shuso with Zenkei Blanche Hartman in 1990. He spent two years thereafter living in Kyoto and translating Dogen with Shohaku Okumura. Among Taigen’s books are Dogen’s Extensive Record; Faces of Compassion: Classic Bodhisattva Archetypes; Cultivating the Empty Field; Just This Is It: Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness; Visions of Awakening Space and Time: Dogen and the Lotus Sutras; and Dogen’s Pure Standards for the Zen Community: A Translation of Eihei Shingi. Taigen has a Ph.D. from Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and has taught at the Institute of Buddhist Studies since 1994. Before relocating to Chicago, Taigen founded Mountain Source Sangha in the Bay Area, which continues thanks to Dan Gudgel. See also.