General Information: Overview: Who We Are: Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao

Wendy Egyoku Nakao

Roshi Egyoku

Roshi Wendy Egyoku Nakao, was born Wendy Lou Nakao in Honolulu, Hawaii, around the middle of the last century. Of Japanese-Portuguese ancestry, she grew up on the Big Island of Hawaii. She attended the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington, where she received a BA in East Asian Studies and an MA in Librarianship. In Seattle in 1975, she began sitting on a dare. "Somebody bet me fifty dollars that I couldn't sit still and keep quiet for a week. I accepted the challenge and did a seven-day Zen sesshin. It was absolutely horrible, but I was hooked."

After three years of zazen in Seattle, Egyoku moved to the Zen Center of Los Angeles in 1978 to study with Taisan Maezumi Roshi. She was ordained by him in 1983, and served as his Head Monk in 1988. During her training at ZCLA, she served in various capacities, including as Editor of The Ten Directions and the Center's Chief Administrator. She was Maezumi Roshi's personal assistant at the time of his death, in 1995.

In 1996, she received Dharma Transmission from Roshi Bernie Glassman, Maezumi Roshi's first dharma successor, in Yonkers, New York. At Roshi Glassman's request, she returned to ZCLA as the Head Priest and Teacher in 1997, and was installed as the third Abbot of ZCLA in 1999. In June, 2004, she received inka from him in an empowerment ceremony held at the Mother House of the Zen Peacemakers in Montague, Ma.

Both Roshi's temple and teaching lineage comes through Maezumi Roshi, whose background was unusual in that he was a Soto priest who studied a Rinzai koan system. The orientation of her Dharma Transmission teacher Roshi Glassman in social action and peacemaking is also a major factor in her evolving teaching style.

A founding member of the Zen Peacemaker Order, Roshi has a strong commitment to rooting practice in our flesh and bones and the myriad forms of our contemporary culture.