About
Rev. Issho Fujita was born in Ehime prefecture, Japan, in 1954 and studied developmental and clinical psychology at the University of Tokyo. After attending a week-long Zen sesshin at Enkaku-ji monastery in 1981, he left graduate school to practice Zen full-time at Antai-ji, a Soto Zen monastery in Hyogo Prefecture. From 1987 to 2005, he was a resident teacher at Pioneer Valley Zendo in Massachusetts and taught at several colleges including Smith, Amherst, and Mt. Holyoke. He served as Director of the Soto Zen Buddhism International Center in San Francisco from 2010 to 2018, visiting Soto Zen centers worldwide. He currently teaches as an independent instructor based in Hayama, Japan, focusing on somatic approaches to Zen practice.
Teaching focus
Rev. Issho's teaching at Upaya sits inside the center's Soto Zen container. The basic form is zazen, just sitting, with the posture and breath held lightly and the mind allowed to settle without force. Around that core, Upaya's programs build out a wider arc that includes the Bodhisattva precepts, oryoki meal practice, walking meditation (kinhin), dharma talks, and the GRACE framework Roshi Joan developed for clinicians working at the bedside. Rev. Issho teaches inside that framework, which means the work isn't just on the cushion. Students are asked to bring practice into the spaces where it actually gets tested: at the bedside, in conversation, in moments of grief or political reactivity, in the long, slow work of climate and justice. Upaya's approach is recognizable for its refusal to keep zazen and the world in separate boxes. The cushion and the clinic, the cushion and the kitchen, the cushion and the protest line are all treated as the same field of practice, not different ones. Rev. Issho's contribution stays in that key. Teaching sessions emphasize uprightness, attention, and the Bodhisattva vow as something lived in specific situations rather than recited as an idea. There's room for silence. There's also room for hard conversations about what practice asks of a person in a world under pressure.
Background
Rev. Issho Fujita appears in Upaya Zen Center's teacher and faculty roster as part of the wider contemplative community Roshi Joan Halifax has gathered in Santa Fe, New Mexico, over the past four decades. The biographical material on file is drawn directly from Upaya's own teacher page and reflects what Rev. Issho has chosen to share there. Rev. Issho Fujita was born in Ehime prefecture in Japan in 1954. He studied developmental/clinical psychology at University of Tokyo. Besides academic study, he intensively practiced Aikido and Noguchi Exercise. When he was a PhD. Student at the age of 27, he was recommended by a master of Chinese medicine to attend a week-long Zen sesshin (intensive Zen training session) at Enkaku-ji, traditional Rinzai monastery in Kamakura. Through this experience he was deeply fascinated by zazen practice. Eventually he left the graduate school to study Zen full time at Antai-ji, Soto Zen monastery in Hyogo Prefecture. In 1987, he became a resident teacher at Pioneer Valley Zendo in Massachusetts. During his stay until 2005, he also taught at various colleges and institutions, such as Smith College, Amherst College, Mt Holyoke College, University of Massachusetts, and Barre Center for Buddhist Studies. In 2010, he was assigned to be a Director of Soto Zen Buddhism International Center in San Francisco. Until resigning from that position in 2018, He visited many Soto Zen centers, temples and groups worldwide to teach Soto Zen teaching and practice. Now he lives in Hayama, Japan, with his wife and a cat, Terra, as a free-lance Zen teacher who teaches somatic style Zen in lectures, workshops and books. That body of work places Rev. Issho inside a center known for blending Soto Zen practice with contemplative care for the dying, climate work, neuroscience dialogues, and a long-running program for clinicians and chaplains called GRACE. Upaya's roster mixes resident priests with visiting scholars, doctors, scientists, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders, and the programs reflect that blend. Rev. Issho's appearances at Upaya situate this work inside that wider conversation between zazen and the world it sits inside. For practitioners who arrive at Upaya through a sesshin or a Being with Dying training, the common thread is a posture of upright, alert presence under whatever conditions show up. The forms are recognizably Soto Zen: zazen, kinhin, oryoki, the Bodhisattva precepts, dharma talks, and dokusan with senior teachers. The framing is wider than any single discipline, which is part of what has made Upaya a meeting ground for working clinicians, scientists, artists, and long-time Buddhist practitioners. Rev. Issho contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Rev. Issho's career outside Upaya can follow the linked website and external publications listed on the Upaya page itself, which is where any deeper biographical detail belongs.
Lineage
Rev. Issho's teaching home for the work documented here is Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, founded by Roshi Joan Halifax in the 1980s and rooted in the Soto Zen lineage. Upaya's broader faculty includes resident priests, visiting senior teachers, scientists, clinicians, poets, and indigenous knowledge holders. Rev. Issho teaches in the Soto Zen lineage as a priest within that container. Information about specific dharma transmission lines, ordination, or external lineage roots belongs on Rev. Issho's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Rev. Issho at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Rev. Issho's own area of focus. Days follow Upaya's rhythm of sittings, walking meditation, meals, talks, and time for questions. Silence is taken seriously, but so are the conversations that come out of it. The framing is wide enough for people from outside Buddhist practice to take part fully. Long-time Zen students will recognize the forms; newcomers will be supported through them. Expect to leave with a clearer sense of how practice meets the specific subject Rev. Issho is teaching.
