About
Taigen Dan Leighton is a Soto Zen priest and Dharma successor in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. He began formal zazen practice in 1975 at the New York Zen Center and worked at San Francisco Zen Center for many years, receiving priest ordination in 1986 and Dharma Transmission in 2000 from Reb Anderson. He spent two years in Kyoto studying with Shohaku Okumura Roshi and other Japanese Soto teachers. Leighton has authored books on Zen practice and Dogen's teachings and has translated several Zen texts. Since 2007 he has been based in Chicago as Guiding Dharma Teacher for Ancient Dragon Zen Gate. He teaches online at Berkeley Graduate Theological Union and has been active in environmental and peace activism.
Teaching focus
Leighton'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. Leighton 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. Leighton'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
Taigen Dan Leighton 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 Leighton has chosen to share there. Taigen Dan Leighton is a Soto Zen priest and Dharma successor in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Taigen began formal everyday zazen and Soto practice in 1975 at the New York Zen Center with Kando Nakajima Roshi. He migrated to the Bay Area in 1978 and shortly thereafter began to work full time for the San Francisco Zen Center. Taigen practiced and resided for years at the SFZC City Center, Tassajara monastery, and Green Gulch Farm Zen Center, and received priest ordination in 1986 from Reb Anderson Roshi. Taigen also practiced for two years in Kyoto, Japan, translating Dogen with Shohaku Okumura Roshi, and practicing with several Japanese Soto Zen teachers. Taigen received Dharma Transmission in 2000 from Reb Anderson. Taigen is author of Just This Is It: Dongshan and the Practice of Suchness Zen Questions: Zazen, Dogen and the Spirit of Creative Inquiry Faces of Compassion: Classic Bodhisattva Archetypes and Their Modern Expression; and of Visions of Awakening Space and Time: Dogen and the Lotus Sutra. He is co-translator and editor of several Zen texts including: Dogen’s Extensive Record Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi The Wholehearted Way: A Translation of Dogen’s "Bendowa" with Commentary by Kosho Uchiyama Roshi; and Dogen’s Pure Standards for the Zen Community: A Translation of "Eihei Shingi". Taigen relocated to Chicago in 2007, and now is Guiding Dharma Teacher for the Ancient Dragon Zen Gate sangha. Taigen still teaches online at the Berkeley Graduate Theological Union, from where he has a Ph.D., and he has taught at various other universities. Taigen has long been an Environmental and Peace activist, currently working with Buddhist Peace Fellowship Chicago. That body of work places Leighton 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. Leighton'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. Leighton contributes to that container in the role Upaya's website assigns. People interested in the specific arc of Leighton'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
Leighton'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. Leighton contributes as part of Upaya's wider faculty rather than as a Zen priest. Information about specific dharma transmission lines, ordination, or external lineage roots belongs on Leighton's own site rather than fabricated here.
What to expect
In a program with Leighton at Upaya, expect zazen and Soto Zen forms paired with teaching in Leighton'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 Leighton is teaching.
