About Tenshin Roshi

Tenshin Reb Anderson is a lineage-holder in the Soto Zen tradition of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.

A former abbot and senior Dharma teacher of San Francisco Zen Center, Tenshin Roshi lived and taught for more than fifty years at Zen Center’s Green Gulch Farm / Green Dragon Temple in Marin County, California, where he trained priests and Dharma teachers as well as visiting and resident lay students.

During his years at Zen Center, Tenshin Roshi regularly led two-month practice periods and three-week intensives at Green Gulch Farm / Green Dragon Temple, as well as three-month practice periods (ango) at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, most recently in 2017.

On leaving residence at Green Gulch Farm, Tenshin Roshi continues to offer teachings and practice opportunities around the world, leading retreats and sesshin as the guest of various sanghas across the U.S. and in Europe, and offering monthly one-day sittings and online dharma talks at No Abode Hermitage in Mill Valley, California.

Born in Mississippi in 1943, Reb lived in Minnesota until 1967, when he left graduate studies in mathematics and Western psychology to move to San Francisco to practice and study with Suzuki Roshi. During these early years, Reb trained at Zen Center’s Tassajara Zen Mountain Center as well as at City Center. When Suzuki Roshi ordained him as a priest in 1970, he gave Reb the dharma name Tenshin Zenki (Naturally Real, The Whole Works).

After Suzuki Roshi’s death in 1971, Reb continued training and practice at Zen Center and received dharma transmission from Zentatsu Richard Baker in 1983. From 1986 to 1995, he served as abbot and with Sojun Mel Weitsman as co-abbot of Zen Center’s three training centers (City Center, Green Gulch Farm, and Tassajara Zen Mountain Center), and in 2001, with a small group of devoted students, he founded No Abode Hermitage as a temple and practice community devoted to his teaching and more broadly to Mahayana teachings in the Soto Zen tradition.

Tenshin Roshi’s Being Upright: Zen Meditation and the Bodhisattva Precepts (2001) is widely studied by Zen practitioners as they prepare to receive the precepts and beyond. Tenshin Reb Anderson is also the author of Entering the Mind of the Buddha (2019), The Third Turning of the Wheel: Wisdom of the Samdhinirmocana Sutra (2012), and Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains: Dharma Talks on Zen Meditation (1999). His newest book, Nothing to Attain: Zen Stories of Faith and Understanding, will be available in March 2026.