Rinzai Zen Nun and Current Head of the Community

Mori Sensei has been practising Rinzai Zen since 1998. After nineteen years of Zen practice, Sōtetsu Yūzen Rōshi appointed her as his Dharma successor on October 5, 2017, and entrusted her with responsibility for the continuation and further development of the First Berlin Zen Community (Erste Berliner Zen-Gemeinschaft e.V.).

Once her children had become independent, she was ordained as a Rinzai Zen nun on her 50th birthday. She also regarded this ordination as a special birthday gift to herself.

Today, Mori Sensei leads the Zen practice of the community. She introduces newcomers to Zazen, gives talks on the teachings of the Buddha, and accompanies practitioners on their path. She practises Dokusan with those who are seriously committed to the path. In addition, she teaches members of the community Sui-Boku-Dō, the Way of Ink Painting, as well as calligraphy.

On June 6, 2026, she was appointed a Rinzai Zen Master. Mori Sensei has decided to wait another ten years of practice before using this title herself.

Two strong impulses originally led her to Zen: despair and a thirst for knowledge—the experience that the answers she had found so far were not sufficient for the pressing questions of life, and the desire to uncover whatever still remained hidden. The practice of Zen has been of decisive help to her on her own path through life. Passing on this experience has become a matter close to her heart.

Her aim is to convey Zen clearly and understandably, sometimes with humour, and without over-intellectualized talk or mystification. Zen is a path of experience that must prove itself in one’s own life and in everyday situations. 

Her public Zen talks address fundamental questions of Buddhist teaching and human life and are also available on YouTube. Through Instagram, the community shares information about its practice, talks, and events and seeks to connect with people who wish to practise this path seriously and together with others.

Founder of the Community

Sōtetsu Yūzen Rōshi (born in 1940 in Neiße/Silesia) founded the First Berlin Zen Community (Erste Berliner Zen-Gemeinschaft e.V.) on July 27, 1971, and shaped and developed our Zen practice over many decades.

His own Zen practice began in 1964. After encounters with and instruction from various teachers of Rinzai Zen, he met Seki Yūhō Rōshi in 1974. Seki Yūhō became his master, and Sōtetsu Yūzen remained his student until Seki Yūhō’s death in 1982. Before his death, Seki Yūhō Rōshi appointed Sōtetsu Yūzen as his Dharma successor in Germany and as a master of the Rinzai Zen school.

Sōtetsu Yūzen understood Zen above all as a practical discipline. For him, insight had to show itself in everyday life—in the way a person acts, deals with difficulties, and succeeds in breaking through habitual patterns of thought and behaviour.

With great determination, and sometimes through unconventional and controversial methods, he sought to break through deeply entrenched patterns in the minds of his students and repeatedly bring them back from mere ideas and concepts to immediate experience.

For many decades, he taught Rinzai Zen throughout the German-speaking world as well as in Poland and developed the form of practice of the First Berlin Zen Community. In his efforts to give Rinzai Zen a home in Europe, he founded 14 Zendōs in Germany, Austria, and Poland.

He is also the author of numerous books on Zen and Kōan practice. In his approach to Kōans, he sought to lead them out of the fog of mere interpretation and towards a clarity that could be experienced and put into practice in one’s own life.

In 2017, he transmitted the Dharma succession to Mori Sensei and entrusted her with responsibility for the further development of the community.

Senior Japanese Master in Our Line of Practice

Seki Yūhō Rōshi (1900–1982) was the 82nd abbot of the Rinzai Zen monastery Eigen in Japan.

Orphaned at an early age, he entered the monastery of his strict master Banshōkan, where he began his training. The rigor of his own training did not prevent him from becoming an exceptionally warm-hearted and caring person. One small story illustrates this particularly well: when the winters were very cold, he allowed the monastery’s chickens to spend the night in his room.

Sōtetsu Yūzen completed his Zen training under the guidance of Seki Yūhō Rōshi and repeatedly spent extended periods with him at the monastery in Japan. Seki Yūhō entrusted his student with the task of developing Rinzai Zen further in Germany and allowing it to take root here. “Make Zen accessible to Western people, but never violate the very marrow of Zen,” he instructed him. This commission has profoundly shaped the development of the First Berlin Zen Community and continues to do so today.

Seki Yūhō’s connection with the Berlin community was not limited to Japan. He visited the Kin-Mō-Zendō in Berlin-Frohnau several times and personally accompanied the development of Zen practice here as well.

Before his death in 1982, he appointed Sōtetsu Yūzen as his Dharma successor in Germany. A portion of Seki Yūhō Rōshi’s ashes is kept to this day in the Butsudan of the Kin-Mō-Zendō.

Through the transmission from Seki Yūhō Rōshi to Sōtetsu Yūzen Rōshi, and from him to Mori Sensei, this line of practice continues within our community to the present day.

Transmission does not mean merely passing on a title or theoretical knowledge. It stands for an experience matured through many years of personal practice—an experience that each generation must receive, examine, and realize anew in its own life.