William D. Johnston

After going to primary and secondary schools in Wyoming, I went to college at Elmira College in New York and graduate school at Harvard University. I have also studied at Nanzan University in Nagoya, Japan, Nagoya University, and Tokyo University, been a research scholar at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies and Kyoto University, and the Edwin O. Reischauer Visiting Professor of History at Harvard. I came to Wesleyan in 1988 and plan to retire in 2024, after 36 years of service.

The Zen practitioner's story: while in high school, I encountered Suzuki Daisetz's An Introduciton to Zen Buddhism and determined to pursue Zen in my life. Rather than study it as an academic discipline, I decided to integrate it into my life as best as possible. While studying in Japan in 1975, I received instruction in Zen meditation from a Sōtō Sect priest, beginning what has become a life-long practice. During my first year in graduate school, I sat with Maurine Myōon Stuart in Cambridge, MA, and later with Yamada Kōun in Kamakura. In 2000, I first visited Zen Mountain Monastery and have practiced there ever since. In 2003, a group traveled from Zen Mountain Monastery to visit a Japanese Sōtō master, Suzuki Seidō Roshi, at Unsenji in Okayama Prefecture in Japan. Since then, I have visited Seidō Roshi in Japan almost every year, and formally became his student as a Sōtō monk at Tōshōji training monastery in 2018. After retiring from Wesleyan, I plan to spend longer stretches of time both studying with Seidō Roshi and at Zen Mountain Monastery.