Taigen Daniel Leighton

Taigen Dan Leighton (b. 1950, Pittsburgh, PA) is an American Sōtō Zen priest, scholar, and author, and a Dharma successor in the lineage of Shunryū Suzuki. He began formal Zen practice in 1975 at the New York Zen Center under Kandō Nakajima Rōshi, and after earning a B.A. in East Asian Studies from Columbia University, moved to the Bay Area in 1978 to practice and work full-time at San Francisco Zen Center, residing for years at City Center, Tassajara, and Green Gulch Farm. He received priest ordination in 1986 from Tenshin Reb Anderson Rōshi and Dharma Transmission from him in 2000. From 1990 to 1992, Leighton practiced and translated Dōgen in Kyoto, Japan, working closely with Rev. Shōhaku Okumura.

Leighton holds an M.A. from the California Institute of Integral Studies and a Ph.D. from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, where he has taught since 1994, alongside teaching appointments at Loyola University Chicago and other institutions. In 2007 he relocated to Chicago to become founding Guiding Dharma Teacher of Ancient Dragon Zen Gate, a role he held through mid-2024. He is an authorized teacher (kyōshi) in the Japanese Sōtō school and has long been active in peace and environmental activism.

Leighton has authored roughly ten books of commentary and translation on Zen texts, including Faces of Compassion: Classic Bodhisattva Archetypes and Their Modern Expression, Visions of Awakening Space and Time: Dōgen and the Lotus Sutra, Zen Questions: Zazen, Dōgen, and the Spirit of Creative Inquiry, and Realizing Genjōkōan: The Key to Dōgen's Shōbōgenzō, as well as co-translations of major Dōgen works such as Dōgen's Extensive Record: A Translation of the Eihei Kōroku and Cultivating the Empty Field: The Silent Illumination of Zen Master Hongzhi.