Seiun Genro Dai Oshō

Herbert Koudela (1924 – 2010) was born in Vienna and trained professionally as a graphic artist. He spent three years at war and in captivity, and left Austria in 1948, initially for a year in the Netherlands. Two years in England and three in Canada followed, from where he was finally permitted to enter the USA as an immigrant.

He settled in Philadelphia for the next 17 years, where he also attended the academy of art and trained as a painter. Portrait commissions brought him, among other things, access to millionaire circles and, for the first time, comfortable circumstances. His expectations in the land of unlimited opportunity were partly fulfilled on the material level, yet his spiritual hunger remained unsatisfied.

After years of wandering he finally found his teacher Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Rōshi, a Japanese Zen master who lived and taught in California. Herbert Koudela dropped out of his former life. In 1972 he sold his house, gave up all material possessions and became a student of Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Rōshi at the Mount Baldy Zen Center. A year later he was ordained as a monk under the name Genro, and two years after that as an Oshō (Zen priest). From 1977 to 1979 he led a Zen centre in New Mexico, from where he returned to Austria to care for his elderly father.

When his father died five years later, Genro Oshō was, contrary to his original intention, no longer able to return to the USA, since he was by then leading a Zen group of his own in Vienna – the Bodhidharma Zendo – and was firmly involved in the pioneering work of Austrian Buddhists. He invited his teacher Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Rōshi to Austria once a year to hold a Sesshin at the Buddhist Centre Scheibbs. Genro Oshō, for his part, returned to Mt. Baldy each year for further training.

For many years Genro Oshō led the Rinzai Zen Senter Oslo in Norway and held Sesshins regularly there and in Germany. From 1987 to 2001 he was president of the Austrian Buddhist Religious Society, and thereafter its honorary president for life.

Genro Oshō died on 28 November 2010 after a long illness borne with equanimity. His teacher Kyozan Joshu Sasaki Rōshi gave him the name Toji Kaizan Genro and the title Dai Oshō. He thus stands in the final place in the line of the Great Patriarchs named during the evening recitation of the Soshi Eko.