When collecting material for Newsletters like this one, I usually ask people to share experiences from retreats that stayed with them.
For the Newsletters on Shinzan Roshi, I found myself doing the same thing. I asked people to speak about the times they met him, practised with him, sat with him, worked on koans with him.
So of course, I asked people who had actually met Shinzan Roshi to share stories about him. And they did. But while gathering these stories, I kept noticing something curious.
I never met Shinzan Roshi. At least not in the conventional sense. I never attended one of his retreats. Never sat with him in sanzen. Never worked directly with him. And yet, somehow, I also cannot honestly say I never met him. Because in a very real way, I keep meeting him.
And I imagine this may also be true for others who never met him personally but somehow feel his presence continuing through practice and life itself.
As someone deeply connected to sport since childhood, I was fascinated when I learned that Shinzan Roshi used to run every day. For some reason, that spoke something in me. Perhaps curiosity. Perhaps a desire to understand why a Zen Master would place emphasis on something other than sitting silently in a meditation hall.
At first, my relationship with sport was mostly built around achievement: performance, times, results, improvement, winning and losing.
Like many people, I also became familiar with the dopamine side of sport: the satisfaction after effort, the emotional high after training, the subtle dependence on movement and intensity.
And when the exercise stopped — when I could not train for a period of time — something else would often appear: restlessness, flatness, a vague sense that something was missing.
But slowly, through Zen practice, and through investigating practice while exercising, my relationship with running and cycling began to change.
The body stopped being simply a machine producing performance or stimulation. It became something alive to be present to. Something I started noticing that was constantly changing.
And this seemed to fit perfectly with what life itself actually is: constant movement, constant change, constant transformation.
Dopamine after intense exercise. Flatness during stillness, injuries, sedentariness. A type of energy appearing and then disappearing. Not better. Not worse. Not right. Not wrong. Just conditions arising and passing. Just life moving and changing form.
Some days the body feels powerful. Some days exhausted. Some days light. Some days resistant.
Aligning with these elements of dopamine, flatness, pain and effort really opened something up for me. Little by little, I stopped interpreting these movements as success or failure. Running itself became less important than directly experiencing what was happening while running.
Breath. Fatigue. Rhythm. Wind. Thoughts arising and fading. Energy rising and falling.
Not a fixed state to maintain, as this is simply impossible and will result in suffering. Not a permanent “good run,” because that exists only as an idea.
Only this changing experience unfolding moment by moment. And through this, I began discovering something that felt very real. Not as philosophy. Not as abstract teaching. But directly through the body.
Life moves. The body changes. The mind changes. Motivation changes. Energy changes. Emotions change. Everything flows. Nothing stays the same, and clearly suffering begins when we demand permanence from what is naturally impermanent.
In this sense, I sometimes feel Shinzan Roshi is still teaching me constantly.
Not through ideas alone, but through the simplicity of fully inhabiting ordinary life. When running, of course, but also when walking or simply breathing and being present inside change.
So, although I never met Shinzan Roshi in person, I feel I keep meeting him in the constant movement and change of life itself.
