John Daido Loori
Born to a Catholic family in Jersey City, New Jersey, in 1931, John Daido Loori forged a birth certificate when he was 16 years old so that he could join the U.S. Navy, and served on an aircraft carrier from 1947 to 1952. Daido’s serious study of Zen began in 1974 with Soen Nakagawa Roshi and Eido Shimano in New York and continued in Los Angeles with Taizan Maezumi Roshi, who made him a priest in 1983 and gave him Dharma Transmission in 1986. After acquiring a large Catholic monastery in 1980 on 230 acres of land in Mt. Tremper, New York, Daido and Maezumi Roshi established Zen Mountain Monastery, and Daido founded the Mountains and Rivers Order. Daido died at Mt. Tremper in 2009 from lung cancer. Zen Mountain Monastery and Fire Lotus Temple in Brooklyn, New York, continue to operate under the leadership of his successors.
