John Nomura gives a Dharma talk at Seattle Soto Zen.
Photos by: Edward Cadman, Philip Newton, Stephanie Tsukiko Nomura-Henley

John Nomura’s 40 years of Zen practice, and fierce dedication to social justice, makes him at 78 a unique Dharma leader in Seattle and Los Angeles.

Nomura takes his investigation into Soto Zen seriously, but he also sees the world as one divine comedy. Above all Nomura is an ardent believer in the power of zazen, a form of Zen meditation.

Nomura greets guests at a family wedding he officiated.

“If everybody sat zazen all the problems of the world would be solved,” he said “Zen is mostly about the practice of sitting zazen and I would say the practice of sitting zazen is to moment-by-moment coming back to the reality of what’s going on in our lives, right now.”

When Nomura engages in conversations hashing out the intricacies of existence, you’re as likely to hear him quoting Zen master Dogen, as quoting Bob Dylan’s koan-like lyrics.

A lifelong activist, Nomura is currently focused on protesting federal mistreatment of immigrants, and the separation of children from their families. While earlier in his life he saw his activism and Zen practice as separate entities, he now views them as inseparable from one another.

“What messes us up is the stories we concoct about what our life is all about,” he said. “These stories are very seductive, but through the process of Zazen we begin to get back to reality.”

Nomura in Japan, exploring by train with family.

Nomura’s home temple of Zenshuji, in the “Little Tokyo” district of Los Angeles, has been deeply involved in the Japanese-American community response to families detained and separated by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE).

A Japanese-American, Nomura was born in 1942 in an internment camp in Santa Anita, California. His family had been forcibly removed from their home and sent to the camp, as had about 120,000 other Japanese Americans, as the United States entered World War II.

But despite adversity he faced as an infant Nomura has been unwavering in exploring Buddhism throughout his life, with his upbringing pushing him to link his Buddhist principles with social activism.

“My dad always said I was a lucky guy,” he said, “because I was born in a horse stable in the year of the horse!”

The place where he was born, Santa Anita, California, was actually an assembly station where Japanese-Americans initially went after being forcibly removed from their homes. From there the Nomura family was sent to a camp in Jerome, Arkansas, and then to the Heart Mountain War Relocation Center in Wyoming, where they remained through the end of the war.

Nomura enjoying tea and cookies at One Pine Hall in Seattle.

Like many in the Japanese-American community Nomura’s mother was a Buddhist. When the family returned to Los Angeles from the camps, like many others they stayed at a Buddhist temple. Later they settled in Los Angeles’ Boyle Heights neighborhood, one of the nation’s largest concentration of people of Japanese origin.

That Buddhist temple was Nomura’s first contact with Buddhism, and his interest developed as he got into grade school and his mother sent him to a Jodo Shinshu temple in the Little Tokyo district. His father was Catholic and while Nomura often attended mass with him, he adds that his father was “very Japanese about it,” in that he remained open and followed interreligious traditions. 

In the 1960s Nomura attended Loyola University, a private Catholic university in Los Angeles, majoring in physics with a minor in philosophy. Spending a lot of time in the library, he found a book about Asian religions that reintroduced him to Buddhism.

While in college he also started working with civil rights movements.  He became active in the Chicano Movement, supporting rights of people of Mexican descent, and regularly picketed grocery stores as part of the United Farm Workers’ grape boycott. He also worked with members of the Brown Berets (a militant Chicano organization) to tutor kids in schools.

Nomura and author Nat Evans at Zenshuji Soto Mission in Los Angeles, during Rohatsu sesshin.

Looking back, Nomura sees a clear connection from his awareness of being born in a concentration camp to becoming an activist.

‘“I was put behind bars as a baby,’ he said, “so I’ve always had a distrust of authorities.”

While at Loyola, influenced by a professor who had been taking classes at the alternative Esalen Institute, Nomura joined “encounter groups” where people engaged in strong dialogue as part of their growth. He was influenced by their ideas and their emphasis on what he terms “being authentic.”

In particular Nomura awakened to the idea that while we all have different sorts of masks we wear at different moments, beyond this façade there is nothing inherent, no self.

These realizations had been developing in Nomura’s life for a while, but through religious exploration he began to have a context and language to understand them. He viewed these as fundamental human experiences where one goes beyond something that can be verbalized, and one sees the world for what it is.

Nomura’s experiences were further contextualized as he read more about Buddhism and eventually had his first formal experience with Zen meditation. This happened during college, when friend taking a world religion class visited a Zen center and Nomura tagged along.

Nomura at Seattle Soto Zen.

The experience was a turning point for Nomura, who began exploring Buddhism by taking classes at a Shambhala Buddhist center, and also by exploring Catholic mystics.

Wanting to investigate meditation further, in 1980 Nomura decided to stop by Zenshuji, the first Soto Zen temple in North America. Upon entering he saw “a guy who was dressed like a monk,” and asked, “Do you guys do zazen here?”

The monk-like person turned out to be Akiyama Roshi, a Zen teacher who became Nomura’s first guide into the world of Zen Buddhism, and who later went on to head the Milwaukee Zen Center.

Nomura began to go to Zenshuji regularly for meditation but also to just hang around Akiyama. He was soaking up his teacher’s wisdom even while doing seemingly mundane activities, like going to the Little Tokyo flower market to buy flowers for the temple.

Typical of Japanese Zen teachers, Akiyama Roshi never gave the Dharma talks one might expect at a Soto Zen establishment focused on American converts. But he always went around and corrected everyone’s posture while they were sitting zazen.

“It took me about five years before I realized that that was the teaching – that’s Japanese Zen,” Nomura said. “It’s subtle… You start to sit and have your posture going – straightened out – and then your mind wanders, and your posture just falls apart. Once you realize that you return to your posture. That’s the whole process of Zen. Sit, your mind wanders, you return to your posture.”

Zenshuji, where Nomura received the precepts in a ceremony called jukai, became Nomura’s spiritual center and remains so. During the summer of 1983  he also lived at the Zen Center of Los Angeles for an extended practice period called ango,  led by Maezumi Roshi.

In the mid-1980s Nomura took a job teaching in Seattle. He sat with several Seattle Zen groups eventually landing at One Pine Hall, founded by Ryuzen Robby Pellett in 1994. Besides daily sitting early in the morning the group also offered a weekly evening meditation, which Nomura attended for years.

In 2005 Nomura helped start Seattle Soto Zen, after being encouraged by priest Sandy Taylor, who also invited regular Nat Evans. The new group offered meditation and community fellowship similar to Taylor’s home temple, San Francisco Zen Center.

Nomura remains active with Seattle Soto Zen, continuing the teaching Akiyama Roshi imparted to him of simply correcting people’s posture while meditating. He also regularly gives Dharma talks. Nomura also continues to practice with One Pine Hall, and with his home temple Zenshuji.

With decades of experience and a fervent belief in Zen, Nomura still moves on the path with wisdom, patience, and a broad worldview.

He says, “The most important thing is discovering your path and doing it whole-heartedly.”