Mission of Compassion: An Interview with Zen Buddhist Head Priest Souken Danjo, Part 1 of 2

Reverend Souken Danjo was born in Fukuyama City, Hiroshima Prefecture in 1956. After graduating from a university in Japan, he studied in America, specializing in agro-economics. Upon his return, he stayed in a mountain in Hino County, Tottori Prefecture for more than a year in order to make a retreat, meditating, putting natural agriculture into practice, and beginning to study healthy food. Before entering into priesthood, he had also traveled to India, where he learned a philosophy of yoga at an ashram in Rishikesh. One day, he had a chance encounter of meeting His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama. The story began when he was picking up some medicine at a Tibetan hospital in Delhi.