Background
Skinner was born in Chatham, United Kingdom in 1963 and grew up in Kent.
寿鸞 大山
Skinner was born in Chatham, United Kingdom in 1963 and grew up in Kent.
After graduation, he worked as a scientist in the pharmaceuticals industry. Given permission to enter full-time monastic training as a postulant in 1989, he was ordained as an unsui or novice monk on April 4, 1991. Foreign the first seven years he lived in the zendo, the meditation hall, with three by six feet of space on the meditation platform and two cupboards, one for bedding and one for robes.
Daizan Rōshi reflects: "As junior monks, we were almost never alone.
Every action 24 hours a day was expected to be obedient to instructions, undertaken mindfully and with consideration for others The monastery is a pressured environment.
The image used to exemplify it was the rock tumbler. The months and years of living cheek by jowl gradually smooth off all the rough corners so that each monk becomes a polished jewel.” He received dharma transmission on December 21, 1995.
On May 8, 2007, Daizan received inka from Shinzan Rōshi.
On midsummer morning (June 21) 2007 Daizan Rōshi began a walk from the south tip of the Isle of Wight to the northern tip of Scotland. Wearing his monastic robes and kasa (hat) and carrying no money, Daizan Rōshi walked up the centre of the island of Britain finishing on Cape Wrath at the north of Scotland. The 777 mile walk took 64 days.
The event was presided over by Shinzan Rōshi.
In March 2015 Daizan Rōshi, together with co-translator Sumiko Hayashi, published the book "In Heaven"s River: Poems and Carvings of Mountain-Monk Enku", a tribute to the life and art of Enkū, the 17th century Japanese itinerant wonder-working mountain monk, sculptor, and poet.