Daniel Kōjin Gallagher

Daniel Kōjin Gallagher Sensei, is an ordained Sōtō Zen teacher. He received Dharma Transmission (Denkai and Shiho) in 2024 from Dr. David Keizan Scott Rōshi, founder of StoneWater Zen Centre in Liverpool, England. Kōjin Sensei has extensive training in both shikantaza (just sitting) and kōan practise, having completed the kōan curriculum in the Harada-Yasutani lineage through Taizan Maezumi Rōshi.

Kōjin experienced early glimpses of insight in his youth and throughout his twenties while practicing with Sunyana Graef in Vermont. While studying at the Sorbonne in France, a series of spontaneous awakenings transformed the course of his life. He then dedicated himself to rigorous Zen practise and intensive kōan study with Catherine Genno Pagès Roshi in Paris. He lived and practised at her Zen centre for several years, attending regular retreats in France and throughout Europe. His Zen training also included several extended residencies at Kanzeon Zen Center in Utah, and Yokoji Zen Mountain Center in California.

Kōjin emphasises the innate potential of every person to awaken to their true nature — the direct experience of the infinite, absolute dimension of existence. Living in harmony with this awakening is the very manifestation of realisation itself — intimate, unending, continuously unfolding beyond all measure.

Born and raised in Newton, Massachusetts, Kōjin earned a BA and an MA from Saint Michael’s College in Vermont. After moving to Japan to teach English, he relocated to France where he spent over twenty years living in Paris, working as a translator and university lecturer while obtaining master's degrees and a doctorate in Comparative Literature at the Université de Paris III – Sorbonne Nouvelle. 

Alongside his academic publications, he is the author of Meeting the True Dragon: Zen Master Dogen’s Fukanzazengi (2019), and Striking Emptiness: Zen Master Dogen’s Bendowa (2024).