James Ishmael Ford

Roshi Ford has nine Dharma heirs including Josh Jiun Bartok Roshi; Melissa Myozen Blacker Roshi of Boundless Way Temple; Dosho Port (suspended indefinitely from Soto Zen Buddhist Association in 2022 for ethical violations); and Jay Rinsen Weik Roshi of the Buddhist Temple of Toledo, Ohio.

In 2020 he started serving as consulting minister to the historic First Unitarian Church of Los Angeles.

In 2015, Ford retired from his ministry at the First Unitarian Church of Providence, left Boundless Way, and moved to Long Beach, California. He then established the Empty Moon Zen Network, a network of Zen Centers in California, Washington state, and Pennsylvania.

Roshi Ford also maintained his relationships within the Soto community, and in 2004 Ford participated in the first Dharma Heritage ceremony of the forming North American Soto Zen Buddhist Association. This event, designed to be the equivalent of the Japanese Soto Zuisse ceremony, was a public acknowledgment of Ford (among others) as a senior member of the North American Zen community. Ford, a past president of the Unitarian Universalist Buddhist Fellowship, was the first Unitarian Universalist minister to be named a Zen master.

Ford began to be seriously involved in Unitarian Universalism at about the same time he began his work with Tarrant Roshi. After completing theological studies he became a Unitarian Universalist minister, serving Unitarian Universalist congregations in Wisconsin and Arizona before becoming senior minister of the First Unitarian Society in Newton, MA in 2000. In May 2008 First Unitarian Church of Providence, RI called him to its pulpit; he began his ministry there in the summer of that year.

Ford began his Zen studies in 1968 at the Berkeley Zen Center under the direction of Mel Weitsman, later Weitsman, Roshi. He was ordained unsui and received Dharma transmission from the late Jiyu Kennett Roshi. After leaving Kennett Roshi's Shasta Abbey and for a brief time exploring other religious traditions including the Episcopal Church, the western Gnostic tradition and Inayat Khan Sufism, Ford pursued Zen koan introspection for nearly twenty years in the Sanbo Kyodan tradition with John Tarrant Roshi, with whom he completed formal training and from whom he received Inka Shomei (formal recognition as an authorized Zen teacher) in 2005.

James Ishmael Ford (Zeno Myoun, Roshi) is an American Zen Buddhist priest and a retired Unitarian Universalist minister. He was born in Oakland, California on July 17, 1948. He earned a BA in psychology from Sonoma State University, as well as an M.Div. and an MA in the Philosophy of Religion, both from the Pacific School of Religion.