Michael Brunner | Ottawa, Illinois

Sensei Sōen Michael Brunner of Ottawa, Illinois is a Sōtō Zen Buddhist priest, author, and the Abbot and founding teacher of One River Zen, a Zen temple and practice community serving Ottawa and the Illinois Valley. He holds a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Michigan, where he graduated with high honors. His teaching focuses on direct experience, classical Zen literature, koan practice, and bringing the realization of awakening into the circumstances of everyday life.

In 2025, Sensei Sōen received Dharma transmission from Rev. Dr. Sojun Diane Martin Roshi in the Sōtō Zen teaching lineage of Dainin Katagiri Roshi. His formation reflects years of dedicated zazen, koan practice, liturgical training, service, study, and teaching.

Sensei Sōen began practicing Zen in 2006 and entered formal training in 2009. Over the years, his practice developed through intensive meditation, koan study, community service, ritual training, and close engagement with the classical teachings of Zen. His approach has been shaped by the conviction that practice must be lived directly, not merely understood conceptually.

At One River Zen, Sensei Sōen teaches from the traditional literature of Zen while continually returning students to their own immediate experience. His work includes extended commentary on Eihei Dōgen, including a twenty-five-part study of Uji (Time-Being), teachings on the Dhammapada, and ongoing work with the classical koan collections, including the Book of Equanimity, Gateless Gate, and Blue Cliff Record.

He is also the host of Awakening Streams, the One River Zen podcast, where his talks explore Zen practice, Buddhist philosophy, Dōgen, koan study, meditation, ethics, and the difficulties of living an awakened life in the midst of ordinary human circumstances.

Sensei Sōen’s teaching emphasizes direct presence and experiential practice. Rather than treating awakening as an abstract state or an escape from ordinary life, he invites students to meet experience before it is divided into preference, judgment, self, and other. Practice becomes a way of entering more completely into work, relationship, family, grief, uncertainty, creativity, and change.

A recurring theme in his teaching is the difference between experience itself and the conceptual structures we build around it. Thoughts, stories, memories, expectations, and identities are not rejected, but they are seen as part of the movement of experience rather than fixed descriptions of reality. Zen practice, in this understanding, is not about constructing a better version of the self. It is about learning to meet the whole of life without being governed by the habits through which we ordinarily divide and defend it.

His teaching also emphasizes the inseparability of awakening and compassionate activity. Insight is not complete when it remains private or abstract. Practice must take form in how we respond to suffering, how we meet other people, how we participate in community, and how we act within the conditions of the world around us.

In the course of his teaching and community work, Sensei Sōen founded the Eternal Spring Order, a contemporary Zen practice community organized around three guiding commitments: Maintain Wonder, Include Everything, and Transform Suffering. The Order brings together traditional Zen practice with compassionate action, interfaith cooperation, and a commitment to embodying practice beyond the meditation cushion.

Alongside his wife and co-founder, Rev. Jinsen Vanessa Roddam, Sensei Sōen has helped develop One River Zen as a center for meditation, retreats, Buddhist study, clergy formation, community practice, and spiritual education in the Illinois Valley. His work at One River Zen includes teaching, retreat leadership, liturgical practice, student formation, and the development of programs intended to make serious Zen training available within the circumstances of contemporary life.

Before entering full-time religious life, Sensei Sōen worked as a senior sales and marketing executive while raising a family. Those experiences continue to inform his teaching. Rather than presenting Zen as something separate from work, parenting, relationships, institutions, or difficult decisions, he emphasizes practice in the places where life is actually happening.

His teaching invites students to return again and again to what is directly present, to question the assumptions through which experience becomes divided, and to discover a way of living that is responsive rather than defensive. In this sense, Zen is not primarily a philosophy to believe or an identity to adopt. It is a practice of meeting this life completely.

Sensei Sōen continues to teach at One River Zen in Ottawa, Illinois, where he leads meditation, retreats, classes, clergy formation, and the ongoing study of classical Zen texts.