In memory of Martha Ekyo Maezumi
Ekyo-San Maezumi died peacefully on Sunday, April 10, 2022, at her home in California.
Ekyo was the wife of our late esteemed teacher and founder of the White Plum Zen lineage, Taizan Maezumi Roshi.
They have been married since 1975 and have three children: Kyrie, Yoshi and Yuri, and one grandchild.
She was a pioneer of Western Zen, the backbone of the Sangha, and a pillar of support for everyone.
Her death marks the end of an era and is a prayer for the healing of the White Plum Sangha.
She was loved by the Sangha and we will miss her very much.
Remembrance and memories
When I first became interested in Zen in 1988, I was a frequent customer in the Zen corner of the Sternverlag publishing house in Düsseldorf. Alongside Shunryu Suzuki's „Zen Mind - Beginner's Mind“, one of the first books I bought there was Taizan Maezumi Roshi's „The Heart of Zen“ - the English title is „Appreciate Your Life“. This book shaped my idea of Zen - and this idea was quite romantic at the time.
I never met my „grandfather“ teacher Maezumi Roshi, but I am glad and grateful that - much later - I was able to meet his wife Ekyo-San: my family and I lived at the Kanzeon Zen Center in Salt Lake City at the time. We had a small room there - one floor above Ekyo-San, so we lived together in the same house for about two years.
Ekyo-San and her children, Kyrie, Yoshi and Yuri, who were frequent visitors, in addition to Genpo Roshi, became my connection to the founder of the White Plum lineage and filled the book „Appreciate your Life“ with life. We heard stories from the 70s in Los Angeles, we heard of happy times, but also of less happy lives and suffering.
How fortunate that Ekyo had raised three children herself, for a long time also in a Zen center. She never complained about the pattering feet of - on the contrary: when she went on trips, she confidently handed over the care of her cat and parrot to the two boys. The parrot was scary for me - but the children got on well with him.
„inherited“ things that Yuri Maezumi had long since outgrown, and they were particularly proud of his baseball glove and baseball.
I visited Ekyo from time to time in her basement apartment, which had been converted into a studio. A huge table was littered with drawings, mostly large-format ink paintings. She was a master of ink and it was in art that we met, as I had also studied art myself. Here is an impression of her virtuosity - find out more here:
I remember Ekyo-San as quiet, almost shy, but of great strength. The basement of the house at 1268 East-South-Temple acted like an energy center during the years she was there. People who knew her during that time put it this way: „As if there had been a big battery there, radiating outwards...“ and they remembered Ekyo as someone who could let people be as they are; and could listen without any judgment of her own.
I looked through old photos from that time and also found those that show Ekyo-San moving from the Zen Center to another apartment in Salt Lake City before she later moved on to California. It was a farewell, but for Ekyo it was obviously also a departure, away from the Sangha - perhaps also liberating.
I was therefore particularly touched when Ekyo-San - despite the distance - attended my Dharma Transmission (Shiho) in 2018; this brought me full circle, which had begun 30 years earlier with Maezumi Roshi's book „Appreciate Your Life“.
Now I am sad - together with the whole Sangha and especially for Kyrie, Yoshi and Yuri - that Ekyo-San has moved on, moved far away but still in all our hearts. I wish her a safe journey.
