Boundless Way Teachers

Boundless Way Zen appears to be the first Zen community in North America to bring teachers of different Zen lineages together with the intention of creating a distinctively Western and American vision of Zen. Currently, Boundless Way has three teachers, Melissa Blacker, James Ford & David Rynick. They are working together collaboratively to foster a practice community that is firmly rooted in the ancient traditions while open to new possibilities for the Zen way as it takes its new shape in the West.

David Dayan Rynick Sensei
David Rynick was born in 1952, in Houston, Texas. He grew up in upstate New York, where his father was a Presbyterian minister with a great faith in a God who is present in our every day lives. He spent his senior year in high school as an exchange student in Nagasaki, Japan. David earned his BA cum laude in Sociology in 1974 from Wesleyan University. For the next decade David studied and taught pottery, aikido and dance improvisation. In 1984 he earned an MA degree in studio art at Wesleyan.

In 1977 he met Melissa Blacker and they married in 1982. Their daughter, Rachel Blacker Rynick, was born in 1986.

Starting in 1984 David began teaching art at a private high school and in 1990 became headmaster, a job he continued until he became a full-time life and leadership coach and consultant in 2003. He currently works with religious leaders and churches as well as other individuals who want to more fully align their lives and their values.

In 1981 he and Melissa began studying Zen with the independent teacher Richard Clarke. Since 1991 David has been studying with George Bowman, the first Dharma successor to the Korean Zen master Seung Sahn. Zen Master Bowman has also studied extensively with the Japanese Rinzai master Joshu Sasaki, and his Single Flower Sangha shows the marks of both traditions.

In 1992 David and Melissa were joined by several friends in beginning a Zen meditation group at their Worcester home. A year later they also began a sitting group at the First Unitarian Church in Worcester, where both David and Melissa had been and continue to be active members. David served as president of the church's Board from 1998 through 2001.

David received Inga, formal recognition as a Zen teacher and Dharma heir from George Bowman in October, 2005. In 2006 he was elected a teacher of the Boundless Way Zen sangha.

Melissa Myozen Blacker Sensei
Melissa Blacker was born in 1954, in Boston, Massachusetts. Her parents were secular Jews. From them she was schooled early to have a deep appreciation of art, theater, music (especially jazz) and leftist politics. In order to understand a spontaneous spiritual experience she experienced when she was nine years old, Melissa began a life-long exploration of religion and psychology.

She attended Wesleyan University, earning her BA magna cum laude in Anthropology and Music in 1976. She went on to earn an MA in Counseling Psychology from Vermont College of Norwich University in 1991. Since 1993 she's worked at the Center for Mindfulness, founded by Jon Kabat-Zinn at the University of Massachusetts Medical School in Worcester. She is a senior teacher and the co-director of professional training and education at the Center.

In 1977 she met David Rynick and they married in 1982. Their daughter, Rachel Blacker Rynick, was born in 1986.

In 1981 she and David began studying Zen with the independent teacher Richard Clarke. After twenty years with Dr Clarke she became the student of James Myoun Ford. She was ordained a Soto Zen priest (unsui) in 2004 and completed shuso training in 2005. Advancing through the Harada-Yasutani koan curriculum she received Dharma transmission from James Ford in April of 2006. In 2006 she was elected a teacher of the Boundless Way Zen sangha.

James Myoun Ford Roshi
James Ford was born in 1948, in Oakland, California. His father had an itchy foot and the family moved around the country, although always returning to California and mostly Oakland. A high school dropout, James acknowledges that his first education came through twenty years of working in used and antiquarian bookstores up and down the California coast. Eventually he returned to school and earned a BA in Psychology at Sonoma State University, in Rohnert Park, California as well as an MDiv and an MA in the Philosophy of Religion at the Pacific School of Religion, in Berkeley.

At eighteen he began studying Zen with Mel Sojun Weitsman, then leader and later abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center. When Roshi Jiyu Kennett arrived from Japan he became her student, was ordained unsui in 1969, completed shuso training in 1970 and received Dharma transmission from her in 1971. Dissatisfied with the quality of his understanding, James continued studying various spiritual disciplines. These included among other traditions Gnostic Christianity and the "new age" Sufism of Hazrat Inayat Khan.

James married Jan Seymour-Ford in 1982. In the mid-nineteen eighties they decided to return to school. While James pursued his degrees Jan earned her master's in Library Science, and now works as research librarian at Perkins School for the Blind, in Watertown, Massachusetts.

In 1991 James was ordained a Unitarian Universalist minister. He served congregations in Wisconsin and Arizona and currently serves as senior minister of the First Unitarian Society in Newton, Massachusetts.

In 1985 James became a student of the Harada-Yasutani Zen teacher Dr John Tarrant, the first Dharma successor of Robert Aitken Roshi. James was authorized to teach by Tarrant Roshi in 1998. In 2005 Dr Tarrant gave James Inka Shomei, acknowledging him as a Dharma heir in the Harada-Yasutani Zen lineage. He is the author of In This Very Moment: A Simple Guide to Zen Buddhism (Skinner House Publications, Boston, 1996 & 2002) and Zen Master Who? A Guide to the People and Stories of Zen (Wisdom Publications, Boston, 2006). He is currently working on an anthology of Dharma talks by different Zen teachers on the koan "Mu."

In 2000 Jan and James founded the Henry Thoreau Zen Sangha at the First Unitarian Society in Newton, which quickly merged with Spring Hill Zen, then meeting in Somerville. (Spring Hill now meets at the UU Church of Medford) The combined organization was named the Boston Zen Community. Since then a third group, the Ralph Waldo Emerson Zen Sangha, meeting at First Church (Unitarian Universalist) in Boston was formed. The expanded sangha renamed itself Boundless Way Zen. James was elected its first teacher. In 2006 Boundless Way Zen and the Worcester Zen Community began a process of consolidation by bringing members of the WZC onto the BoWZ Board, and electing David, Melissa and James as its three guiding teachers.