Soho Machida

Dr. Soho Machida is currently professor emeritus of Hiroshima University, and the chief abbot of Arigato Zen temple in the food of Mt. Fuji, Japan.
He was born in 1950 and practiced as a Zenmonk for 20 years in a conservative monastery of Kyoto. He later earned an MA from HarvardUniversity and a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, and taught at Princeton University, theNational University of Singapore, the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies and Hiroshima University.
His research disciplines are comparative religion, history of civilization, and bioethics.
He hasauthored about 50 books in Japanese and English, including Renegade Monk (University ofCalifornia Press), “Religion, War & Ethics” (Cambridge University Press), “Why Religion PreventsPeace?” (Kodansha), etc.
He occasionally gives lectures in NHK radio & TV programs. Besideacademic activities, he conducts voice-meditation called Arigato Zen meditation in Japan, US, andEurope. A number of people have recovered from various types of mental illness through histherapeutic meditation.