Ever since his meeting with Roshi Deshimaru in 1968, Sando Kaisen has been transmitting his master’s teaching. He has led a major mission through France and across the Eastern Europe all to way to Vladivostok. He is not among those who boast of having received such and such transmission. He has even refused on two official occasions to officially receive shiho, once in Eiheiji and once in Sotosha when offered to him by Roshi Kuroyanagi and Roshi Matsunaga.
Master Sando Kaisen can rely on the full support of Roshi Kosaka Kiyu from Sengakuji in Tokyo, an expert on transmission for Eiheiji and Sojiji. It was Kosaka Kiyu, who supported Sando Kaisen’s mission in France and Eastern Europe and encouraged him to create European Zen and distance himself from the Japanese Zen of today which is full of formalism and politics.
Master Sando Kaisen spent some time on the island of Kyushu and travelled with two friends of Roshi Kodo Sawaki – with Roshi Honda Kansho and Shibuya Ishi, a renowned disciple of Kodo Sawaki from Zuiji-Seki (near Shizuoka). All of them visited the tomb of Kodo in Entaiji together.