Today we’d like to introduce you to Michael (Taiun) Elliston.
Michael (Taiun), we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin?
It depends which part of the story you mean. My story covers the alphabet from A to Z, from Art to Zen. As a child growing up in a musical family, I taught myself to draw at an early age, probably as a way of garnering attention from the adults. My older brother was a prodigy pianist, my older sister a real beauty and dance major. My younger sister had to follow in all our footsteps. So my creativity moved in a visual direction, taking my initial cues from Disney movies and cartoons. I have continued my interest in the visual arts and design into adulthood and am still active in my eighties. Plus, I have dabbled in music starting at an early age and got involved in Zen in Chicago in the 1960s.
We incorporated the Atlanta Soto Zen Center (ASZC) in 1977 as a 501c3 NFP chartered in Georgia and have been in nearly continuous operation ever since. We offer daily, weekly, monthly and annual schedules of meditation sessions and events such as retreats. Our national umbrella organization, the Silent Thunder Order (STO) of priests and supporting members, now numbers 10 or so affiliated groups in USA and Canada with individual members all over the world. We post a robust schedule of online individual and group meetings, extending the practice of meditation and dharma dialog to include recovery and interfaith groups as well as our affiliated Zen centers. I am a formally recognized transmitted Zen priest and member of the Soto Zen Buddhist Association of American Zen. Published books currently include “The Original Frontier: A Serious Seeker’s Guide to Zen” and “The Razorblade of Zen: Cutting Through the Clutter, Confusion and Conflict Between Extremes of Rationalism and Theism In the Face of Man-made and Natural Disasters During a Time of Increasing Uncertainty” releasing in February 2023.
Online websites: www.ASZC.org; www.STOrder.org.
My weekly podcast: www.ASZC.org/UnMind for further information.
I’m sure you wouldn’t say it’s been obstacle free, but so far would you say the journey have been a fairly smooth road?
No. We (I, my design career and businesses, and both NFP corporations) have all had financial ups & downs like any other NFP, occasional personality issues with Board of Directors members, but no major scandals or disasters so far. My fourth book (I should live so long) will attempt to chronicle some of this pilgrim’s progress at the intersection of Zen and design thinking and their relationship to creativity in general.
One of our major accomplishments along the way was publishing the collected talks of our founding teacher, Zengaku Soyu Matsuoka, Roshi, a Japanese Soto Zen master, who was one of the earliest pioneers bringing Zen to America. Sensei (Japanese for “teacher”), as he asked us to call him, first hit these shores in 1940, the year I was conceived, as it happened. His written record is available online in two volumes, “The Kyosaku” (named for Zen’s posture correction stick) and “Mokurai” (which translates variously as “Stillness in motion; motion in stillness” or “Silence is thunder,” which is where we derive the Silent Thunder Order designation; the resolution of opposites).
Gathering the written record of his teachings was a real teeth-pulling exercise, as they were ensconced in closets and in various printed form (including some on sprocketed computer paper) and scattered amongst his dozen or so Zen students from Chicago to California. But their publication made him a less obscure figure, illustrating his importance in the history of Zen in America. We are currently working on finishing a video documentary of his life & times in Japan and America, and an inspirational reader of selected teachings, working title: “The Warmth, Wit and Wisdom Of a Modern Master of Zen” due to drop in 2024.
A trailer of the videodoc: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHp-MTM9Kuo
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know about your work?
I approach and teach Zen from the perspective of unleashing our innate creativity rather than from a historical or religious angle as such. I was trained in design science at the “New Bauhaus,” the Institute of Design at Illinois Institute of Technology. I taught art and design at the University of Illinois at Chicago Circle Campus and simultaneously at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where in both schools I was the youngest Assistant Professor. Design approaches the profession as a problem-solving activity, and the propagation of Zen in America is certainly a problem needing solving.
In 1970, I moved to Atlanta with Centrum International, a consumer research and design firm, when Matsuoka Roshi moved to Long Beach.
My art can be seen at the Kai Lin Art Gallery, with which I have exhibited for the last dozen years or more: https://www.kailinart.com/elliston-roshi
Details of my paintings may also be seen on my “UnMind” podcast page, along with instrumental backgrounds of my original music.
Can you tell us more about what you were like growing up?
Not exactly introverted, but as one of four siblings on a 20-acre farm in southern Illinois, just outside of Centralia, 60 miles due east of St Louis, MO, I spent a lot of time alone and many summers in the Missouri Ozarks with grandparents. So I learned to entertain myself. Which anecdotally, I find to be common with “creative” types.
I taught myself to draw at about seven years of age by copying Disney cartoon figures. I remember a crayon drawing I did in the fourth grade of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, which I do not believe I could do much better today.
My father was a jazz pianist and vibraharpist amongst other professions. Being a high-school dropout, he did anything and everything he could to make additional income — including selling early innovations in cooking utensils such as “Wearever” and “Salad Master” products (learning to cook in the process); freezer food services, the first home-delivery groceries venture; additives for automobiles; doing upholstery of vibrating cushions; photography for weddings primarily; boarding horses; and raising soybeans, etc. Which probably influenced me, subliminally and directly, in terms of my creative outlook. Summers when I would come home from university, he generally had some one thing or another lined up for me to do with him to earn some money. He was necessarily very entrepreneurial and one of the smartest men I ever knew, even though he was self-educated. And could never fill that void in his own mind.
My siblings were creative as well as a lifelong jazz pianist taught at the University of Illinois Champaign-Urbana and later Maryland State U, if memory serves, where he and his wife, a jazz singer, hosted the East Coast Jazz Festival for fifteen years or so. Both were musicians’ musicians, well known and respected in that community. My sister graduated magna cum laude in ballet at Texas Christian and as we say went on to become a line broad and solo dancer in Las Vegas, where her husband, one of several high school sweethearts, was the guy who decided if the “whales,” big gamblers from Japan and other areas of the world, would be extended another million bucks in credit, or not.
Owing to our dirt-poor beginning – my mother — who had also spent a good bit of time tap-dancing, sewing costumes, and modeling for my dad’s photography — would often say of her upbringing that “We were poor but didn’t know it.” We were rich in other ways. I paid for my higher education at a private institution with part-time work, scholarships and loans. Which latter burdens were not nearly as usurious as the appear to be today. The investment paid off, as did the time and effort invested in Zen. Big return and dividends. I recommend Zen to anyone. It will help you tap your innate creativity.
Pricing:
- “No donation required, no donation refused” is our motto
- We are a 501c3 NFP Zen center operating on donations from members
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ASZC.org/UnMind (local website and personal podcast)
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UM0SgvznZk0
- Other: https://www.kailinart.com/elliston-roshi
Image Credits
Kai Lin Art Gallery
