Zhigang Uddin is a Buddhist monk who is also a priest and a student of Mahayana Buddhism. He was a member of a Buddhist sect called the Vajra. After becoming a Buddhist, he became a student in the Dzogchen school of the Tiantai school of Mahayana Buddhism, who studied at the Wenshan (Heidegger) monastery from 1974-1981. Uddin met Yezong again in 1999 in the Soto Zen School. The two Zen masters discussed the concept of the world around them and then a great spiritual light was passed between them. In 2003 the two Zen masters began a dialogue together.

In 2007 Uddin was invited to join the Shinshu branch of the Nichiren Shoshu School of Nichiren Daishonin. The Shinshu School is centered in Kyoto between Edo and Meiji periods. It has had a long tradition of learning under the masters. It is centered on a study of the Daimoku and a careful practice with the five jewels (a.k.a. kosho shinshu). It is characterized by its openness to Western philosophical and scientific ideas and by its emphasis on the living and the non-living Buddha. From 1996 Uddin was a teacher at the Shinshu monastery of Hombu Goh. His teaching is very practical-practical Zen and has an international quality that can only be described through the personal communication and communication with other teachers. He teaches the two-line samadhi practice with the following kosho: “There must be three ways, there must be four lines: ‘I take my breath; there is nothing, there is nothing'”; “There is nothing, there is nothing”; “There is and there is not.” In this manner every day, every day, every single day Uddin encourages his students to practice more deeply in accordance with the two-line samadhi practice.

For the record, when he speaks of taking breath and nothing, he always implies “without breath”. There is a saying: “Without breath he is like water”. One day in November of 2007, before the two-line samadhi practice, Uddin went off to the forest to talk to a young woman by the river-bank about Buddhism and other things – some say she was a Shobogen (a devotee of Nichiren) – who also happened to take her