One of the closest disciples and successors of Master Deshimaru, Master Kosen has contributed greatly to the continued development of his master’s mission in Europe, as well as in Latin America. He gathered the Kosen Sangha around him and founded the first Zen temple in Argentina, Shobogenji, and the Yujo Nyusanji Zen Temple in France.
It is useless to hope to find in Master Kosen the slightest trace of conformism, conventional attitudes, or stereotyped behaviors: there are none. Master Kosen is in the lineage of the great iconoclastic masters, free from all shackles, liberated from all dogma, and always baffling.
Stéphane Kosen Thibaut, born in Paris (France) in 1950, is the son of Gilles Thibaut, a talented jazz trumpeter and successful lyricist, and Josiane Philippe (Josy Thibaut), a psychologist and professor at the École des Hautes Études, then a pioneer of the Women’s Liberation Movement (it was ultimately on a Zen meditation cushion that she continued her path of liberation by becoming a master in the art of meditation).
After primary studies at the Decroly school, Stéphane Thibaut was not very inspired by the curricula offered by the society of the time. Carried by his family environment, he opted for music and theater and had the chance to enter the International School of Theatre and Mime, school of theatre through movement, of Jacques Lecoq where he studied for two years.
It was after some tribulations and other spiritual revelations that he decided to seek out a spiritual master, whom he met in Paris in September 1969.
He then joined the school of stillness: zazen, the practice of Zen, with Master Taisen Deshimaru, the man who had just brought it to the West, the Bodhidharma of modern times
.
From then on, he devoted his life to practice and followed his master everywhere, until the latter’s death fifteen years later. He became his disciple, shaved his hippie mop, and received the bodhisattva ordination under the name Kosen
, then that of a Zen monk in 1971.
In 1984, Master Niwa Zenji, the highest authority of Soto Zen in Japan, thus authenticating Master Deshimaru’s mission in Europe, gave him – as well as two other close disciples of the master – the shiho, certification of the transmission of the Dharma, which made him the 83rd successor of the Buddha Shakyamuni in the Soto tradition.
He then became one of the main leaders of the teaching of Zen transmitted by Master Deshimaru in Europe and America.
Moving away from Paris, he directed the Zen Dojo of Rennes from 1990 to 1993, then created the European Zen Center of Amsterdam (Netherlands) from 1994 to 1999. Since 1999, he has practiced and taught at the Montpellier Zen Dojo.
The Kosen Sangha
It was from 1993, during his first summer camp in Switzerland, in Obertschappina (Graubünden), that the sangha (assembly of disciples) that has followed him ever since began to form: the Kosen Sangha. He then created an association allowing the group to function: the AVZD (Association of the True Zen of Deshimaru), which later became ABZD (Zen Deshimaru Buddhist Association).
In 1999, with the help of his entire sangha, he founded in Argentina the first Zen temple in South America, the Shobogenji temple.
In Europe as in South America, in Cuba as in Canada, many disciples follow his teaching, from sesshin to sesshin, from continent to continent, forming his international sangha.
In December 2008, the Caroux colony was purchased, it became the Yujo Nyusanji Zen Temple, located in the Haut-Languedoc regional park, in France.
Master Kosen leads ever more numerous dojos, gives conferences, develops a revolutionary website, and continues his master’s mission in multiple ways: to bring humanity the treasure of true Zen.
He left us in 2025, bequeathing to his disciples the mission to continue the practice and spread of Zen.
Transmission
Throughout his mission, many disciples have received the bodhisattva, nun, and monk ordination.
To strengthen the transmission of this treasure of humanity, he certified by the shiho four disciples of Master Deshimaru and eight of his disciples, four women and four men.
In September 1993, he himself gave the shiho in the name of Master Deshimaru to some of his master’s disciples who commanded his admiration: Barbara Kosen Richaudeau, André Ryujo Meissner, and Édouard Shinryu Bacgrabski.
In 2002, he gave this same transmission in the name of his fellow disciple Master Étienne Mokusho Zeisler, who died very young, to Yvon Myoken Bec for his remarkable work in Eastern European countries and more specifically in Hungary.
In 2009, in his temple of Caroux, he gave the transmission to his disciples Christophe Ryurin Desmur and Pierre Soko Leroux, then in 2013 to Loïc Kosho Vuillemin and in 2015 to Ingrid Gyuji Igelnick and Françoise Jomon Julien (France), Paula Reikiku Femenias (Sweden), and Ariadna Dosei Labbate (Argentina).
In 2016, in his temple in Capilla del Monte (Argentina), he transmitted the shiho to Toshiro Taigen Yamauchi.
To find out more
Master Kosen has written several books on Zen, see the dedicated page.