How can twenty years of a master’s spoken teachings be turned into books, without a publishing house, without a budget, and without losing the voice that gave them their value? That is the question that guided the shaping of a three-volume edition of the kusen of Master Stéphane Kōsen Thibaut (1950-2025), Dharma heir of Master Taisen Deshimaru, founder of the first Sōtō temple in South America, in Argentina, and of Yūjō Nyūsanji Temple in France.
These teachings, given week after week in dojos across Europe between 2002 and 2024, were recorded by Françoise Julien, Geneviève Capelle, Laurent Costamagna, Pascale Boulay, and Geneviève Perrier, then patiently transcribed by Josy Thibaut, Françoise, and Geneviève Perrier. Master Kōsen passed away in September 2025. What remained were the recordings, the transcriptions, and the sangha’s determination to make them accessible to everyone: Olivier Carrère converted the files to LaTeX, cleaned up the Montpellier audio recordings, and published the whole collection on YouTube, the channel linked by the book’s QR codes, along with those on the Montpellier dojo website; Julen Fernandez is gradually publishing an HTML version of the kusen on zen-deshimaru.com; and the print edition was overseen by Xavier Goetz.
Three volumes
The three volumes bring together his commentaries on a foundational text of the Zen tradition, the Shinjinmei, with each commentary opening with a poem. The chosen format is a sober, old-style paperback, set in a warm typeface designed for sustained reading rather than effect.
The first volume is complete; the second and third are already typeset but still require finishing work. Publication will therefore happen in stages, at the pace readers naturally come to the work.
A bridge between page and voice
The most moving decision is also the simplest. Each chapter includes a QR code linking back to the original recording: dozens of kusen moved from an old podcast host to a stable channel. A reader following the printed transcription can, with a single scan, hear the master’s own voice speaking those words.
That is the spirit of the project: the book does not replace the teachings, it provides access to them. Print and digital stop competing and begin reinforcing each other: a text to study, a voice to return to, brought together by a small square of black-and-white ink.
A transparent production process
The book was designed like a software project that produces books: plain-text sources, version history, reproducible builds. Each printed copy carries in its colophon the exact imprint of the version that produced it, so the text remains traceable down to the smallest detail.
The project also openly acknowledges, including within the book itself, the use of artificial intelligence for repetitive tasks such as the index, glossary, consistency checks, and layout refinement. Transparency is part of the editorial choice. But what matters most remained a matter of human patience: the care given to typography, spacing, ornaments, and to the page that “sounds” right was not delegated. The tool made the mechanical work less costly; the time it saved was given back to judgment.
An economy in the image of the sangha
Commercial publishing would have been the wrong framework. The project is based on a community model: published by the association for its members. This is not a fallback caused by a lack of budget, but the expression of the way the community already functions.
The detailed account of this production process, including the “book as code” approach, the typographic choices, and the role of AI, was published by the book designer: Books as Code.