Ariadna Labatte was born in 1969 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. At the age of 13, due to the sudden loss of her sister, she urgently tried to understand what it means to be alive, what existence, time, and death are, how to live and assume the incredible possibility of consciousness.
At 19, she entered a dojo, did zazen and, deeply moved by this experience, she began to practice. Stillness and patience were really difficult for her, but despite this, at 22, she asked for bodhisattva ordination from the monk Michel Bovey.
She participated in the formation of the Buenos Aires dojo, and in February 1992, she met her master, Kosen, and became his disciple, secretary, and translator. During the first summer camp in Argentina, she received from her master, in her native country, nun ordination.
She followed Kosen to France. Living in his dojos, she accompanied him on his travels and conferences to develop the teaching transmitted in Latin America. In 1994, she moved to Uruguay. With the monk Riki ko e gen Philippe Girard, her partner and the father of her future daughter, they founded the Montevideo dojo which Kosen named Pearl of the Dragon
. They settled in Buenos Aires in 2001 and began practicing zazen in the garage of their house. Quickly, the news spread in the neighborhood, the space was crowded and their dojo, recently become a small temple, was created in the Florida neighborhood on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
Since 2006, she has lived in Capilla del Monte, a village adjacent to the Shobogenji Temple and contributes to its development. She translated Kosen’s book “The Five Degrees of Awakening” which became Los monjes modernos
in Spanish. With other monks of the Latin American sangha, she spreads Zen throughout the country and the entire continent.
In 2015, she received the shiho from Master Kosen along with three other women, thus becoming the first female Zen master in Latin America in the lineage of Dharma transmission.