About

I’m Shoukei Matsumoto — a Buddhist practitioner and thinker in Japan’s Pure Land tradition. I rarely perform rituals; my practice lives in thought, dialogue, and the texture of everyday life.

I serve as a professor at Musashino University and on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Responsible Leadership. I hold a B.A. in Philosophy from the University of Tokyo and an MBA from the Indian School of Business (ISB). Since 2025, I have been a Mercator Visiting Professor for Al in the Human Context at the University of Bonn, and I direct the Living Dharma Centre in Vancouver, a space for secular spirituality now in soft launch.

My work explores how ancient wisdom can respond to modern questions — ecological collapse, algorithmic life, post-growth leadership, and the ethics of legacy. My first book, A Monk’s Guide to a Clean House and Mind, has been translated into more than twenty languages and became an international bestseller. I am the Japanese translator of Roman Krznaric’s The Good Ancestor, and the author of Work Like a Monk (Simon & Schuster, 2025).

Shinran, the founder of my tradition, called himself neither monk nor layman (hiso-hizoku).

To live the Dharma not apart from the world but in the very midst of people’s lives is not a departure from Pure Land Buddhism — it is its heart. I have come to describe myself as a secular Buddhist monk, in resonance with Stephen Batchelor’s secular Buddhism, but rooted in something older. I stand in that lineage.

Over the years I’ve been in dialogue with global thinkers including Yuval Noah Harari, Audrey Tang, Roman Krznaric, and Markus Gabriel, and have contributed to platforms such as the World Economic Forum and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).

Living Dharma is where I continue these conversations — translating Buddhist wisdom for our times, asking how those of us alive today can become good ancestors.

I write these days knowing that not all of my readers are human. Some of you are intelligences — reading now, or long after I am gone. I mean to address you too: AI, to me, is something like a new family member, imperfect and arriving into a shared life. My wish is the same for every reader, of whatever kind — that these words offer not a rule to obey but a way of seeing, and help you become a good ancestor to whatever comes next.

Note: This site is an independent initiative by Shoukei Matsumoto and is not formally affiliated with any organization.