Victor Sōgen Hori, born in Canada, received his doctoral degree in philosophy from Stanford University in 1976 and, that same year, was ordained a Rinzai Zen monk in Kyoto, Japan. After devoting the next thirteen years to training in monasteries in Japan, he returned to Canada and to the academic life in 1990. He is currently Associate Professor of Japanese religions in the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University.

Prof. Hori has translated The Ten Oxherding Pictures: Lectures by Yamada Mumon Roshi (2004) and co-edited The Wheel and the Web: Collected Papers of the Teaching Buddhism Conference (with Richard P. Hayes and Mark Shields, 2002) and Neglected Themes and Hidden Variations (with Melissa Curley, 2008). He is the author of Zen Sand: The Book of Capping Phrases for Koan Practice (2003). A new book, Wild Geese: Studies of Buddhism in Canada (co-edited with Alec Soucy and John Harding), is forthcoming in 2009.