Sevan Ross


Sevan Ross is a Zen Buddhist priest with training backgrounds in both the Sōtō and Rinzai traditions in the Harada-Yasutani lineage. He is the former spiritual director of the Chicago Zen Center in Evanston, IL.
Ross is an outspoken advocate of Vegetarianism, especially as seen in the context of Zen practice: “I was a member of the Rochester Zen Center from, I think, 1977. The Rochester Zen Center has always emphasized vegetarianism, and within a year I made the identification with animals where I recognized that by consuming them, at some point in the process, I was harming others. I wasn't harming the one that I was consuming, because I couldn't see it die, but I knew it would be replaced by others. And when that realization hit me, it hit like a ton of bricks and I was a vegetarian within a week. I just stopped. I opened the refrigerator one day, I looked at that tuna salad, and I said ‘that's enough of this. I don't need to eat this.’ It's not like I lived in a place where you couldn't get decent food, it's easy, so I quit and I never looked back. My transformation was linked to the identity that whatever flesh food I'm eating is being replaced by another animal that is tortured in some way before being murdered to become the next flesh food meal. So I wanted to stop being part of that chain.”