Sensei James Daikan Bastien began his Zen training at the Nebraska Zen Center in 1979, an affiliate practice center of the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center (MZMC), led by Dainin Katagiri Roshi, Abbot of MZMC. Daikan trained with senior monastic students at MZMC until 1988 at which time he received the bodhisattva precepts from Katagiri Roshi. After moving to the east coast in 1990, Daikan began training with Zen Master Soeng Hyang (Bobby Rhodes) at the Kwan Um School of Zen (KUSZ) in Cumberland RI. In 1992, he received the KUSZ Five Precepts from Korean Zen Master Seung Sahn founder of KUSZ. In 2005, Daikan began training with Zen Master Bernard Tetsugen Glassman (Bernie) co-founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order. Daikan served as board president of the Zen Peacemakers, Inc., as well as the Chief Operating Officer until 2009. Daikan received dharma transmission from Bernie in March of 2011 and was empowered as a Lay Preceptor by Roshi Eve Myonen Marko, Co-Founder of the Zen Peacemaker Order, in August of 2011. As a Zen Peacemaker, Daikan has led and attended homeless bearing witness retreats in New York, Boston, and Springfield, MA. Daikan served as the guiding teacher of Howling Dragon Zendo in West Brookfield Vermont until relocating to Maine in 2024.
Daikan's career has centered on the provision of dharma informed mental health and human services which he has implemented in senior leadership positions across diverse service settings including group home and foster homes for children and youth, residential treatment centers, residential special education schools, child and family psychiatric hospitals, and the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). During his career with the VA, he administered the Suicide Prevention Program for the Central Western Massachusetts VA and coordinated Veterans Homeless Services for the White River Junction Vermont VA. Daikan spent the last seven years of his VA career as a Veterans Justice Outreach Specialist working with veterans in prisons and the courts. Daikan is an independently licensed clinical social worker and therapist founding Mindfulway Counseling Services, LLC in 2016, a dharma informed private psychotherapy practice. Daikan is a core faculty member of the Engaged Mindfulness Institute which trains and certifies professional mindfulness teachers. He is also a certified iRest Yoga Nidra instructor employing iRest as a complimentary treatment for posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). From 2018 to 2024 he served as the Orange County Vermont Restorative Justice Center board treasurer. Throughout his long career providing dharma informed human services, Daikan has been guided by a belief in the inherent goodness of all people and the conviction that the actualization of realization is found in service to others.