Ikkyu Sojun’s training unfolded under two principal guides, each shaping a different phase of his spiritual maturation. The first of these was Ken’o (often referred to as Ken’o Soi), a monk at Ankoku-ji, under whom Ikkyu entered the Buddhist clergy and began his formal Zen training. This early relationship provided the basic framework of monastic discipline and practice, giving structure to the raw intensity that later came to characterize Ikkyu’s life and poetry. Under Ken’o’s guidance, the young monk stepped into the world of Zen, not yet as a celebrated iconoclast, but as a novice learning the foundations of the path.

The second and far more decisive influence was Kaso Sodon, a Rinzai master whom Ikkyu regarded as his true teacher and spiritual father. Under Kaso’s rigorous training, Ikkyu underwent the deepest phases of his practice and experienced the breakthrough traditionally described as enlightenment. Kaso did not merely instruct him in doctrine or meditation technique; he served as the living embodiment of the lineage that Ikkyu would later carry forward. Through this relationship, Ikkyu came to see Kaso as his principal and most influential teacher, the one in whose shadow his own understanding of Zen took definitive shape.

Seen together, these two teachers mark distinct but complementary stages in Ikkyu’s journey. Ken’o provided the doorway into the monastic life and the initial discipline required to walk the path, while Kaso offered the crucible in which that early training was tested, refined, and transformed into mature realization. In this way, Ikkyu’s spiritual inheritance can be understood as a continuum: from the first vows taken under Ken’o at Ankoku-ji to the profound awakening nurtured under Kaso Sodon in the Rinzai tradition.