Shohaku Okumura was born in Osaka, Japan in 1948. He received his education at Komazawa University in Tokyo, Japan, where he studied Zen Buddhism. On December 8, 1970, Okumura was ordained at Antaiji by his teacher Kosho Uchiyama, where he practiced until Uchiyama retired in 1975. He then traveled to the United States, where he co-founded Pioneer Valley Zendo in Massachusetts and continued Uchiyama's style of zazen practice there until 1981. In that year, he returned to Japan and began translating the writings of Uchiyama and Eihei Dogen from Japanese to English. Prior to founding the Sanshin Zen Community, in 1996, he was a teacher at the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center in Minneapolis, Minnesota,and at the Kyoto Soto Zen Center, in Japan.

Okumura has dedicated his life to zazen and to studying and translating the writings of Dogen. Among contemporary Zen teachers, he offers the unique perspective of a practitioner active in both the Japanese and Western Soto Zen communities, as well as insights that come from his work as a translator of Dogen's poetic and highly nuanced use of the Japanese and Chinese languages. The two main focuses of Okumura's teaching career have been sharing the intensive zazen practice of his teacher Kosho Uchiyama and giving extensive commentaries on the works attributed to Dogen. In addition to sesshins, he leads four intensive study retreats (called genzo-e) each year, which are dedicated to particular fascicles of Dogen's Sh?b?genz?. These take place at Okumura's home temple, Sanshinji, at other American Zen centers, and occasionally in other countries. Okumura's wife, Yuko, serves as the sewing teacher at Sanshin Zen Community, continuing the nyoho-e style of okesa and rakusu sewing that was encouraged by Uchiyama's teacher, Kodo Sawaki. The author James Ishmael Ford describes Shohaku Okumura as, "...a tireless worker bridging the gap between Japanese and non-Japanese practice communities."

In recent years, several priests have received shiho ("Dharma transmission") from Okumura: Chiko Corona (Los Angeles, CA), Shotai de la Rosa ( Daishin Zendo Hialeah, FL), Densho Quintero ( Comunidad Soto Zen de Colombia Bogotá, Colombia) and Shoju Mahler ( Zendo L'eau Vive Alès, France). Taiun Michael Elliston ( Atlanta Soto Zen Center) has also received transmission from Okumura to further legitimize the sometimes disputed Soto lineage of Soyu Matsuoka.