Ordination as a Zen priest, distinct from and generally a prerequisite short of the further dharma transmission required to become a recognized teacher, Roshi, qualifies a person to perform Zen Buddhist ceremonies, including funerals, memorial services and temple rituals, wear priestly robes, and, in many lineages, lead a temple's day-to-day operation and community life without necessarily having yet received formal authorization to guide students' own meditation practice independently. In Japan, Zen priesthood has historically often passed within families associated with a specific temple, particularly in the Soto school, where married, hereditary temple priests running a family-affiliated temple across generations became the common pattern following changes to clerical marriage rules during the Meiji era, a markedly different social pattern from the celibate monastic model more familiar from Zen's earlier history and from many other Buddhist traditions.
Zen priest ordination in Western Zen centers typically follows a period of committed lay practice and formal application, involving vows and a ceremony conducted by an already-ordained teacher, and many Western Zen priests continue in lay-adjacent lives, working secular jobs and raising families while serving their sangha's ritual and teaching needs part-time, a pattern that departs considerably from the full-time monastic or hereditary temple-priest models more typical of traditional Japanese Zen institutional life.