WEST BATH — Thomas Buckley, Ph.D., whose name in religion was Jokan Zenshin, died after a brief illness at his home in West Bath, Maine, on April 16, 2015. The cause of death was cancer.

Tim, as he was called by family and friends, was an anthropologist, essayist, expert sailor, Zen priest, and often a poet. In 1965, he moved to California to study with Shunryu Suzuki, the Japanese Zen master. He was active in the founding of San Francisco Zen Center and its monastic center at Tassajara. After 1971 he also studied and practiced with his second teacher, Harry Kellett Roberts, raised in the medicine traditions of the Yurok Indians of northwestern California. Tim continued working with Mr. Roberts until his death in 1981 and was his spiritual heir.

Educated at St. George’s School, Harvard College and the University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in anthropology, Tim was broadly published and well known for his work in Yurok Indian ethnography and ethnohistory. He taught in the department of Anthropology and the American Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston from 1980 until his retirement in 2001.

A Buddhist from the age of 18, Tim was ordained as a Soto Zen Priest in 2011, founded the Great River Zendo in West Bath, Maine, and received Dharma Transmission in the Shunryu Suzuki lineage in 2014.

He is survived by his wife of 36 years, Jorunn Jacobsen Buckley, his son Jesse, two grandchildren, other family members, his adoptive brother Tracy McCallum, and by many close friends and students.

Arrangements are under the direction and care of Brackett Funeral Home in Brunswick.