Crooked Cucumber - Suzuki Lecture Archive Ltr99

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About the Book

About Suzuki Roshi

Suzuki-roshi Lecture Archives Project

6\7\99 update of the Shunryu Suzuki Archives Project of the San Francisco Zen Center.

[This is a letter to the head of a foundation interested in partially funding this project. I have edited it for general consumption.--DC]

Progress Report

[by Bill Redican]

This phase of the project consists primarily of preparing a scrupulously verbatim transcript of each of the 400 or more lectures, providing annotations and cross-referencing where needed, in order to complete a working manuscript for The Collected Works of Suzuki-roshi, publication of which has been discussed with the University of California Press. We have begun with the most recent lectures by Suzuki-roshi, from 1971, as there were one or more series of sesshin lectures and his English was at its best. As of this writing, the 1971 lectures have been virtually completed. A staff of four to five volunteer transcribers has been assisting with the first draft of the transcription process. In an effort to make his lectures more available to the public, we selected four lectures, remastered them, and recently released them for public sale and national distribution through Mystic Fire Audio. (The next set is in preparation.) We also released a videotape of five short films produced by film students at San Francisco State University.
      In addition, we have transcribed Suzuki-roshi's series of fourteen lectures on the Sandokai, delivered late in his life [summer of 1970] at Tassajara. We have worked closely with Mel Weitsman and Michael Wenger in preparing these lectures for publication with the University of California Press, Berkeley. The final manuscript has been submitted, and page proofs are expected shortly.
      A continuing effort has been made to locate lectures that were thought to have been lost. Approximately two dozen such lectures have been located, the most recent coming to light only last week (a lecture delivered in Marin County in December of 1970 on the preservation of earth's resources).
    We have also secured the volunteer services of an archivist who specializes in the preservation of photographs. With her help, we have begun to systematize and preserve existing photographs of Suzuki-roshi.

Staff Archivist

The project is being supervised by Michael Wenger, dean of Buddhist Studies at San Francisco Zen Center. It is being carried out by William K. Redican, PhD, staff archivist, a summary of whose background follows:

PhD in psychology from the University of California, Davis, 1975. Approximately 25 monographs and other academic publications. For the 14-1/2 years prior to Zen Center, worked as senior editor for an instructional audio/video publishing firm that produces post-secondary instructional courses. Compiled the complete audio catalog of Suzuki-roshi's lectures over the last three years and coordinated the archival reproduction of the entire set of tapes at a professional sound studio. Co-edited (with Gil Fronsdal, PhD) and coordinated the proceedings of the Sati Conference on Suzuki-roshi held in Palo Alto May 30-31,1998.

Contact Bill Redican at zcarchives@aol.com [only part time now but there's no one else as yet - DC - 10-02]

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