12/21/02 - DC's reply to Stuart Lachs' comments on darkzen.com about Shunryu Suzuki, Richard Baker, ZMBM, and war and peace (see 12/09 below).

12/20/02 - Check out the site dedicated to collecting and making available stories about Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche. Go to http://www.chronicleproject.com/index.html.

12/14/02 - Shunryu Suzuki on Transmission

12/13/02 - Taigen Dan Leighton's comments on Shoes.

12/09/02 - Check out this article on the Myth of the Zen Roshi from Dark Zen at darkzen.com wherein people's silly assumptions about transmission and the SFZC and Suzuki and Baker get bopped about. There are some inaccuracies and stuff I disagree with that I'll try to get to and I hate to see people's feelings get hurt but this bit of axe grinding and bubble bursting is, to me, good for the health of Zen institutions and the path of us poor pathetic practitioners of Zen and whatever. And give us some feedback - Contact Me  here at cuke.com if you feel so inclined. 

See also the Shoes Outside the Door page (cause that's what a lot of the Myth article is based on). And you can check out Rick Levine's note to Michael Downing which was just added there. 

11/13/02 - Gary Snyder's article "Buddhist Anarchism" -- one of the first expressions of what later became known as "socially engaged Buddhism" -- is now online at http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/garysnyder.htm . - thanks to Ken Knabb and his BUREAU OF PUBLIC SECRETS with a dynamite motto or whatever it is: "Making petrified conditions dance by singing them their own tune."

11/09/02 - A new contest! ----- Details on the New Contest!

11/07/02 - Interview with Kamala Cesar Buckner, "rated the foremost living exponent of Bharata Natyam, the 2,000-year-old dance art of South India's courts and temples."

11/06/02 - an article on Elsie Mitchell - based on the interview with her that used to be here plus some from her writings.

10/29/02 - A poem by Elsie Mitchell - Dogs of Buddha and some work on the Elsie Mitchell main page pertaining to all that she's done.

10/27/02  - The Way of Eiheiji: Zen Buddhist Ceremony was a two record set Created by Suzuki Roshi's compadre Elsie Mitchell and her husband John. They worked on it from 1957 through 1959 and Folkways Records released it in 1960. I plan to get a sample of the recordings on here, but now one can read the 16 page booklet, written by Elsie, that came with it. And there are photos. It's a unique picture of Soto Zen's jewel, Eiheiji, before the modern era had taken much of a toll on it. 

10/26/02 - Letters from Shunryu Suzuki to Elsie Mitchell, founder in 1957 of the Cambridge Buddhist Association.  "I feel a great responsibility for future students of Zen in America." - this has more graphics and is more complicated than most stuff herein so please give me feedback as to how fast it loads and how it works for you. Thanks. - DC

10/9/02 - A 1971 lecture by Shunryu Suzuki on case 61 of the Blue Cliff Records. - not on site anymore - only one lecture at a time.

9/23/02 - An improved presentation of The Way of Zazen mentioned in the note below 

9/22/02 - Happy equinox which came during the light of the full moon. On this first day of fall, take a look at The Way of Zazen by Rindo Fujimoto, edited and brought out by Elsie Mitchell of the Cambridge Buddhist Association in 1966.

9/21/02 - Revised chapter that was cut from Crooked Cucumber now called Art & Bart.

9/20/02  - Terrific article today in the SF Chronicle about the Real-to-Real Film Festival that opens today. Congratulations to Michael Wenger.

9/18/02 - Cuke Mistake. Changing Art, Bart, and Elsie from 9/13 to Art and Bart when I checked up on date and fact discrepancies between Art's and Elsie's stories and realized that the woman Art met that day probably wasn't Elsie. Or maybe it was. Anyway, it doesn't matter.

9/17/02 - another cut from Crooked Cucumber, this one on Suzuki Roshi's first visit to the East Coast to see Elsie Mitchell and visit with the Cambridge Buddhist Association. 

9/15/02 - Real-to-Real: Buddhism and Film festival Sept 20-22 at the Castro Theatre in San Francisco. 

9/13/02 - Art, Bart, and Elsie - a dandy chapter that was cut from Crooked Cucumber that is in the newly reorganized Excerpts section which for now will include some other writings. (Now called Art & Bart)

9/12/02 - Lecture by Shunryu Suzuki - 67-8-14 [not on site anymore - only one lecture at a time]

9/11/02 - His Holiness the Dalai Lama's Message on the Commemoration of the 1st Anniversary of September 11, 2001

9/5/02 - An interview with Suzuki disciple Les Kaye from zenandbusiness.com

8/27/02 - PHILIP WHALEN MEMORIAL READING on Friday August 30, 7:00 pm in San Francisco. And a reminder that: 

A memorial service for Philip Whalen will be held at Green Gulch Farm in Marin County, CA, at 2:30 on September 1st. Green Gulch is located at 1601 Shoreline Hwy (Highway 1) just south of Muir Beach.

8/23/02 - There will be a memorial service for Kobun Chino Roshi at Jikoji near Los Gatos, CA, on Sunday, August 25th, at 11:00 A.M. Jikoji is located off Hgwy 35, 1.8 miles north of Hgwy 9 on Ward Road. Many will attend. 

8/22/02 - A note from John Steiner with an invitation to see an exhibit of Kobun Chino's calligraphy.

8/10/02 - to get the SFZC's email newsletter, email them at <sfzc_sangha@topica.email-publisher.com>.

8/9/02 - An appeal from Vanja Palmers for support for Kobun Chino's family.

8/6/02 - A message from Tensho David Schneider describing Kobun Chino and Maya's funeral. Also from David Schneider, a piece from his journal on Philip Whalen.

8/5/02 - Having returned from Tassajara where I spent ten days with my eleven year old son, Clay, with great sadness I post here, for those who don't already know, that Kobun Chino Roshi, our friend and teacher, drowned with his daughter Maya on July 26 in Switzerland. As I get more information I will post it on the Kobun Chino page. 

7/18/02 - Interview with Roy Iwaki, architect, artist, and builder

6/30/02 - More on Philip Whalen has been added including a report on his cremation ceremony, when and where the memorial service for him will be, and where to send donations in his name. There are many links to articles, obits, memories of Philip, comments, poems, and pictures.

6/26/02 - This morning Philip Whalen died in his bed at the hospice of Laguna Honda Hospital in San Francisco. 

6/15/02 - Interview with Reuven Ben Yuhmin, wild man gardener at Tassajara who's been in Taiwan since the early seventies.

6/11/02 - Suzuki Roshi student Bill Lane has been reading my books here by Shodo Harada Roshi who was my teacher and kind patron when I was in Japan and I realized that I'd never put them on this web site because this is a Shunryu Suzuki oriented web site but it really has no particular limits and Shodo Harada Roshi's teaching is as worthy as anything I've got on here. His books are Morning Dewdrops of the Mind : Teachings of a Contemporary Zen Master and The Path to Bodhidharma : Teachings of Shodo Harada Roshi. Those links are to Amazon.com (for informational purposes before you buy them from independent booksellers though I must say I do appreciate Amazon) but you can also go to http://www.itteki-ji.org/teacher.html to learn more about Shodo Harada Roshi, his teaching, his sangha, and his books. I miss him. He's great. Check him out. The reason I keep writing his full name is that there are so many Harada Roshis in Japan who teach westerners. It's sort of an anomaly, like if there were five well known Zen teachers in America named Johnson. - DC 

6/6/02 - The new book of Shunryu Suzuki edited lectures, the true sequel to Zen Mind Beginner's Mind, is out. It's  Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen, edited by Edward Espe Brown. 

6/6/02 - A Suzuki Roshi Lecture from June 11, 1967 [replaced - only one lecture at a time is posted.]

6/6/02 - Today all over America people are gathering and marching and all to support sick people's right to take medicine, namely, marijuana. I'll be in on the Santa Rosa, California, demonstration. I want to make a poster that says

Buddhists Against the Drug war

but I probably won't. I also think people should be able to smoke marijuana for fun like I think they should be able to do other naughty things like watch TV, eat sugar, drink beer, and run their own lives. Like it or not, a lot of marijuana consumption is also for spiritual purposes and so to deny it to them is religious persecution. Nothing new. - DC

6/5/02 - An interview with Koshin Ogui, a Jodo Shinshu priest who was close with Suzuki Roshi.

5/31/02 - For those of you who know Della Goertz, her 90th birthday is coming up on July 11th. She doesn't want any big to do  made for it so Michael Wenger at Zen Center is putting together an informal book for her which will consist of people's memories and stories and tributes or whatever. Submissions should be made to him by July 1. Della was one of Suzuki Roshi's first students who met him in the first weeks that he was here in America. See the interview with Della that's on this side. I'll try to put more on about her in the coming days. Send to Michael Wenger, SFZC, 300 Page Street, San Francisco, CA 95472. And don't tell her. Thanks - DC.

5/26/02 - I just finished Healing Lazarus : A Buddhist's Journey from Near Death to New Life -- by Lewis Richmond, Pocket Books. I heartily recommend it Just put a review on Amazon.com that says it goes deeper than most books on practice. Just hit that link and it will take you to Amazon.com which will fill you in on it. Good going Lew. And glad you made it back to the world of the living. - DC

5/25/02 - A question about the Shunryu Suzuki "translation" of the Heart Sutra.

5/19/02 - About the Zig Zag Zen book mentioned below, check out the web site for it at http://www.zigzagzen.com. - DC

5/17/02 - Check out these links to two teachers in Suzuki Roshi's lineage who teach in Northern California. Their sites include schedules, talks, their books (both are writers listed elsewhere on this site) and more. 

Taigen Dan Leighten and the Mountain Source Sangha at http://www.mtsource.org 

Now (2011) Taigen's Sangha is Ancient Dragon Zen Gate - Soto Zen in Chicago

Zoketsu Norman Fischer and the Everyday Zen Foundation at http://www.everydayzen.org 

And check out Zentatsu Richard Baker Roshi's Dharma Sangha Europe site (in German) at  http://www.dharma-sangha.de - couldn't find anything for his American monastery at Crestone, Colorado. Oh - Thanks to David McGrath for sending me a link to Spiritual Projects in Crestone and Baca Colorado. Just hit http://www.manitou.org/mf_spiritual_ctrs.html and once there, hit the link to The Crestone Mountain Zen Center. - DC

5/12/02 - Read Psychoactivism, a chapter from Zig Zag Zen. This is an unedited version.

5/10/02 - In the current May issue of Shambhala Sun there is a piece called Wherever You Are, Enlightenment Is There Two talks by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi which are excerpts from the upcoming book of his lectures, Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen, edited by Edward Espe Brown. Due to a software error four lines were covered by the graphics, an unfortunate error because it's confusing to the reader who cannot tell where they've landed and that there's only one line missing. Go here to get the complete paragraphs with those missing lines.  But no need to worry about that anymore - the book is out now.

5/09/02 - And I just added to the book list below: Loving What Is: Four Questions That Can Change Your Life, Byron Katie, Stephen Mitchell (contributor), Harmony Books. And here's a blurb I wrote for it that's on the back cover:

“Good Lord! Where did Byron Katie come from? She’s the real McCoy. Her Work is amazingly effective—a simple, straightforward antidote to the suffering we unnecessarily create for ourselves. She asks us to believe nothing, but provides a surprisingly effective and simple way to cut through the tangle of delusions we wrap ourselves in. Just reading the exchanges in Loving What Is, I can admit things I didn’t want to admit and stop torturing myself in ways I didn’t realize I was doing.” -- David Chadwick, author of Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

5/3/02 - On a recent trip to Tassajara and the disciples group. - DC Some comments added 5/10 and 5/11.

4/23/02 - Here's a profile of the San Francisco Zen Center  I wrote for the April issue of the Buddhist magazine, Shambhala Sun. - DC

4/1/02 - Greetings. I've got great news. I have attained complete perfect enlightenment and can transmit it to you with just two simple words. If you are ready to make the great leap just hit this link and ultimate bliss will be yours. - DC

3/30/02 - Comments on Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center

A couple of further comments on the review of Shoes Outside the Door and the NY Review of Book's review of it.

3/25/02 - Another little Suzuki story, a doozie from his youth - told to me by Dennis Samson. - DC

3/22/02 - A brief piece on Philip Whalen (with an aside on me) from Brian Unger. - DC

3/17/02 - Interview with Mark Gripman.

3/12/02 - Working on a patio tonight with a friend and Suzuki student named Dennis Samson, he told me a pithy Suzuki story. 

2/21/02 - An interview with Doug Bradle now a Christian in Alabama.

2/18/02 - Shunryu Suzuki on Peace and War. There may be additions to this. - DC

2/9/02 - Hi. I'm fifty-seven today. And here's a letter from Rowena Pattee Kryder that she wrote to the ZC back in 1987. - DC

2/3/02 - Greetings on Super Bowl Sunday. I've been working on my archives more recently due to a generous gift from a family foundation and so I plan to put some more time into this site. This morning I got a call from Mark Gripman who said he'd like to see more Suzuki Stories. I didn't really add anything new to the site but I added a Suzuki Stories link to the Outtakes from  To Shine One Corner of the World: moments with Shunryu Suzuki so that they can be found there as well as on the Shine main page.