cuke.com - Shunryu Suzuki Index  - table of contents - DONATE - Goals

What Was New in 2012
going backwards

What Was New 1999 to now Index



  WHAT'S NEW this year shunryusuzuki.com -  A new search form to access Shunryu Suzuki lectures, the audio, film, and a great new photo archive



December


12-31-12 - Last post of 2012. It's been a good year. It's been a bad year. It's been everything in between. - dc


12-30-12 - Sister Susan and Niece Camille arrived and now we're all (including Katrinka and me) preparing for Mother Ahdel's New Year's Eve bash tomorrow, an event which has been going on throughout recorded history. - dc


12-29-12 - Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki

the fifth anecdote - If a tree falls


12-28-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture partial transcription from one of the problem audio - 65-07-31. This work is going very slowly but there's only so much of it. Little by little improving the audio and transcripts. Thanks to the noble volunteers. - dc


Check out Jim Dreaver - You are not your story.


12-27-12 - Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki

the fourth anecdote - Calm mind


Study: booze worse than pot for kids' brains


12-26-12 - Jenny Wunderly on Sticking with It. - part two of four she wrote after the December Sesshin at Green Gulch. -  - on her work with Suzuki Roshi's use of the word precept(s) and cuke.com. Thanks Jenny. I blush. - dc


12-25-12 - Merry Christmas - Watched It's a Wonderful Life with Mother and Katrinka last night - for the first time. Good story. Good message. Despite this death trap we find ourselves suffering in, glad to be alive. Good tidings to all, the one who cheats us, the one who's come to arrest us, the ones we've hurt, the ones we love, to all with a love beyond love. Treasures pour down. Merry Christmas. - dc


12-24-12 - It's everywhere.

A sampling from the web:

Mayo Clinic - meditation

Cleveland Wellness Clinic - Stress Free Now

Om Harmonics

TM

Belief Net

In the Fort Worth area where I'm hanging with mother:

Kadampa Meditation Center (Meditation in Texas)

36 Meetup Groups under "meditation" in Fort Worth

The Maria Kannon Zen Center in Dallas.

The Fort Worth Zendo is associated with MKZC in Dallas. They meet each Thursday, 6:30 – 8:00 pm, Catholic Renewal Center, Nolan High School, 4503 Bridge St, FW, 76103
All lineages and religions are welcome to come sit in traditional silent meditation.

Could keep listing but got to go shopping with Katrinka who arrived last night. - dc


12-23-12 - Jenny Wunderly on her experience at Rohatsu sesshin at Green Gulch Farm


12-22-12 - Happy day after winter solstice.

Best joke heard three times yesterday, "Don't worry, if the Mayan prediction doesn't happen, it's not the end of the world."

Check out this BBC report on memory and faked photos - thanks JR. Reminds me of rule # 1: not to believe what I think, or remember. Or was it not to follow rules?

Enjoy the holidays. - dc


12-21-12 - Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki

the third anecdote - Shovel


Doors and memory loss - thanks Gregory


It's 10:16am Central time. Still waiting. - dc


12-20-12 - Shunryu Suzuki Lecture - 68-10-00-X - new to archive as a separate entry. This is an old transcription. Recently found at end of 68-10-00-J problem tape transcribed by JG but seems to be from separate lecture. All these fall 1968 lectures, especially those on the Lotus Sutra, need to be looked at more carefully. Next year. - dc


We are aware that cuke's holiday gift suggestions seem to have been posted a bit late. Actually it's the beginning of a 2013 Holiday cuke gift advertising campaign. - dc


Click on thumbnail to get seven day forecast starting five days ago. - thanks Katrinka


12-19-12 - Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki

the second anecdote:

Once I asked Suzuki Roshi, "What is Nirvana?"

He replied: "Seeing one thing through to the end."

------------ Mel Weitsman, Sokoji, circa 1965


Go here for the rest of cuke's holiday gift suggestions


Check out Paul Durham's Black Lab World music site - thanks Karen Decotis


12-18-12 - Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki

the first anecdote:

One morning when we were all sitting zazen, Suzuki Roshi gave a brief impromptu talk in which he said, "Each of you is perfect the way you are…and you can use a little improvement."
------------- Ed Brown, , Tassajara, circa 1968


Go here for the rest of cuke's holiday gift suggestions


12-17-12 -Flint Sparks is a Zen teacher in Austin who sent a note about teaching from Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind in France. Here it is.

Here's his APPAMADA site.

ZMBM.net

ZMBM on cuke

Source Lectures for ZMBM can be found at:

shunryu suzuki dot com - In the New Search form under Book, select ZMBM (all but two of the lectures as given)

Beginner's Mind - Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to ZMBM - minimally edited versions

Plan to make a chart for this for easier access to the material. - dc


12-16-12 - Go to Mark Petchey's website to read a recent letter from his mother Hideko - in Updates on the upper left - the 2012 Holliday Update.

Here's Mark's cuke page.

Here's his father Grahame's cuke page.


12-15-12 - Metta Sutta

Prayers for victims of school shooting


12-14-12 - Peter Coyote on Democracy Now on behalf of Native American activist Leonard Peltier. - thanks Howie Klein

Peter's cuke page


12-13-12 - Transcript of Shunryu Suzuki part of Sunseed, a film from c 1970 on gurus.


12-12-12 - Happy twelve day.

Off to Fort Worth in a few hours.

I was just bragging recently about how I never get viruses or malware and I've been downloading software to this new ASUS and was not careful - started loading one from the wrong site and I bet didn't pay attention and just hit Next or something like that and now I've got the browser hijacker MyStart Incredibar which is hard to get rid of.

Bringing a lot of Crooked Cucumber Archive work with me but first must concentrate on fundraising which I didn't do in November though I wrote here that that's what I was going to do.

Onward. - dc


12-11-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 129th lecture excerpt - from 68-02 - part two.

That's the last post on Jenny Wunderly's almost year long project to show in context each mention Shunryu Suzuki made of the word "precept" as recorded in the digital archive of his lecture transcripts. The last ten or so entries were out of chronological order because they were from lectures added recently. Jenny wrote yesterday:

I made a plug for Cuke.com and my project. This was in the zendo in front of at least 30 people [at the end of the Rohatsu sesshin]. Linda [Ruth Cutts who'd lead the sesshin] noted Crooked Cucumber and thanked me for creating such a wonderful resource for them to be able to go to when preparing students for refuge etc. It made an impression on some when I said I had spent a year, found 1346 incidences, and came to sit there as a way to mark the end. At the end of sesshin several came up to me to talk to me about taking precepts. I had a great time sitting Rohatsu at GGF and will write something more about the precept project and about my experience at Green Gulch Farm.

Thanks Jenny. Look forward to receiving more from you to post on cuke. - dc


12-10-12 - Today just prep for flying to Fort Worth on Wednesday, namely getting a new laptop up and loaded with all the programs I use. The so-called new Netbook was too slow for Windows 7 and I was forced to upgrade. After much consultation with kind comrades and research and five hours in Apple and MS stores, got a ASUS X202-E with Windows 8, a cut-rate little guy that runs faster than I'm used to. - dc


12-09-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 128th lecture excerpt - from 68-02 - part one.


Concentrating on organizing new archive storage, looking for best work to take to Fort Worth including backlog for the oral history, some tapes to digitize, and material to scan. Leaving in three days. Also researching new laptop. Netbook with Windows 7 is too slow. Looking at Ultrabooks. Need it light to go in small backpack but fast and strong enough to handle Windows 7. Don't want Windows 8. A Mac that runs Windows would be good but too expensive.  Got a little bit of new Suzuki Roshi lecture material to go up soon. - posting in what we're doing - dc


12-08-12 - Happy Bodhi Day, Buddha's enlightenment day.

During the third watch, the Buddha discovered the Four Noble Truths, finally reaching Nirvana. In his words:

My heart, thus knowing, thus seeing, was released from the fermentation of sensuality, released from the fermentation of becoming, released from the fermentation of ignorance. With release, there was the knowledge, 'Released.' I discerned that 'Birth is ended, the holy life fulfilled, the task done. There is nothing further for this world. - Maha-Saccaka Sutta

This is said to have occurred on the 8th day of the 12th month, rohatsu in Japan. Rohatsu sesshin are completed today wide and far. - thanks Wikipedia - dc


2-07-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 127th lecture excerpt - from 68-02-21.


J Bearden wants to see Zen monk sponsorship along the lines of this Tibetan Buddhist monk sponsorship. For those in poor nations. Maybe starting something on Facebook. Send suggestions here.

JB adds to prior post on his music trip with an explanation and two YouTube links.


12-06-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 126th lecture excerpt - from 68-10-00-E - part two.


Nepsis has a new look


12-05-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 125th lecture excerpt - from 68-10-00-E - part one.


David Cay Johnston on NPR about how big companies rob us blind.


12-04-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 124th lecture excerpt - from 67-09-12 - part three.


Marblehead Zen Center (Massachusetts) has a new website.


12-03-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 124th lecture excerpt - from 67-09-12 - part two.


How To Live on the Planet Earth
Collected Poems of Nanao Sakaki
foreword by Gary Snyder
edited by Gary Lawless
Blackberry Books
Nobleboro, Maine
Jan. 1, 2013
304 pages
$16.95 paperback

Read about it on Ginsberg Project

Nanao's cuke page


12-02-12 - Just seven posts left on the Shunryu Suzuki use of the word precept series that Jenny Wunderly began with the first post on February 1st. Here's something she just sent about how she got into it. Today she begins sitting the Rohatsu Sesshin at Green Gulch Farm. Gambate! - dc

Rohatsu is Japanese for "eighth day of the twelfth month." December 8 has come to be the day Japanese Buddhists observe the enlightenment of the historical Buddha. - lifted that from here

Jenny Wunderly Art on Facebook.
Check out her website.


So cool - the impossible was possible.


12-01-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 123rd lecture excerpt - from 67-09-12 - part one.


Just eleven days till I go to Fort Worth. Concentrating on organizing new office-storage focusing on isolating material not yet presented on cuke, the backlog - doing work here I can't do there. Minimizing time on cuke till then. Hope to get the storage shelves all secured today so can get into going through stuff. Already found Stan White's art which Kaz Tanahashi wants to have photographed for a book.  And Niels Holm art was in the same suitcase. Aim to get both scanned and up on cuke. It's mainly notes and tapes of interviews and conversations with no copies that I'll be looking for. - dc


11-30-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 122nd lecture excerpt - from 66-01-12 - part two.


Richard O. Moore's Louisiana Diary

Read about it on Wikipedia

See it on Thirteen dot org

Richard Moore was for years a neighbor of Green Gulch Farm. He had an impressive role in pubic TV and documentary film. Read about it here. He's in his nineties now and is working on getting some of his new poetry published. I visited him recently at the Redwoods retirement home in Mill Valley. When he hugged me I collapsed on the floor. Read more in dchad misc. - dc


11-29-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 121st lecture excerpt - from 66-01-21 - part one.

Jenny Wunderly just sent the last ten excerpts, the end of this lengthy project. They're all from the most recent additions to the lecture archive found on  the Suzuki lecture work in progress page.

Congratulations Jenny and nine bows. - dc


Now On Turning Wheel Media:
Video with Ven. Pannavati, Ven. Bhikkhu Bodhi, and Joanna Macy


11-28-12 - A light edit of a Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 65-07-29-A - thanks Christian Damian Espicha.


Gustavo Fermin wrote to get the username and password for shunryusuzuki.com and sent this link to the Centre Zen Maha Muni - Paris. He's from the Dominican Republic. He's a fine artist - here's his site for that - "And I also do Graphic work, (book covers, illustrations, etc) I also work as the assistant of an American artist called Peter Beard."

I love the Internet. And Gustavo offered to help cuke. OK. We'll see - there's lots to do here. - dc


11-27-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 120th lecture excerpt - from 71-08-17.


Author Warns 'Second Nuclear Age' Is Here - NPR - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section in the Species Threat department


11-26-12 - Made a correction on the interview with psychic Anne Armstrong and her husband Jim which includes contacting our namesake in the beyond. The mistake was that I incorrectly included info quoted from the Internet on Ann M Armstrong (Medium/Healer/Private-Sittings) in England. My apologies to her and to England. - dc

Anne and Jim Armstrong's interview with Michael Toms on New Dimensions Radio


Recent photo of Hoitsu Suzuki during a dharma talk at Rinsoin on the Tenzo kyokun - thanks Isao Miyanoiri.


11-25-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 119th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-30 - part 6


Walking in Beauty: Growing up with the Yurok Indians
by Harry Roberts -
Tim Buckley helped Harry create this book, wrote the introduction, and wrote the following about the book including how to get it.

Tim Buckley cuke page


11-24-12 - Interview with Layla Bockhorst Smith

Layla's sitting group - Mt. Root Sangha in Larkspur

Mt. Root Sangha Readings



UNEP Greenhouse Gas Emissions Report Finds Climate Change Goals Growing More Elusive -  - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section in the Species Threat department


11-23-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 118th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-30 - part 5


Cuke report: Got 19 days till fly to Texas to hang with mother Ahdel in the same home we moved to when I was 12. No am going to concentrate on doing what I can't do there - go through stuff here and material in new archive storage room big enough to move things around. Set aside notes, interviews, etc not on cuke, tapes not transcribed and digitized, photos not scanned - to backup here then take with me in the continuing struggle to get backlog entered here.

Photographer, sculptor, artist, craftsman Bill Schwob came to Thanksgiving Dinner and dropped off an envelope with negatives of all Rinsoin (Shunryu Suzuki home temple) photos including scrapbooks and pictures on walls and buildings and a photo show he had of the place at SFZC years ago. He let them keep all those mounted prints which are in storage. Also included were negatives of Nona Ransom's photos and Raymond Rimmer's negatives of shots of those scrapbooks done in '94. Bill did his when he was over there. Most the scrapbook photos are in Suzuki photo archive on shunryusuzuki.com. I'd forgotten I'd left all that with Bill for safe keeping.

Will be looking for someone who can scan negatives for preservation ad to get with Suzuki photo archive the images not there.


11-22-12 - Happy Thanksgiving to you and yours.

Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpt 68-12-22. After searching for the word "Thanksgiving" in Suzuki lectures, this is the only one that had that word.

Discovered in this search that this lecture is also incorrectly listed as 69-12-22b which brought up the importance of maintaining an error list to inform other collections of this lecture archive.

Am thankful to Peter Ford for the reorganization of material on shunryusuzuki.com with its New Search Form and to all bodhisattvas, volunteers and donors most who are listed on the contributors on work in progress pages. And a special thanks to MK and JW.

Am thankful for cuke readers, family, friends, all sentient beings, Katrinka, and that which must remain nameless. - DC


11-21-12 - Got this off SFZC.org from this page.

Winter 2013 Practice Period at City Center
Lay Practice: Aligning All Activity with the Heart of Buddha

January 19 - March 30, 2013
led by Abbess Kiku Christina Lehnherr and Entrusted Lay Teacher Dainin Marsha Angus

There is a story about our founder Shunryu Suzuki Roshi answering the phone in the office at City Center. When asked “What time does meditation begin?” He replied, “It never stops!” and hung up the phone.

posted in brief memories with a DC comment questioning its authenticity - thanks Danny Parker


A Paul Shippee Facebook page: Sustainable Conversations - Community Page about Nonviolent Communication - posted on Paul Shippee page


11-20-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 117th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-30 - part 4


We can learn about education from the Finns - This op ed in our local Marin Independent Journal points out the rewards of living in a society where people take care of each other - all for one, one for all. - dc - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section


11-19-12 - Lloyd Kahn remembers Phillip Wilson which ends with a neat story about Shunryu Suzuki.

Check out Lloyd's blog and Shelter


Buddhist People Of Color Sanghas - Huff Post


11-18-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 117th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-30 - part three.


Mysterion's Postulates today brings us To Ascend is to Fall, most intriguing with reference to the Heiki Monogatari which concludes with

The 2nd Abbot of SFZC Zentatsu Richard Baker apologized for a bump in the road - 30 years past. SFZC survived. And so did Richard Baker. 
http://50years.sfzc.org/weekend-dharma-talks 

And so did you and I or I would not be writing it and you would not be reading it.

POSTED BY 

Putting Mysterion's Postulates in Links


Sight covers space
Sound moves in time
Thoughts bubble on
With their memes and their mimes.
- Kabumpkan

(Said in response when Clay pointed out the sight sound space time angle.)


balloons11-17-12 - Happy Birthday Katrinka my love. - dc

 

posted in family


Genine Lentine has a new book: Poses: An Essay Drawn from the Model

Genine's site


11-16-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 116th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-30 - part two.


More on what happened the day before yesterday.


11-15-12 - Had to go to the emergency room and spend the night in Marin General Hospital last night which was most relaxing and just got home and think cuking will wait till tomorrow. No problem now. Later. - dc


11-14-12 - Remember once Suzuki Roshi was asked what we seem like to him and he said, "I think you're all enlightened until you open your mouths." - filed in DC Brief Memories of SR. - filed in DC's Brief Memories


A message from the National Religious Campaign Against Torture - Sixteen religious leaders will meet with White House staff on Tuesday, November 27 to urge the President to sign the Optional Protocol to the Convention Against Torture.  Please join us by signing this statement.  - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section


November is fundraising month for the Crooked Cucumber Archives (CCA) but so far have only been able to get around to writing notes like this. Getting a new Netbook set up has been imperitive since the old one barely got started last time (turned off all sleep functions and it's been full on during this transition. There are time consuming compatibility issues with programs I'm used to and Windows 7. Moving storage from Santa Rosa to San Rafael is taking time but is going to be a big plus to have it all nearby and spread out where things can be found. And then keeping the daily posts going here and keeping up with volunteers and communications. Not complaining, just explaining. - dc -

posted in November 2012 Fundraising Drive Notes


11-13-12 - Interview with Naome Rader Dragstedt by DC in April 2012 during the Tassajara Alumni reunion (thanks CM for the transcription),[Removed by her request]


Climate Change - it's the Heat and the Humidity - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section


11-12-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 115th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-30 - part one.


New pot laws in the face of the feds - John Stewart and Andrew Sullivan have both recently pointed to the giggles that frequently accompany this topic when covered by TV media, not taking it seriously. Obama brushed it off with a joke too when legalization was topic #1 on his Internet ask-the-president thing a few years ago. But surely he knows the suffering these pointless draconian laws cause - to millions, especially to the poor and minorities. Around 750,000 arrested last year in the US followed by jail time, sometimes many years, stigma, loss of jobs, job opportunities, Federal aid to education and housing.  If Obama who was a pot head had been by chance he'd not be president. - dc - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section


Legal drugs, deadly outcomes - LA Times


Another archive storage work day. Trying to get to the fundraising. - dc


11-11-12 - Simply Drop Off Everything -- Hongzhi - a reading for morning service at Mt. Root Sangha in Larkspur, teacher Layla Bochhorst Smith. -

If you live near Larkspur, there's a sitting with Lalya on Tuesday and Friday mornings at 6:30am followed by a brief reading like this. I like it cause it doesn't go on too long  - sit, read for a minute, on with the day. - dc


Veteran's Day - Support the troops - take care of them after they've served, bring them home as soon as possible, don't let politicians send them to fight without extremely good reason. Check out Veterans for Peace

Suggest we pass a law that any politician who votes to send soldiers to fight is then committed for life to work for veterans - in veterans' hospitals or with a veteran's jobs program or veteran's counseling or veteran's something. It's going to effect the people they're sending for the rest of their lives so it would effect theirs' too and they'd take the gravity of their vote more seriously. -  dc - posted in EngagedBuddhism/Current Events section


11-10-12 - A light edit of a Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 65-07-26-D - thanks Christian Damian Espicha.

Anyone wishing to do a Light Edit of a Shunryu Suzuki lecture may do so. Just contact DC.


Going this afternoon to the Lew Richmond and Peter Coyote benefit performance in Tiburon mentioned yesterday.


Last night went to [read more in dchad misc]


11-09-12 - Rick and Carolyn Morton interviewed by DC in April 2012 during the Tassajara Alumni reunion (thanks Layla Smith for the transcription). This placed at the bottom of Rick's interview of years ago. Contains links to an earlier interview with Carolyn and Rick's brother Jim.


Lew Richmond and Peter Coyote to give benefit performance for people who are ill - Saturday, Nov. 10 at 2 pm, at the Community Congregational Church, 145 Rock Hill Dr. in Tiburon  -  Well-being Fund created


If you get a message from PayPal that says this: Your account has been limited until we hear from you ! - Forward it to spoof@paypal.com and then DELETE IT. - dc


11-08-12 - A light edit of a Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 65-07-28-C - thanks Clare Hollander.  See comment down on 11-02 for more on Light Edits.


EngagedBuddhism/Current Events section topics rolling around in my thought stream: , the plight of disadvantaged poor people and plutocracy, the rise of women, nuclear threat, torture, drones, war on drugs, voter suppression in the US and climate change as something that could make all other issues insignificant,


November is cuke survival month. We want to continue. Please Donate

Must force myself to take time and energy from getting cuke tasks done with the lecture work and oral history in order to have the funds to keep going. Filing in  November 2012 Fundraising Drive Notes

Still, got archives moved yesterday from packed Santa Rosa space to more spacious storage in San Rafael where they will be near and neatly arranged - taken out of their can and spread out. There's more moving and organizing to do but this is a great start.


11-07-12 - A light edit of a Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 65-07-27-A - thanks Clare Hollander.  See comment down on 11-02 for more on Light Edits.


For many, today is a day to rejoice. One thing to be grateful for is the rise of the scientists (Nate Sliver, TPM, Huff Post, and Real Clear Politics Poll calculators), the comedians (Stewart, Colbert, Maher), and humanists (Moyers, Hedges).


Moving archives from Santa Rosa to San Rafael today. Post election November is cuke survival month. We want to continue. Please Donate. More to come on this. Thanks. - dc


11-06-12 - Work in Progress - Shunryu Suzuki lecture 68-10-00-H - CM's 2nd pass following JG's 1st pass. - from the audio problem set.


VOTE


Got the backup Netbook, the newer one, all ready to do websitery so no worry about the prospect of a cukeless day. - dc


11-05-12 - A light edit of a Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 65-07-27-B - thanks Clare Hollander.  See comment down on 11-02 for more on Light Edits.


A Simpson's animator comments on the election


11-04-12 - "The same person never steps into a river twice." - Kabumpkan

Enjoy yourself today and forever. - dc


11-03-12 - Work in Progress - Shunryu Suzuki lecture 69-06-29 - from the audio problem set - BH 1st pass. - thanks Bill Hackenberg


Please help Melissa White with her Kickstarter for Dizzy Sushi


Chris Mathews and guests on Climate Change  - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section


11-02-12 - A light edit of a Shunryu Suzuki lecture - 65-07-27-B - thanks Jeff Tollefsrud.

In the past, Gordon Geist did many light edits which are posted on cuke and shunnryusuzuki.com. This is the first of many new light edits to follow. The goal is to get a light edit for each lecture that is now in verbatim form. Many of the lectures are already in light edit form from the work of Marian Derby for the Lost Altos lectures, Brian Fikes, and others. There's a Light Edit category on shunryusuzuki.com but so far only Geist's LE's are entered there. It will take time to get this all together and presented well. In the meantime, we'll be posting them here. - dc

Verbatim transcripts are word for word what Suzuki said. Light Edits smooth them out a bit to make them easier to read. For more on what a light edit is, go to this link in the Work in Progress Page


Active Non-Violence and More: Turning Wheel Media Interviews Alan Senauke  - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section


11-01-12 - Work in Progress - Shunryu Suzuki lecture 68-00-0)-B - from the audio problem set - CM's 2nd pass following JG's 1st pass.


Remembering Issan Dorsey By Adam Tebbe in Buddhadharma

Filed on the Issan Dorsey Page


I Don't Believe a Word You Say - thanks Charlie Musselwhite


Thanks Jennifer Moore for sending these photos of mother Ahdel and her witch friend and helping her to get ready for the trick n treaters last night.

Sending out a thought of thanks to father Kelly who died 56 years ago today in the early morning and who encouraged me to devote my life to understanding mind (as in Shunryu Suzuki's big mind). - dc


October


10-31-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 114th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-29 - part 6


Our Words Are Our Weapons by Rebecca Solnit (on Truthdig from Tom's Dispatch)  - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section

 

See Rebecca Solnit in Tom's Dispatch

 

Rebecca Solnit dot com


10-30-12  - Work in Progress - Shunryu Suzuki lecture 67-10-00 - from the audio problem set - CM's 2nd pass following JG's 1st pass.

And an updated version of CM's work on 69-08-30 (he pointed out that the latest version of his wasn't posted). A "pass" here refers to the work of one person, not how many times they went over a lecture. - dc


Garbage Warrior - thanks Howie


10-29-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 113th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-29 - part 5


Father Steve Frost with a poem, De Deum, and a diagnosis - Paean's Song. Filed in Others Contribute


Bill Moyers and Company - Plutocracy Rising - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section -  - thanks Howie and others


10-28-12 - Sweden as a Monastery by Rick Wicks


Work in Progress - Shunryu Suzuki lecture 67-09-08-A- from the audio problem set - CM's 2nd pass following JG's 1st pass.


Color Dreams for To Find the Girl from Perth


10-27-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 112th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-29 - part 4


A Simple Sense of Delight  by Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche - a reading for morning service at Mt. Root Sangha in Larkspur, teacher Layla Bochhorst Smith. This is the second such posting and there's another in the wings so started an index page for Mt. Root Sangha Readings.


10-26-12 - Work in Progress - Shunryu Suzuki lecture 67-03-26-B from the audio problem set - CM's 2nd pass following JG's 1st pass.


Everything Is Broken:
Songs About Things As They Are

by Alan Senauke & his highly musical friends

Alan's Clear View Project


Reworked the home page because an old friend wrote and said he read the Hoitsu article in Sangha News (see yesterday) but couldn't find it in messy cuke. I know that's true. So I wrote this to him about how to find things on cuke and brought the search box up on the home page and made some other changes. It's probably hopeless but I think that's a little better:


10-25-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 111th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-29 - part 3


On Hoitsu Suzuki’s Last Day at Eiheiji by Isao Miyanoiri published here 10-18 now is reproduced on the SFZC's Sangha News. Don't miss all Isao's photos.


JW who sent in the first, now discredited, stab at Esperanto translation of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, writes (surely inspired by the recent Shunryu enso discussion):

Having found I have no vocation for Esperanto translation, I have decided to pick up the pieces and devote myself to drawing ensos [circles] instead, where I am sure to find my place in the proper order of things. Here is my first one.


Sex Hands - sent by JBearden who writes "Fresh from Manchester. Soon to join 333 Records." Not sure what JB has to do with this but dug the tune and fondly remember Manchester where I had an eleven hour wait for a plane to get fixed and discretely plugged my laptop in behind a soda machine at the suggestion of a man with a broom. Might have mentioned it here. Ah yes - just searched cuke for "Manchester" and it was 10-25-07 (the one in England not Vermont). Hey! That's exactly five years ago today. - dc

Go here for JB's answer

JB adds to prior post on his music trip


10-24-12 - Work in Progress - Shunryu Suzuki lecture 67-09-12 from the audio problem set. This is the fist 2nd go through of the lectures Judy Gilbert tackled last spring. Thanks CM.


MK noticed in the Trungpa Rinpoche lecture on Zen linked to on October 2nd that Trungpa said Zen was like a Heath Robinson Pancake Machine. Here's a Heath Robinson page with the pancake machine being three down and 4th down the OK Go video for "This too shall pass." - thanks Michael Katz - posted on the Chogyam Trungpa page


10-23-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 110th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-29 - part 2


Andrew Main comments on the Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind in Esperanto post of a few days ago, submits another translation of the same lines as before, and more.


10-22-12 - Nothing Special- the final chapter, thirteen, of Beginner's Mind, Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.


Congratulations to James Fox for miraculously meeting the Kickstart goal to raise $30,000 to finish his movie on the year of the BP oil spill, Pretty Slick. - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section


10-21-12 - Shunryu Suzuki dot com has been totally reorganized (thanks to Peter Ford), is more complete, user friendly, and versatile. That's the whole lecture transcript and audio, video, and photo archive - in progress - lots has been added and there's to do with no end in sight.

Cuke dot com is the oral and written history with selective focus on the lectures - and a bunch of other stuff that's caught our eye and which will be more and more moved to another site that's in development. Stay tuned. - dc - posing this in What We're Doing


Higher resolution, larger, versions of Hoitsu Suzuki's family added to the report on his last day at Eiheiji - Click on photos to enlarge


Watch: Pastor’s Speech Against Gay Rights Has Surprise Ending -  - posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section


Making a Work in Progress presentation today.


10-20-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 109th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-29 - part 1


Two more photos, these of Hoitsu's family added to the report on his last day at Eiheiji


JW decided to translate Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind into Esperanto.


10-19-12 - Forgetting Ourselves- Chapter twelve of Beginner's Mind, Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.


Another comment on the famed Suzuki left to right enso.


10-18-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 108th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-26.


On Hoitsu Suzuki's Last Day at Eiheiji - with great photos - by Isao Miyanoiri

Hoitsu Suzuki main cuke page


10-17-12 - Self-Nourishment - Chapter eleven of Beginner's Mind, Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.


Tomoe Katagiri wrote in a recent email:  "I'm very genki and  happy because I can practice okesa sewing with many people at home and Z centers." (I like that "Z centers." I'm sure most know that "genki" is healthy and energetic in Japanese)

You can download Tomoe's book, Study of the Okesa, Nyohō-e: Buddha's Robe from this page on the Minnesota Zen Meditation Center website.

She was our dear friend and I miss her and her late husband, Dainin Katagiri. - dc

Interview with Tomoe - and a nice new photo lifted off the MZMC site.


10-16-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 107th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-25.


Only two days to go for Jamie Fox to achieve his Kickstarter goal of $30,000 to fund his documentary film on the BP oil spill. Jamie is already an acclaimed documentary film maker.


Freedom Songs, part VIII - Cookie - 1964, Jackson, Mississippi


10-15-12 - Limiting Your Activity - Chapter ten of Beginner's Mind, Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.


Congratulations Jane Bay - retiring after 35 years as George Lucas' executive assistant at Lucasfilm (after being Jerry Brown's when he was Secretary of State 1971-75). Jane will be heading to Nepal to attend a conference with the International Council of Thirteen Indigenous Grandmothers, hosted by the Center for Sacred Studies. Then Jane plans to start working again on her new book, GROWING UP SOUTHERN - Stories from the Attic of Childhood Memories.  The prologue and several chapters are already on her website - www.JaneBay.com  in the "Stories from the Road" section.


"We all grew up thinking soda could be part of a healthy diet. It's not. Soda is the No. 1 cause of the health crisis in America," says DR. Ritterman of Richmond, CA. Read more - from SF Chronicle


Realized that I hadn't prepared my income tax report for last year which I always do for the October 15th deadline. Talked to my family CPA who is a Seventh Day Adventist and works on Sunday. He said get the numbers in by five his Texas time and we'll do an email file tomorrow. Called him at four Texas time and said can't find 2011 receipts - must have put them in storage when we quickly moved. But when he heard what income I had to report he said, "Forget it - you don't need to file." Relieved, I returned to rejoicing in this life of luxurious poverty. - dc


10-14-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 106th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-22 - Part two


The Diggers Archive with a photo gallery featuring the photography of Chuck Gould.


If you'd like to see the redo of shunryusuzuki.com, beta version, let me know. - DC - thanks cubed to Peter Ford


10-13-12 - Memorial Service for Aiko Uchiyama, Shunryu Suzuki's sister, at City Center on October 13th early morning. Here it is on cuke.

1994 Interview with Aiko Uchiyama, Shunryu Suzuki's little sister, by DC - Just took me 13 years to get it up here on cuke. Going over other interviews with her and Suzuki family members from 73 to post.- dc


Diss Information: Is There a Way to Stop Popular Falsehoods from Morphing into "Facts"? - Scientific American


10-12-12 - Flashing - Chapter nine of Beginner's Mind, Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.


Visit to Sauk Mountain - by David Silva

David Silva cuke page with links to his interview, website, photos, more


The US presidential debates' illusion of political choice - Glen Greenwald in in Guardian - thanks Gregory

More Greenwald in the Guardian

posted in Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section


illusion - thanks Mike Love


balloonsHappy birthday Kelly Chadwick (my father, not son) 10-12-1903-11-01-1956

 

 


10-11-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 105th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-22 - Part one


Remembering Nanao Sakaki - thanks Andrew Main (who mentioned that the recent Kishizawa story triggered memory of Nanao)

Nanao's cuke page


Making a Work in Progress presentation to members of the IHS, Institute for Historical Studies, in Oakland on October 21st at 2pm titled The Legacy of Shunryu Suzuki. I'm going to emphasize that this work is going on through the contributions of many people. Here's the notice sent out to members. If you're interested in attending, please contact me. - DC.

The IHS is an organization of independent historians and has been a fiscal sponsor for this work for over a decade. Here's their website.

Adding this to the Do-it section under What we're doing.


10-10-12 - Bread - Chapter eight of Beginner's Mind, Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.


Shocking News on this famous enso

(not actually shocking - just trying to look like the Huff Post)

 


Beverly has a civil rights story too


10-09-12 - Tom Cabarga sends this about his father translating Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind into Spanish.


The past should not be followed after,
And the future not desired.
What is past is dead and gone,
And the future is yet to come.

But whoever gains insight into things
Presently arisen in the here and now,
Knowing them, unmoved, unshaken -
Let him cultivate that insight.

- The Buddha (Majjhima Nikaya III.187 )

- thanks Jeff Bearden


Freedom Songs, part VII - Natchez - 1964


10-08-12 - The Double Moon - Chapter seven of Beginner's Mind, Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.


Six Poems by Beverly Morris Armstrong (Horowitz)

Beverly's cuke page


An article by Noam Chomsky  -  Mitt Romney and Barack Obama are ignoring two of the gravest threats to humankind: climate change and nuclear war.  Article on the article - in Truthdig


10-07-12 - Freedom Songs, part VI - Non Violence


One thing karma means is that we are not exempt from the results of our actions - Kabumpkan


10-06-12 - Horse Sense - Chapter six of Beginner's Mind, Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.


From Warm Smiles from Cold Mountains: Dharma Talks on Zen Meditation  by Reb Anderson and Susan Moon. Found this story (cuke link) posted on this page of Wild Fox Zen


Al Gore suggests Obama was suffering from altitude sickness Wednesday night. He'd arrived four hours earlier. That happens to me. One example: Security guards at Harrah's in Tahoe told me I couldn't sleep in a comfy chair near where son Clay and friends were playing video games. I told them I'd lost all my energy and couldn't stay awake. "Just get here?" one asked. "Yeah." "You've got altitude sickness. Go get a chocolate bar."


10-05-12 - Zen and Excitement - Chapter five of Beginner's Mind, Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.


Jim Griffin, buddy from the Texas Panhandle, sends a mellow tune he put up on the You Tube and writes, "I fondly remember you playing and singing guitar in our living room...we then motored to Amarillo College to interest that lot with the "Freeze Please" World Suicide LP ..... they are still lost." He says he's reading Thank You and OK! for the third time. Good lord. His buddy, Chris, "Yohmei" Blasdel, another Texan, has lived in Tokyo since 1972. Studied for decades with Kinko Master, Yamaguchi Goro. Chris has written a book about all that - in Japanese - and it won awards. Good lordisimo. Now it's in English: THE SINGLE TONE: A Personal Journey into Shakuhachi Music. Texans rule. - dc


10-04-12 - Two posts from the recent SFZC's Sangha News Weekly

Memorial Service for Aiko Uchiyama, Shunryu Suzuki's sister, at City Center on October 13th. Here it is on cuke.

Julia Morgan’s Sacred Architecture


Constancy - Chapter four of Beginner's Mind, Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.


balloonsHappy birthday Kelly, elder son

 

 


10-03-12 - Nothing - Chapter three of Beginner's Mind, Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.


INNER PEACE — GLOBAL IMPACT - thanks Howie


10-02-12 - The Joy of Giving - Chapter two of Beginner's Mind, Marian Derby's original manuscript that led to Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.


Chronicles Project - Talks by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche on Zen and Tantra - video and audio - thanks Howie

On the same talks, read David Schneider's The Teacup and the Skullcup - here's the introduction

filed on Chogyam Trungpa page


10-01-12 - Beginner's Mind - Chapter One for a book of the same name, from Marian Derby's original manuscript.


Translator interview on Translating the words of Buddha site. - thanks Howie


Community Grows - Barbara Wenger continues greening up the Koshland Park and San Francisco and SF youth. Give generously.



What's New before October in 2012




only search cuke dot com

WHAT'S NEW since the stuff below up to NOW


September


9-30-12 - One Pine Hall - Soto Zen in Seattle with Robby Ryuzen Pellett as the host. His teacher is Hoitsu Suzuki, son of Shunryu. Their new newsletter is out and it's linked to on the site now.


Life offers interesting moments to punctuate the seemingly endless bathing in digital data. - in DC Misc


9-29-12 - Notes on RICHARD BAKER INTERVIEW - from an early WIND BELL. The first in a series of posts from interviews in the early Wind Bell (publication of the SFZC)

Zentatsu Baker Roshi link on Dharma Sangha website


Welcome, to Jikoji's Sunday Programs - south of San Francisco, near Santa Cruz


Harvest moon tonight.


9-28-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lectures on the Lotus Sutra that weren't included in the digital archive. Here's a minimally edited version of the 6th of six that were giving in February of 1968. - Thanks to Brian Fikes for doing this work over 20 years ago.


History of 300 Page Street - by Mary C. Morgan

Archived on cuke


Intriguing CGI musical instrument and pretty cool, to me, music - I watch and wonder how much work did it take to make the video. - dc


PDA Launches BlogTalk Radio - One Nation Protecting the Vote


9-27-12 - Heard Jigme Tromge Rinpoche at Open Secret in San Rafael, CA, last night. Had met him five years ago or so at the opening of his Cazadero center with son Clay. Back then he gave us a long orange prayer flag banner.

Here's his Facebook Page

Ati Ling Center website

His Padmasambhava Peace Institute

Last night he spoke of treating others with the same love one has for one's own mother, children. More at dchad misc


Pundit Sarah Silberman on Voter Suppression - an old topic for cuke's Engaged Buddhism/Current Events section.

Censored Version

Clean Version - failed attempt to bleep

MORE on this timely topic


9-26-12 - The Minnesota Zen Meditation Center now has a Katagiri Project.

Here's their announcement of this project.

Dainin Katagiri was Shunryu Suzuki's assistant from 1964 till 1970 and continued to help out for years. He was more than an assistant really, more of a second teacher, a warm-hearted, sincere, diligent priest who went on to found a center in Minneapolis. There are a number of teachers in his lineage now. I miss him. - dc


Working on a total redo of shunryusuzuki.com to be unveiled soon. - dc


Rocky Anderson of the Justice Party is the guy Ralph Nader is supporting. Here's an article on him speaking candidly from Truth Out.

Here's the Anderson-Rodriguez official website - Vote Rocky dot org


9-25-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lectures on the Lotus Sutra that weren't included in the digital archive. Here's a minimally edited version of the 5th of six that were giving in February of 1968. - Thanks to Brian Fikes for doing this work over 20 years ago.


A haiku about aging from today's Marin IJ.(Independent Journal)

Roses are so red!
Violets are so - what's the word?
Look, dear, a bluebird!

---Martin Bernbaum


9-24-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 104th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-17 - part four


Fat Free Buddha


9-23-12 - Freedom Songs, part V -  Lynch Street


In answer to JW's question -

Is there such a thing as a "Zen card."?

Someone wrote "How many Jokers have answered, A Joker?" - sorry, lost name

JW wondered about a wild eyed Samurai then he sent this Zen Card.


Our sculptor friend Ihara sent two nostalgic photos from Japan from 1989 - posted in DC Family


9-22-12 - Happy Equal Night.


Shunryu Suzuki lectures on the Lotus Sutra that weren't included in the digital archive. Here's a minimally edited version of the 4th of six that were giving in February of 1968. - Thanks to Brian Fikes for doing this work over 20 years ago.


Once again Robert Moses was to me quietly inspiring in the meeting yesterday. He met with about twenty of us, mainly veterans of the civil rights movement. - Read more.


9-21-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 103rd lecture excerpt - from 71-07-17 - part three


A reminder that later today and tonight Robert Moses, the inspiring leader of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, will be in the Bay Area at an Oakland church near Mills College as reported two days ago. Read details

That got me to working on the Freedom Songs story.

Here's a Summary of my Brief Civil Rights Movement Experience - DC


The Space Shuttle just flew over bud Gregory's home in Tucson. He was on the roof waiting - but his neighbor got better photos. Here's one. Click on it to enlarge.

 


All three parts are now up of the video of the talk Zentatsu Richard Baker gave at the City Center of the SFZC with Steve Stucky's excellent introduction. - thanks Madeline Landis


9-20-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lectures on the Lotus Sutra that weren't included in the digital archive. Here's a minimally edited version of the 3rd of six that were giving in February of 1968. - Thanks to Brian Fikes for doing this work over 20 years ago.


NRCAT’s Preventing Torture Everywherecampaign urges President Obama to sign a new treaty to help end torture. 


Still time to catch - Art Exhibit: Zen & Sumi-e | Japan & America - Michael Hofmann, September 2012


 A mushroom for international defense as long as we preserve old growth forests. - thanks JR


9-19-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 103rd lecture excerpt - from 71-07-17 - part two.


Robert Moses, the inspiring leader of the 1964 Mississippi Freedom Summer Project, will be in the Bay Area at an Oakland church near Mills College raising funds for Ron Bridgeforth [see article in SF Chronicle]. While he is here, he would like to meet with Bay Area veterans of the Mississippi Movement to discuss plans for a 50th anniversary gathering of the Mississippi Summer Project. He was truly a moving and humble spokesman for non violent change - and that's change I hope for. - DC - Read details


This photo from Crooked Cucumber that was in Buddhadharma recently and in the 25 year book [which will be scanned and entered here] - is labeled thus in Crooked Cucumber.

Tassajara, Zen Center, first practice period work-time photo. Summer 1967

(Just entered the following note under it on the CC photo page and in the errata section of cuke.)

[Close but incorrectly identified. It's from the Fall work period following that summer. I realized that recently when I saw Niels Holm upper left and Jim Morton just pointed it out. Both came in the fall for the first time. Most of us were there in the summer though. Names to follow soon I hope. Just went over them with Leslie at Tassajara and have notes and plan to follow up. - DC


9-18-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lectures on the Lotus Sutra that weren't included in the digital archive. Here's a minimally edited version of the 2nd of six that were giving in February of 1968. - Thanks to Brian Fikes for doing this work over 20 years ago.


Congratulations to Jakusho Kwong Roshi and all at Genjoji - Sonoma Mountain Zen Center on the groundbreaking for their new zendo

from Genjoji website:

Sep 16 Sun. MANDALA GROUNDBREAKING 10 am. 

After eight years, we have met our fundraising goal in order to break ground for our new Meditation Hall. We invite you to join us for this historic ceremony from 10am to 12 noon on Sunday, September 16, 2012.

The new Zendo – is the womb of Buddhas and Bodhisattvas from which they are born. This birth is like dawn’s light as it dispels the darkness of the landscape by helping the many human beings to restore their inherent nature – Basic Goodness.

Jakusho Kwong-roshi

Sorry I couldn't make it. - DC

Jakusho Bill Kwong cuke page


Mother Ahdel dressed up to go to the Mobster's Ball


Thanks MK for pointing out that I'd typed "with Steve Tipton's excellent introduction" instead of "with Steve Stucky's excellent introduction" in the post below. Steve Tipton was just over here and I work fast. Duh.


9-17-12 - Here's a link to the audio of the talk Zentatsu Richard Baker gave at the City Center of the SFZC with Steve Stucky's excellent introduction. A link o the video  was posted here a month ago but, at least back then, it only had the first third of the video and that was mostly the camera running before the talk started. - Now it's all there in three parts.


Thanks to the Norman Zendo and Windsong Innerspace Zendo (Windsong Dojo) for the generous donation to the Crooked Cucumber Archives. Donors are not mentioned here on What's New, they're listed on the Contributors page of the CCA Do-it section (where they'll be entered soon). But what they did is something I'd like to encourage. They had a one day sitting to raise funds for the CCA and sent $775. That brought CCA funds to a point where we can see solvency. Thanks Oklahoma! - dc


Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 102nd lecture excerpt - from 71-07-17 - part one.


9-16-12 - There are some Shunryu Suzuki lectures on the Lotus Sutra that weren't included in the digital archive. Here's a minimally edited version of the first of six that were giving in February of 1968. - Thanks to Brian Fikes for doing this work over 20 years ago.


AMEG - Arctic Methane Emergency Group - thanks again to Brian Fikes

Following up on yesterday's link on Arctic ice melt. Posted in currentevents/engagedbuddhism


A key goal of this Crooked Cucumber archive work is to get these materials as complete and well presented as possible and then to get them duplicated and printed up on acid free paper by people all over the world. Archiving only extends the life of something a little longer. One way I see it is moving a ball toward a goal that keeps moving away till it turns into a cliff. - dc


9-15-12 - An unfinished (due to technical difficulties) lecture transcript from 69-08-30. Posted in the Shunryu Suzuki lecture work in progress section.


ZIRH is being posted all over the Internet posing as an ad campaign for men's skin care products  but which is actually a subliminal campaign to promote another ZIRH, namely
Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki.

ZIRH - cuke  ---  ZIRH - Shambhala Publications  ---  ZIRH - Google Books (21 reviews)

ZIRH - iTunes (for download)  ---  ZIRH - Amazon  ---  ZIRH - Amazon Kindle

So when you see ZIRH posted all over the Internet, remember -

Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki.


Arctic Ice Melting fast - Posted in currentevents/engagedbuddhism


9-14-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 102nd lecture excerpt - from 71-07-06 part 2


Mako and Graham have a cool blog with lots of neat photos of Tassajara. They're leaving soon for Asia for a pilgrimage including India to visit and join in with the creation of a Zen practice center in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu, with Gita and Paul Haller.

Here's their blog: The Cloud Mountains.

They need money. Cuke just donated $50 to help them on their journey. A PayPal donate link  - dc


Including links to Mary Quagliata's video and art sites on the Suzuki story posted yesterday


Alan Chadwick dot org - a site for the great gardener and character who started the gardens at Green Gulch Farm.


9-13-12 - On Suzuki Roshi by Mary Quagliata - a gem from the backlog of the cuke archives.


Cooking from the Summer Garden with Deborah Madison

with Deborah Madison and Koyo Dan Welch September 28-30, 201

A benefit at and for Crestone Mt. Zen Center


balloons9-12-12 - Happy birthday sister Susan.

And to Danny Parker for sending me the following note: Congratulations on the anniversary of your ordination. Oh. Nothing that would come to mind with me. I thought back. Yes it was about this time of year. When was it - the 11th? No I guess it was the 12th cause he sent that today. Twelfth, Nope - the 11th. He just emailed me. Knew the date because his teacher, Ed Brown, and I were ordained together. But back a few hours ago I was thinking there's something about the twelfth. Oh yes! I picked up the phone and called my sister and wished her a happy birthday. Thanks Danny.


MK comments on a Suzuki comment.


Ron Browning asks us to sign this petition (I did.- DC):

Have fact checkers at the presidential and vice-presidential debates

I wanted to stay away from posting things about electoral politics cause then someone else will ask me to post something opposing but later I thought that well, it's not taking sides between what to me are just different imperialist servants to giant robots (read giant corporations) and the inorganic money flow though of course many sincere Buddhists take one side or another and I am going to vote and I'm sure you know who for - my favorite imperialist servant to giant robots and the inorganic money flow. - Posted in currentevents/engagedbuddhism


Exploring the link between junk food, government, and Alzheimer's. - from the Guardian - thanks Gregory - Posted in currentevents/engagedbuddhism


9-11-12 - Interview with Shunryu Suzuki student SH


Remembering those who died on this day eleven years ago. May we evolve toward a peaceful world where violence and revenge as policy are not seen as virtues. May we be more alert.

May we cause as little harm as possible. How many September 11ths has the United States caused in other nations since WWII?

On this day reflecting on the approximately 1500 people who die violently each day worldwide, only one tenth of those in "in conflict settings or during terrorist activities." See Trends and Patterns of Lethal Violence. - Posted in currentevents/engagedbuddhism


9-10-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 101st lecture excerpt - from 71-07-06 part 1.


September 13 – 16, 2012 at the Santa Rosa Creek Zendo

A retreat exploring the seminal koan text the Blue Cliff Record and implications of enlightenment with John Tarrant & Joan Sutherland

Standing at the Blue Cliff: The Enlightenment Talks


9-09-12 - DC will be interviewed by Brian "Swervin'" Kirven on KWMR in Point Reyes this Sunday 9-09-12 from four to six PM. Hide the children.


Just for tuning in to cuke.com today you've been awarded a Certificate of Emptiness which you can download and display proudly. - Thanks JW for sending it.


9-08-12 - Our third installment from our spy in the Edward Brown camp:

Ed says Suzuki Roshi also said that Suzuki was fond of reminding that: "You are the boss."

Thanks Danny. - DC -  filing in Brief Memories


Update on work on getting more Shunryu Suzuki lectures into the digital archive including here on cuke.com and on shunryusuzuki.com

And then there's a DC knee update.


 Interview with Suzuki student Meg Gawler edit posted


9-07-12 - Again from our spy in the Edward Brown camp:

Ed says that Suzuki Roshi was big on being vague and encouraging each person to find out for themselves what might work for them. Experimentation-- even groping.

Ed abbreviates that now, and it has become his favorite line for his own teaching on how to practice: "See what you can find out."

Thanks Danny. - DC -  filing in Brief Memories


A thought provoking question received today:

Dear D.C.,

Is there such a thing as a "Zen card."?

JW

Any suggestions? - DC


9-06-12 - One of our spies relays the following that Edward Brown said about the old Crooked Cucumber:

Ed told about Suzuki Roshi on zazen (I have heard this one twice): Someone asked, "Why don't you give us better directions on what to do in zazen?" Suzuki: "Because if I told you that, you might try to do it." - thanks Danny - filing in Brief Memories

Ed Brown cuke page


My Love letter to Plum Village:  Thay Nhat Hanh and the Brocade Fan - by Katherine Cook


9-05-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 100th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-02 (part 5)


Scanning of SR lectures postponed till tomorrow because David Cohen of Techlight is bringing a scanner he's not using, a two year old HP to replace my 13 year old Microtek.


9-04-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 99th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-02 (part 4)


DC will be interviewed by Brian "Swervin'" Kirven on KWMR in Point Reyes this Sunday 9-09-12 from four to six PM.


9-03-12 - Interview with Suzuki student Meg Gawler


CBD - revolutionizing medical marijuana

Read The Straight Dope, including a review of Smoke Signals.

I've always seen the war on pot as cruel persecution but used to be suspicious of pot as medicine but not now. The war on drugs causes more harm than the drugs is nothing new but the more I know the worse it looks - a war on superior medicine and a great overall plant. And millions thrown in cages and screwed over by our hysterical criminal justice system for involvement with pot. It's our version of burning witches. - Posted in currentevents/engagedbuddhism


9-02-12 - Katherine Cook and Peter Martinelli radio interview, - Festival of First Fruits, is on this page of Pt. Reyes' KWNR's site

Katherine's cuke page


On the Work in Progress  - Added NOTES for someone wishing to help, even just a tiny bit (in getting the Shunryu Suzuki lecture archive more together) followed by DC Suggestions for transcribing Shunryu Suzuki lectures for the archive. There are a few people doings things now so if you want to help please let me know. I'm going to make a chart with tasks and who's doing what and I'm planning on scanning some transcripts today and signing people up to do just one page. I figure we can get more done that way.

Looking for a name for volunteers, helpers. How about Accomplices? - dc


People tell me often that they can't find something here on cuke which is understandable since the whole thing is a big mess, but I can almost always find what they're looking for in a jiff by just searching for a key word in the site's Google search boxes (located on the top of this What's New page and near the bottom of the home page - or just writing "cuke.com whatever" in a search program like Google [MORE]


9-01-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts - 98th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-02 (part 3)


Going through old collections yesterday thrown out by GGF with a note that the new verbatim lecture archive supplants it, found six transcripts not in archive - and identified more work to do using the old transcripts. Have brilliant plan to get these new so to speak ones all transcribed on to disc quickly and here on cuke and on shunryusuzuki.com. More to say but must go with Katrinka now to Sausalito Arts Festival. Later. - dc


Art Exhibit: Zen & Sumi-e | Japan & America - Michael Hofmann, September 2012


August


8-31-12 - Made a more complete list of Shunryu Suzuki lectures that need work on the new transcript page. A few have audio but haven't been transcribed. Most need to be listened to to check transcripts in progress. Some audio is really bad. Most have modified audio that attempts to make the words easier to understand. There are a number of those to add, lectures that we have transcripts for but which have not received the V seal of verbatim. Going to go down the list of all lectures on shunryusuzuki.com and add those with these transcripts marked with a U in the name (for un-verbatim).

This work is endless. I'm glad it's not as simple as it seems from a distance as in "Hasn't that all been done?" cause it gives me something to do,  a great job, but there's so much that at times I realized I must leave as much as possible for others and move on to other nooks to cranny. - dc


When in Bethany Oklahoma, shop at the Liberty Thrift Store and say hi to Paul Speir for me. - dc


From correspondence stumbled on deep in the cuke labyrinth - Kabumpkan says: Practice hard, practice soft, practice till you loose your socks.


8-30-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  97th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-02 (part 2)


Marblehead ZC has a new home. ------ Here's their website.


Help us get some Shunryu Suzuki transcripts done. Got good ears? We've got some modified audio of previously untranscribed lectures that has made them easier to understand and have some transcripts in progress and a few not yet done. Go to the new transcript page. Contact DC to get started. Don't need to make a big commitment.


8-29-12 - Richard Baker mentioned the following book in his Saturday lecture at the City Center recently: Buddhist Phenomenology: A Philosophical Investigation of Yogacara Buddhism and the Ch'eng Wei-shih Lun (Routledge Critical Studies in Buddhism). Danny Parker sent me that link. Reminds me of the time that Shunryu Suzuki suggested to Stan White Buddhist Logic (2 volumes) by Th. Stcherbatsky (1962), a book that got through his Stalinist censors.


Karen Hamilton has a show coming up in Sacramento of her art. Check it out.


Going through archives and stuff. This will take time. Must prioritize. Let's see Important stuff first, silly stuff second, serious stuff third. Hmm. So many decisions. And the organizing is going to run into the fundraising because the till is running out of lucre.


8-28-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  96th lecture excerpt - from 71-07-02 (part 1).


Here's a flyer for the Oklahoma retreat to benefit the Crooked Cucumber Archives with all the necessary info. Thanks Frank! (Special thanks for mentioning my books though it should be noted that To Shine One Corner of the World is now called Zen Is Right Here.) - dc

Immediate goals for this work are to keep organizing the archive materials with an eye to setting aside interviews, notes, photos, etc to be entered here onto cuke and other work to be done such as tapes to be digitized and transcribed then entered. Wish to get this stage of the work done quickly as funds are dwindling and I realize I must devote a block of time to fundraising soon. Other tasks such as transcribing interviews, work on web presentation of Suzuki lectures, index and maps for Crooked Cucumber (with volunteers and poorly paid semi volunteers) and daily posts will continue.

The First Church (First Congregational United Church of Christ) in Santa Rosa has offered a room for further organizing. In the next step I wish to have a lot of flat space to lay materials out. Thanks to senior minister David Parks-Ramage. - DC


8-27-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  95th lecture excerpt - from 71-06-22.


Sore from lifting and going through boxes. Back there today - to the archive storage. Gotta get through this stuff. Things to find. Stuff to throw away. But first, a meeting and pleasant chat with the curmudgeon Buddhist.


8-26-12 - Infinite City (UC Press link) (SFMOMA Link) by Rebecca Solnit mapping twenty-two of the countless versions of San Francisco (or any city), about cartography, geography, imagination, and the coexistence of many worlds in one place and then focus on one particular map, which pairs the topics of salmon migration through the waters of the Bay Area and the migration of Soto Zen Buddhism throughout the region and beyond. (lifted this blurb from this page on SFZC.org with month and day for an event but not year) with essay by Genine Lentine on SFZC and Coho Salmon sites in Bay Area. Bought the hardback of the book yesterday at Book Passage to be part of Crooked Cucumber Archive library which includes tomes with something on Suzuki Shunryu and spent an hour reading it before leaving store. Also, Ray in Maryland is working on maps for Crooked Cucumber so it seemed like a relevant and justified purchase worth 3% of remaining CCA funds. - dc


8-25-12 - Off to SFZC City Center for morning zazen, lecture, and lunch with Blanche and Narcissus Quagliata. See a video interview with him got off YouTube. He was the first director of that building in 1969 and did the stained glass hands of Shunryu Suzuki and Dainin Katagiri in the doors between the dining room and the kitchen, then the one at the end of the lobby hall, the beginning of a prominent career. In the photo of Suzuki he shows in the video, that's me on the right. More later. - dc


8-24-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  94th lecture excerpt - from 71-06-20.


The Norman Zendo and Prairie Wind Sangha are having a one day sitting on September 9th, in Oklahoma City. The donations received will go to the Crooked Cucumber Archives work which is what we do here at cuke.com and beyond. Thanks OK and Frank Anderton. Contact info forthcoming. - dc


Ron Browning wants everyone to know what the NY Times has to say about TRUTH and LIES ABOUT MEDICARE. - Posted in currentevents/engagedbuddhism


8-23-12 - Just got back from five good days at Tassajara. Tons to go through. Lots to do. Here are a few items to peruse.

Fear is not your Friend - Another Elephant Journal excerpt from Jack Elias.


The third installment of Rob Lee's Collaborating with Angels about Issan Dorsey is now up. Cuke page on Issan


Father Steve Frost sends this query: How's your Tibetan?  Here's a 'note' and inscription the Dalai Lama wrote in my Kalachakra book.  If I ever knew what it says, I don't know now.  Just curious.

Can someone help with this? - dc [thanks Mary Cunov.]


8-18-12 - Video of Zentatsu Richard Baker's talk at the SFZC's City Center last Saturday. (It starts with people arriving and the densho bell then Richard then Steve Stucky's introduction at about 27 minutes in - so you can get some good meditation in before the talk starts.)

Zentatsu, Steve, and I are on our way to Tassajara early this morning. I won't be back till Thursday so nothing here till then. Please dig into the labyrinthal depths of cuke in my absence. - dc


8-17-12 - Appalachian Dharma & Meditation Center - learned about this dharma center from Peter Ford in Tennessee who's doing some significant revising of the presentation of Shunryu Suzuki lectures on shunryusuzuki.com which will be making its debut there in the future. And one thing we'll be doing is linking each lecture to its presentation on other sites, mainly SFZC's excellent site for this. - dc


8-16-12 - The Arrangements Has Failed Again - David Schneider Green Gulch memories.


Chauffering Richard Baker now who's visiting Grahame Petchey. Next, Dave Haselwood. Then Pam and Mike Dixon. A good day.


8-15-12 - Read an excerpt from Always Beginner's Mind by Colleen Morton Busch from the September 2012 issue of Shambhala Sun.


Barrie Mason remembers what is surely the first contact that led to the SFZC's purchase of Green Gulch Farm, featuring Huey Johnson, Bill Lane, and her - in 1970.

Her email had the subject line: You Seem to be the ZC historian - DC comment on this


balloons8-14-12 - Happy  birthday John Tarrant, head teacher of PZI and major benefactor of the Crooked Cucumber Archives.

And here's another reminder of:

Standing at the Blue Cliff: The Enlightenment Talks

September 13 – 16, 2012 at the Santa Rosa Creek Zendo

A retreat exploring the seminal koan text the Blue Cliff Record and implications of enlightenment with John Tarrant & Joan Sutherland


Yesterday's final event for the 50th anniversary of the SFZC was most enjoyable. More on this soon. - dc


8-13-12 - Off to the ceremony at the new Sokoji in a minute. See yesterday's post. Will briefly report on that and yesterday's Green Gulch event soon.

The text of today's program is posted on the ZC50 web site, with an embedded video player for the live stream:


balloonsHappy birthday mother Ahdel Chadwick, born 98 years ago today. Thanks from all of us for agreeing to stop driving.

 

 


8-12-12 - The SFZC at 50 events are happening. Yesterday's talk by Zentatsu Richard Baker was - well, I don't like to praise people too much here on cuke cause then I feel like I have to say something nice about everyone and thus my policy is to just link and let you decide so listen to and I think you can also watch Richard Baker's talk at the City Center yesterday. Today at Green Gulch Reb Anderson is speaking and there's alumni picnic. Last nights party at Greens was a trip - lot of us old codgers saying hi and the younger crowd drumming, dancing to DJ's picks. Monday, tomorrow, there's a ceremony at Sokoji temple on Laguna at Sutter, not the old original Sokoji on Bush at Laguna. Grahame Petchey who arranged for the incorporation of the SFZC in 1962 (GP on that) will be there with his ex Pauline. There will be a procession down Laguna to the City Center at Page and Laguna, a short ceremony, inauguration of the Peace Bell, some brief statements in the dining room (including 2 minutes from me), and a reception. Lot of good feeling yesterday and I bet it continues. I've got to go to Green Gulch now for the picnic (couldn't make Reb's lecture cause Katrinka is doing flowers for some event at the Panama Hotel here in San Rafael) so I don't have time to get the links to Richard Baker's talk and Reb's but they're there on SFZC dot org somewhere. Send me the link please - just one of you. - dc


Last person I talked to at the party last night at Greens I asked at the desert table I was sitting next to what her tie to the SFZC was and she said she'd walked out of a boring event across the way there at Fort Mason and noticed a lot of activity happening at Greens and so she came in to check it out. We got to talking and I was telling her about Evolutionaries, a book Loring sent me I'm digging and how it's about everything always evolving, not just the biosphere, with innate intelligence and creativity, constantly being born, and Evolutionaries are the ones who are not just riding the wave but driving it as well (to draw from a Shunryu S. lecture), doing our best to wake up, accept things as they are, and  make them the best they can be as Shunryu also said and I pointed out that she, as a therapist was doing her part and said got a card? Here's her site: Joanne Davis MFT dot com.

And if you're wondering how I had the time to write the previous but not to get the links for Richard and Reb's talks, it's maybe cause I wrote this later comment first. - dc


8-11-12 - On shunryusuzuki.com, entered new modified audio files into the Shunryu Suzuki Lecture Index. (That link bypasses the username and password) The links to these audio are located directly under the original audio files and are marked AM-w or AMP-w, AM as in audio modified and the P for problem meaning this audio is not fully transcribed or checked. Most have a transcript in progress which will be entered or linked to there next and we'll be seeking help in getting them done as well as possible so please consider helping on that. Email me, DC, if you're interested. Here is a page for these transcripts in progress.

That site now undergoing major revision. Stay tuned.


Off to SFZC's City Center for Richard Baker's lecture as the SFZC celebrates its 50th year. - dc


8-10-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  93rd lecture excerpt - from 71-06-12 - part 5 - coming in on the home stretch. This excerpt project has been most revealing of the constant emphasis Shunryu Suzuki placed on precepts and how to understand and implement precepts in one's life and practice.

Want to repeat a comment from April: Amazing how much of the entire lecture archive is in these excerpts. I remember Niels Holm (RIP) saying once, "Suzuki Roshi taught precepts, his whole teaching can be seen that way."

And again, nine bows to Jenny Wunderly for compiling these excerpts. She's in her native Switzerland now visiting her mother. Check out Jenny's wonderful paintings. - dc


Inside California’s original Zen retreat - Sunset Magazine - which had articles on Tassajara, as I recall, even before the SFZC bought it in '66. - dc


8-09-12 - Buddhadharma magazine this month features Forum: San Francisco Zen Center at Fifty with Steve Stücky, Blanche Hartman, Norman Fischer, and Mary Morgan and an introduction by yours truly, DC. Here's the intro on cuke.


If you want to know where to go sit, go to gosit dot org, the Meditation Center Guide


Nagasaki mon amour.


8-08-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  92nd lecture excerpt - from 71-06-12 - part 4

Panama Hotel and Ramblin' Jack and Bogie.


What If Everything That Distressed You Was Irrelevant? - Jack Elias on Elephant Journal.  (Sounds right to me. - dc)

Jack's cuke page


At the Panama Hotel all is getting well and they can be serving dinner again tomorrow night according to the fire inspector. (see Marin IJ article and below). The annex rooms will continue to be occupied but, for now, not the original rooms upstairs from the restaurant. Most fortunate that Katrinka had just moved a hotel guest up there into room one (the Bordelo Room) from another room so he could have a private bath. Fire moves quickly as anyone who's been around it can attest, and the guest reported smoke coming from the ceiling and walls of his room at its inception. Earlier that evening there had been an intermittent problem with electrical outlets working in nearby room number ten, the Captain's Cabin. - dc


8-07-12 - 11pm - FIRE at the Panama Hotel and Restaurant.

Got a call from Katrinka who is hosting tonight at the Panama Hotel in San Rafael, CA - where I'd walked up to earlier to drink some tea and listen to a set of Swing Fever in the dining room - and there was a fire there tonight. All the guests could still stay there but some had to go to other rooms and the fire dept. blocked off the nearby streets. Katrinka said that the fire was out, that it was in the ceiling of room one. I hope this isn't too big a setback for this wonderful place. I've got a room booked there for Richard Baker in a week and he, John Tarrant, Michael Katz and I are planning to have dinner there after they go sailing. - dc


6pm - Occupied with errands, chores, and knee.

Here are some quotes sent by JW:


8-06-12 - Hiroshima day - Species Threats - Union of Concerned Scientists -  - Buddhist Peace Fellowship


Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  91st lecture excerpt - from 71-06-12 - part 3


8-05-12 - This Old Earthquake's new album, Gospol Flat is now available. Check out their website and get it from there.

Read Paul Liberatore's Marin IJ review

Congrats to Ethan Okamura and the rest of you. - dc


Follow the SFZC at 50 events coming up especially next weekend.


Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship? - Bob Fuller (whom I remember from the Baker days at the SFZC) - thanks John Steiner


8-04-12 - Golden Rule. Checking around on this subject this morning.
Religious historian Karen Armstrong TED Talk on the Golden Rule.
A cornball video on the Golden Rule with quotes from many traditions - from the Humanity Healing Network.
Ron Paul on applying the Golden Rule to foreign policy
Wikipedia on The Golden Rule or ethic of reciprocity

Shunryu Suzuki nuanced use of the term


Heather Gordon paintings


8-03-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  90th lecture excerpt - from 71-06-12 - part two.


Where to sit in San Rafael

Ron who wrote me, DC, yesterday about where to sit in Sebastopol wrote back.

Thanks very very much for your great research tailored to my question regarding where to sit in Sebastopol! And sorry about the difficulty in getting back to me. Now you can find me easily as long as you email me from addresses I have written to you on. Do you belong to a sangha or group?

DC answer


Erik Davis wrote a two part article on RICK GRIFFIN, SUPERSTAR - "an appreciation of the esoteric and religious themes in the work of California's great psychedelic poster/underground comix/surfer illustration artist, who turned to Christ in 1970, during the first flush of the Jesus Freaks." -  in HiloBrow.


8-02-12 - Where to sit in Sebastopol. Got an email from someone who just moved there and asked me where to sit. Here are some suggestions. It was fun looking into it. I tried to email back Ron Fein who asked the question and that sent me to a page where I'd have to fill in stuff to send to him to get approved to send it and one of the boxes to write what in had an image next to it with hard to read disguised letters that I couldn't make out. So if you follow cuke or have a friend who does who'll tell you Ron you'll find your answer. - dc


Had lunch with Father Steve Frost yesterday. He ran the Newman Center at Sonomas State U for years. Check out his NEW PAINTINGS - SPRING/SUMMER 2012.
and the Nepsis Foundation for his writing.


Fat Sick and Nearly Dead - one successful alternative to the miserable diet habits encouraged by government subsidies, corporate propaganda, and our bad habits. See also Food Inc and Supersize Me and The Future of Food.


8-01-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  89th lecture excerpt - from 71-06-12 part one.


Freedom Songs, part IV - Corn Rows - Next stop, Mississippi, 1964. - dc


Standing at the Blue Cliff: The Enlightenment Talks

September 13 – 16, 2012 at the Santa Rosa Creek Zendo

A retreat exploring the seminal koan text the Blue Cliff Record and implications of enlightenment with John Tarrant & Joan Sutherland


July


7-31-12 - Greatly improved and expanded INDEX for Crooked Cucumber. Thanks to Ray Watkins (see his handsome photo at bottom of page with this note) for putting tons of time into doing this index which is still a work in progress. When it's finalized there will be a printable version that can be inserted into the book or not. Thanks Ray. - dc


Follow the SFZC at 50 events coming up next month.


Judy Silber produced a documentary about the science of compassion broadcast July 16 on KALW (91.7-FM, San Francisco). She's now working on Buddhist oral history in the Bay Area.


New York State is now in the cross-hairs of the gas industry and Governor Cuomo is itching to yield to them. That is why it is necessary to raise a storm and let him know we've caught on to the dangers of fracking. For those living in or near New York State, please sign and disseminate the petition. The same website has another form of the petition that non-residents can sign. With blessings, Ven. Bhikkhu Bodh. - Sent by Taigen Dan Leighton and posted on his Peace and Justice page along with more from Taigen on this issue.


7-30-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  88th lecture excerpt - from 71-06-09.


Freedom Songs, part III - Picks N Chooses - took me three months to get back to this story. Next - on the way Mississippi, 1964. - dc


7-29-12 - Sunday. Enjoy the sun.

Haight Ashbury Museum - Watch the promotional video for this project. Narrated by Peter Coyote (cuke link). Sent by Brother Lor who writes: Suzuki Roshi appears in short shot of Be-In, about 1/3 through: always wondered what happened to the series of photos he appeared in from that memorable day. Tim Buckley brought him there over Okusans'' strenuous objections. Maybe this museum will find them.

Would love to get that photo of Suzuki out of there. - dc


7-28-12 - Picking up Tozen Akiyama in a while in Santa Rosa. Taking him to Green Gulch to have lunch with Shohaku Okumura. In honor of this event, posting  many more lectures given in earlier years by Tozen, now happily retired and avoiding most ceremonies and social obligations. - dc


7-27-12 - received from Taigen Dan Leighton today. Add my name to those concerned. - dc

Zen Buddhist Temple in Pennsylvania Endangered by Natural Gas Fracking

An Open Letter to the American Buddhist Community

Read it on Buddhadharma


Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  87th lecture excerpt - from 71-06-05.


Back in the North Bay Area from Texas. Hung out with son Clay at the San Rafael Thursday night street market and wow what a change - so temperate - cooler sitting in the sun eating a peach than at three in the morning in Fort Worth. - dc


7-26-12 - Wendell E. Berry Lecture “It All Turns On Affection”

Article on Berry and this talk from Inside Higher Ed with links to talk and longer essay at the end. - thanks Gregory


A comment on Warrior monks on the Buddhist Blog - thanks again Gregory

Posted on Brian Victoria page


Fort Worth report: Off to San Rafael in a few hours, maybe for only a month. - dc


7-25-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  86th lecture excerpt - from 71-03-12 at Reed College.


Greenland Ice Melting liquidy split.

Why haven’t we rallied our collective power to mitigate climate change? - Columbia U blog

We’re All Climate-Change Idiots - NY Times - thanks Gregory


7-24-12 - Interview with Jack Fishman


Kirkus Reviews review of Chris Hedges' Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt - pardon my dwelling on this guy and his message, but this articulate fan of the Occupy Movement is talking about really serious threats to the sort of social stability necessary to have the time to meditate and secure places to do so (thus the relevance to this strictly Zen site). And he's also talking about the human race being sacrificed little by little then more by more but always person by person to institutionalized robot greed. Posted in currentevents/engagedbuddhism

Somewhere around 1983 I wrote and produced an angry demented song on this subject - sort of. It's called Mr. Bigness. I've been wanting to post it ever since the Occupy Movement started. Please forgive me. - dc


7-23-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  85th lecture excerpt - from 71-02-07.


Kobun Otogawa Roshi Memorial Sesshin and Celebration

This sesshin, led by Vanja Palmer, honors the 10th anniversary of Kobun's passing.  It begins Wednesday evening after a social dinner at 6 pm, through Saturday and leading to a day-long celebration on Sunday -- see the links above for details, or visit Jikoji's web site.

Kobun Chino main page


Chris Hedges was great as usual on Bill Moyers and Company also great as usual - yesterday. Painted a dire picture of our future as usual - unless we do something about our slavery to corporate robots. I loved it when he quoted Paul Tillich as saying all institutions become demonic. Reminds me of Ivan Illich's statement that all institutions inevitably come to thwart the purpose for which they were founded and Saul Alinsky's practice of firing the people who hired him to deal with urban community problems.  We're talking corporations which "only know one word, more" according to Hedges, and governmental institutions, and religious, etc. It's another of those "can't live with them, can't live without them" things. Good luck to us all. - dc


7-22-12 - Sunday - Beverly remembers crying and Suzuki Roshi after the killings in Aurora.


Take a break with Matt. - thanks Jack Elias


7-21-12 - Take a look at the new Japanese translation of Zen Mind Beginner's Mind with wrap-around promotion over the cover sent by alert scholar Richard Jaffe. Then read his accompanying note. At first I thought it was the cover and so posted but no, it's the cover plus what they call an obi which is what they call the sashes that are used with kimono. - dc


Some recent photos of Loly Rosset sent by her son Peter


7-20-12 - Loly Rosset passed away this morning.

Received from her son:

Dearest Family and Friends of my mom, Hannelore "Loly" Rosset:

Loly passed away peacefully this morning here in San Cristóbal de las Casas, Mexico, at 6:29 am. She was born on August 29, 1923, and left this world today, July 20, 2012, after almost 89 years. She had suffered a massive stroke several days ago, and was unconscious for the past several days. Thankfully she had enough remaining consciousness last Sunday night to recognize me upon my rushed return from Indonesia to say farewell. In accordance with her wishes, we brought her home to the small house we built for her on Tuesday, were she rested peacefully in her own bed, surrounded by family and friends, until passing away. - Peter Rosset.

Interviews with Loly Rosset

I first met Loly Rosset in the sixties at Tassajara, maybe the first time was when she came with the group of visiting teachers in 1968 - Yasutani, Soen, Shimano, Maezumi, Aitken. She's sat with them all. Later she came to spend time at Tassajara, Page Street, and Green Gulch. In later years I'd visit with her at the Redwoods Retirement Community in Mill Valley. She had a fascinating history in her native Germany, in the New York literary scene with her husband publisher Barney Rosset, and in emerging world of Zen in America. She was a smart, alert, and thoughtful woman. Farewell Loly and congratulations on a courageous life. - dc


Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  84th lecture excerpt - from 71-01-16.


7-19-12 - Interview with Brit Pyland


Nine great non-believer's - second Humanist post. Putting this in the Current Events/Engaged Buddhism section.


7-18-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  83rd lecture excerpt - from 70-12-23.


American Humanist Association - more on this to come. - dc


Fort Worth Report - Woke up last night at 2 and wasn't tired but didn't want to get up - this happens a lot to me in FW. I'm regularly irregular. So I used the best antidote to wakefulness, I sat zazen. MORE


7-17-12 - Loly (Hannelore) Rosset has had a severe stroke

Dear Friends of Hannelore (Loly)

My mother Loly had a severe stroke and is in the hospital here in Mexico and is semi-unconscious. We don't know if she will make it.

Please help me spread the word to family and friends.

Thank you and lots of love,

Peter Rosset

Interviews with Loly Rosset


Panentheism and Brother David Steindl-Ranst - bouncing off Bittner's post of yesterday.


7-16-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  82nd lecture excerpt - from 70-12-20.


Mark Bittner's blog has a piece on Science Meets Pantheism he sent after reading yesterday's Science and Religion post here.


7-15-12 - The Huff Post article on Higgs Boson: 'God Particle' Discovery Ignites Debate Over Science And Religion ends with the quote:

"That's the difference between science and religion," he said. "We don't require the universe to be what we want -- we force our beliefs to conform to the evidence of reality."

Read irritated dc comment on this


Hurt my knee. Gregory gave me an exercise, thinks it's pinching a nerve or tendon. Taking Naproxen sodium as suggested by Katrinka. No long walks for two days. Using my grandfather Bruno's cane now to lighten the load there a big on the walk to and fro the tea shop. Enjoy this day of rest - for some. - dc


7-14-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  81st lecture excerpt - from 70-08-23V - LAY ORDINATION CEREMONY


Yesterday's communiqué had a reference to Shunryu Suzuki now corrected to Dainin Katagiri by JW who included another mouse reference, this one definitively to Shunryu Suzuki. Another example of rigorous cuke scholarship. - dc


Nancy Talbott interviewed about crop circles - a follow-up to links to a couple of films about them mentioned on 7-06-12. I've had some exchanges with Ms. Talbott recently. She's into pure scientific research and doesn't dwell on speculation. Her outfit is called BLT Research Team Inc. Read all about it. - filed in cuke-the-arts cause to me, DC, they're beautiful art.


7-13-12 - Cooking from the Summer Garden
with Deborah Madison and Koyo Welch-roshi
September 28-30, 2012
- a benefit for Crestone Mt. Zen Center in Colorado


An interesting communiqué about communicating with vermin and ants and Shunryu Suzuki (nope - about Dainin Katagiri).


Wow - some computer animation here


7-12-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  80th lecture excerpt - from 70-08-09v - PRIEST ORDINATION CEREMONY:  Paul Discoe and Reb Anderson.


Rob Lee with some memories of Sokoji, the Soto Zen temple on Bush St. in San Francisco where the SFZC started. Rob wrote Collaborating With Angels about Issan and Maitri hospice.

I've got a whole folder on Sokoji that I photocopied from the SF Public Library file. If I ever get time or interns or a grant I'll get it up on cuke. Anyway, it would be neat to have a Sokoji section. That reminds me - there was an interesting couple of emails from a man here in the Forth Worth area about Sokoji not long ago. Here they are. Here - just made a new Sokoji Section for cuke. - dc


7-11-12 - Index for Crooked Cucumber (in progress) - We really should have included an index with the book when it came out. An index makes a biography more appealing to libraries and reviewers I gather. A number of people have bemoaned the lack of an index in CC. Well, now, thanks to the noble efforts of tireless cuke volunteer Ray Watkins, we have one - in progress. Take a look and make any comments you wish. Send them to DC. I see the index being presented in three ways: here on cuke to refer to, a printable version on cuke that can be used with the book or even attached to the back end of it (that was Ray's excellent idea), and, ideally, included with a later edition of Crooked Cucumber along with some maps and a few errors corrected (such as getting Phillip Wilson's first name spelled right).


Fort Worth report with a wild photo of mother and her sisters.


7-10-12 -  More photos taken at Crestone Mt. ZC during the time of Dan Welch's installation as abbot. Sophie Dillo sent them. Asking if she took them. - dc


Got a request for the username and password to shunryusuzuki.com with the note: I really enjoyed your interview on the Expanding Mind podcast!!!. I'd forgotten about that. So here is a link to it which I'm adding to Audio of DC that should probably be erased - dc

Adam Sommer is the person who sent that message. He's got an interesting astrology site called Holes to Heaven.


7-09-12 - Rick Wicks - What is my (Zen) practice now?  - which follows his How I came to Zen practice.


A little of the Ludwig Van - via  flashmob - thanks Katrinka


7-08-12 - Reading BBC news this morning before 5am noticed the following ad:

What Happens When You Die
New theory says death isn't the end
RobertLanzaBiocentrism.com

Comments on this in DC Misc


Oh gosh - genetic engineers explain why GMO food is dangerous. - thanks John Steiner


7-07-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  79th lecture excerpt - from 70-08-04.


Can't start a page for Issan Tommy Dorsey without featuring

Schneider, David. Street Zen: the Life and Work of Issan Dorsey. Marlowe and Company, (2nd Edition, June 2000) originally Shambhala, 1993.  Here's the Amazon.com link.

More to come.


7-06-12 - From the end of the 2nd chapter of Collaborating With Angels, Rob Lee's memoir about Issan Tommy Dorsey and Maitri Hospice, being serialized in www.subtopian.com (issue 5), 

In a conversation the question of helping other people came up. Issan's answer had been immediate, firm, "What else is there to do?"

Amen. - dc

Starting a page on Issan


Sue Moon will be guest editing another issue of Inquiring Mind, the spring 2013 issue, along with editor Barbara Gates, and Sue writes, "Because it's a different sort of issue than usual, we are sending out a call for submissions." Here it is:

The spring 2013 Inquiring Mind will feature stories and poetry. Please send us creative work that comes from a dharmic perspective, but you don’t need to mention the Buddha unless you feel like it. 3,000-word limit for stories.  Deadline: October 1, 2012.

Check out the website, which will give you a sense of the printed magazine if you're not familiar with it.  Send submissions to Spring2013@inquiringmind.com.


Crop Circles. Wow. Saw this film on YouTube. Now I want to see What on Earth. They are so beautiful. Congratulations to the great artists and brilliant engineers, veritable magicians - who made these wonderful creations. - dc


7-05-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  78th lecture excerpt - from 70-08-04.


A million thanks, nine bows - to those who've donated to keep this work going.

Donors to the Crooked Cucumber Archives are now listed on the contributors page. Please inform of any omissions. Have enough now to get by through October. See Donate page, Do it page, Suggestion: on the Donate page, make a $2 monthly donation through Paypal. Thanks. - dc


7-04-12 - click thumbnail to enlarge
Happy birthday USA and Ron Kovic and good cheer to all, this day celebrated because, as Wikipedia states, The United States Declaration of Independence is adopted by the Second Continental Congress. May we continue to guarantee for each other life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Interesting reading, reminding me that this is the day that the above mentioned declaration explained why independence was declared two days earlier. Many other tidbits there to contemplate on this holiday from working on the CCA. . - dc


7-03-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  77th lecture excerpt - from 70-08-04.


Katherine Thanas obituary in Monterey Herald (PDF)

Katherine's cuke page


Keith Martin Smith has an interesting site which features a book he wrote on Denis Kelly, Heart Blown Open: Of Saints and Sinners - that's a link to a page with excerpts. Lots about Alan Marlowe in the book and some about Shunryu Suzuki. Alan introduced me to Denis in 1972. More to say, but later. He's a Zen teacher now, Jun Po Denis Kelly. Here's his site, Mondo Zen. - thanks bro Lor


7-02-12 - A few tributes to Katherine Thanas whose funeral was yesterday - from cuke correspondence.


Loring Palmer on The Conquest of Peru - his recent inspiring trip and trips there


Fort Worth Report: Ahdel (mother) reports for cataract surgery at 6 this morning. Printed up the Appeal for funds for the Crooked Cucumber Archives (including this site) for her, soon to be 98, and her one comment was that she thinks I meant complementary, not complimentary. Thanks mom.


7-01-12 - +++++++++++++++++++???????????????-------------!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


June


6-30-12 - Nityanjali and the beginnings of a practice center in the Shunryu Suzuki lineage in Tiruvanamalai, Tamil Nadu, India where I was last year. This is a project of Shindo Gita Gayatri who was very helpful to me there last year and with work on the Suzuki archives at the City Center in past years. Gita was ordained as a priest in the SFZC by Paul Haller who is to be involved in this project. - DC


A Response (my favorite) to the April 2012 appeal for funds for the Cucumber Project and comment on Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind from the Curmudgeon Buddhist. Sent in May. Also posted in Notes on ZMBM - DC


6-29-12 - A Funeral Ceremony for Katherine Thanas will be held at Santa Cruz Zen Center this Sunday, July 1 at 2:30pm. Everyone is most welcome but there may be an overflow of people there. There will be another funeral ceremony for Katherine at City Center or Green Gulch Farm in another month or two, especially for her friends in the Bay Area. cuke main page for Katherine Thanas.


Update on Katharine Cook on the new Katherine Cook Main Page


Motivation, Inspiration, Intention in DC's MSWSM.


Fort Worth Report: Murder in the neighborhood.


6-28-12 - A question about Shunryu Suzuki's college thesis.


New entry in the Crooked Cucumber Errata section: Katrina Boni in the acknowledgments should be Catrina Boni. She's Italian. Discovered this because this photo of Shunryu Suzuki standing in front of the SFZC's City Center, probably by her late husband, Robert S. Boni, is being used by Shambhala Sun. I was helping out and in searching for her name noticed the erring spelling in the book. My apologies Catrina. Here's her cuke interview.

Here's another photo of Suzuki with Pat Herreshoff I think. Had it by accident because its file name was almost same as the photo above. - dc

Do you know who took these photos? The one mentioned above I believe to be by Robert S. Boni. Let me know if you think otherwise.  This one was taken in Los Altos I'm pretty sure. Anyone know who took it? Maybe Will Stocker? Shambhala Sun is using these two photos in an upcoming article on the SFZC's 50th anniversary and would like to credit them. They're crediting Boni with the first one. But I just sent them an email saying it seems a little funny to use a photo from Los Altos in such an article and suggested I could send them any photo from this site's photo page or this Shunryu Suzuki photos archive. - dc


I'm used to the idiocy, bemoan the grammar, but love the irony - in dchad misc.

Also in the same fascinating section, an addenda to my recent detention by the Fort Worth Police.


6-27-12 - Santa Cruz ZC Abbot Sobun Katherine Thanas' remains were moved from her home this morning at 9:00 a.m. - main page for Katherine Thanas. Her funeral still isn't set because Reb Anderson is in Europe and they're looking for a good date. - dc


Eijun Linda Cutts SFZC page ---  Wikipedia page  

with a brief memory of Shunryu Suzuki

She used to be Jiko Linda Cutts but now I see the SFZC site has Eijun


Suzuki student now ordained Tim Buckley's Great River Zendo in West Bath, Maine. Here's their listing on the SZBA site. Here's their Facebook link.  ---------- Tim Buckley's cuke page.

The SZBA mentioned above is the Soto Zen Buddhist Association and has an excellent website.


Photo of Issan by Rob Lee looking at the card I sent him from Japan right before he died - attached to post about Rob's book on Issan - 6-06-12 in dchad misc.


6-26-12 - In loving memory of Katherine Sobun Thanas, Roshi

Posted on: Jun 24th, 2012 on Sweeping Zen  and here on cuke.

That article had some excerpts from an interview with her in Santa Cruz Sentinel, one of which is now posted here in Brief Memories (of Shunryu Suzuki).


War on Drugs a boon to the spread of AIDS according to prestigious international body.


6-25-12 - Karin Sobun Daiosho, Rev. Katherine Thanas, entered Great Peace at 10am yesterday, June 26, surrounded by loving students and friends at her home. MORE

DC on Katherine's passing


Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  76th lecture excerpt - from 70-08-03U - the U in this file name means un-verbatim, that there was no tape to check against or that it wasn't checked against the audio. Usually this means an older transcript of which the audio is lost. A V at the end of a lecture file name means verbatim.


6-24-12 - Karin Sobun Daiosho, Rev. Katherine Thanas, entered Great Peace at 10am today, June 24, surrounded by loving students and friends at her home. MORE


6-23-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  75th lecture excerpt - from 70-08-02V


Two updates from yesterday on Katherine Thanas' condition.


JW sends an interesting note regarding my visual migraine mentioned yesterday.


Interested in seeing this film. - dc - thanks Howie


6-22-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  74th lecture excerpt - from 70-08-01V part 4


Created a main page for Katherine Thanas with a new photo - thanks Elizabeth Sawyer for the photo


A visual migraine - in DC Misc.


6-21-12 - Katherine Thanas, who had a stroke two days ago, is in a coma, back at home with her Sangha around her. Tony Patchell was sent this from Beata in Santa Cruz:

No IVs, fluids, liquids, few meds. She is okay re clear instructions that are being followed with great care. She has a team of hospice nurses who practice with us and they are all here. She has a team of priests and heirs who are planning events surrounding her passing, which is expected       to be soon.

More on Katherine's condition and how to help and an upcoming sesshin.

Katherine has been the abbot of the Santa Cruz Zen Center since 2002 - see this page on their website.

Katherine's cuke interview and photo.

(See below 6-18).


Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  73rd lecture excerpt - from 70-08-01V part 3


Off to Akron tomorrow for five days with mother for her grand niece's wedding. When the police detained me  last night in front of her house, she may have been worried that this could potentially interfere with our flight plans. (Read more).

A budget note: None of the money donated to the CCA (Crooked Cucumber Archives) is being spent for the trip to Ohio or this trip to Texas. All my expenses are being covered by my mother - except for some flowers I bought her. Work continues though. I get a lot done here. - dc


6-20-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  73rd lecture excerpt - from 70-08-01V part 2


How I came to Zen practice - Rick Wicks


What I'm doing now. - dc


Will post updates on Katherine Thanas' condition when I hear. - dc


6-19-12 - All our prayers go out for Katherine Thanas. See below.


6-18-12 - late

11:03pm - Talked to Rosie P. Katherine apparently fell in her apartment. There was a cut on her head. She's had a lot of internal bleeding in her brain. She's in a coma and on a ventilator. Rosie says there's a lot of chanting going on around the country for Katherine.

10:28pm - Just talked to a nurse. Katherine is in critical condition in intensive care at Dominican. People are in the room now chanting with her.

10:20pm - Got a message on my cell phone this evening from Vicki Austin saying that Katherine Thanas was found - unconscious I think - she'd fallen. She's at Dominican Hospital in Santa Cruz, CA. - more as I learn. Prayers for Katherine. - dc


6-18-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  72nd lecture excerpt - from 70-08-01V part 1.


Peter Schneider comments on the May 2012 Crestone Mt. Seat Ceremony for Dan Welch


6-17-12 - zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz


6-16-12 - Mind Seeking Way Seeking Mind - Awareness of Suffering


From yesterday's Who Is Meditating? : There is a Burmese saying, "You are not meditating, meditation is meditating."

Reminds me of:

"Don't ever think that you can sit zazen! That's a big mistake! Zazen sits zazen!"

from ZEN IS RIGHT HERE: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki


6-15-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  71st lecture excerpt - from 70-07-28V - part v.


Who Is Meditating? - Went to sit with Layla Smith's Mt. Root Sangha in Larkspur/Corte Madera, CA and we chanted this. She says she got it out of Buddhadharma magazine. It's an original teaching of Buddha on how to meditate plus commentary by Narayan Liebenson Grady. Yesterday while being interviewed on Expanding Mind radio, Erik Davis' co-host Maja D'Aoust (super cool site) asked just what is Zen meditation. I think I started off saying there's not one method and blabbed on a while. Now I'm posting this and sending them a link cause I think this is great. - dc


The prior post makes me think there should be a place on cuke with suggested posts cause this is so basic I should post it every day but that would get tiring. - dc


6-14-12 - Mind Seeking Way Seeking Mind - a new section. First day - Be yourself on Wayne Dyer's telethon.


For those who wish to have material to ridicule me with, as mentioned yesterday, I'll be talking to Erik Davis on Expanding Mind at 1pm central time on the Progressive Radio Network. - dc


6-13-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  70th lecture excerpt - from 70-07-28V - part iv.


I'll be talking to Erik Davis on Expanding Mind at 1pm central time tomorrow for an hour. - dc


6-12-12 - Antaiji website and its interesting German abbot, Muho. The temple became famous because of former abbot's Sawaki Kodo and Uchiyama Kosho. -  thanks Silas Hoadley.


DC remembers something Shunryu Suzuki said once about astrology.


6-11-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  69th lecture excerpt - from 70-07-28V.


Fort Worth report - in dchad misc


6-10-12 - 7 Practices That Restored My Buddhist Faith - Lew Richmond in Huff Post. Also am saving this in Reflections in case it disappears from Huff Post. Reflections is a section for material on or relating to Shunryu Suzuki originally published elsewhere, whole or excerpts. Lew Richmond main page


I Am - the film


6-09-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  68th lecture excerpt - from 70-07-28V.


Met a woman named Martha Traer at Ray Sumser's art show (see yesterday's post) who did a brief video on Ray's best known piece, Cartoonum. Find it on Traervision with lots more of her work.

I told  Martha about my illustrious film and video career.


I arrived in Fort Worth yesterday. Here to hang with mother Ahdel for a month or so. - dc


6-08-12 - Taking Suzuki Roshi to see 2001, a Space Odyssey


Check out Ray Sumser's Treehouse Gallery website and go to his gallery in San Francisco. Cool guy. Cool art. Great opening last night. - dc


6-07-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  67th lecture excerpt - from 70-07-28V.


While we're fiddling:

Earth Tipping Point Study In Nature Journal Predicts Disturbing And Unpredictable Changes

Green decline 'may bring irreversible change'


6-06-12 - Collaborating With Angels, Rob Lee's memoir about Issan Tommy Dorsey and Maitri Hospice is being serialized in an online magazine -  www.subtopian.com.  The first installment is now up.  Rob writes to DC:

To say it's been a long time coming is a ridiculous understatement, but I don't regret it as the topic has such weight that time and contemplation have been helpful.  It begins with Issan but he died pretty quickly and the project took on a life of its own.  It's an attempt at something beautiful and true and helpful.  Not so easy. In editing this book I'm revisiting all kinds of fond memories, and with the hospice, complicated memories. Speaking of which, I hope you enjoyed seeing the look on Issan's face reading your card shortly before he died. He didn't have many good times in those months and that was as happy as I saw him that summer.


6-05-12 - Andy Ferguson's new book, TRACKING BODHIDHARMA: A Journey to the Heart of Chinese Culture (Counterpoint, $26), is reviewed in the NY Times - review begins halfway down this page.

Amazon link for this book.


6-04-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  66th lecture excerpt  - from 70-07-08V.


Write a grant proposal for the Crooked Cucumber Archives.

People are always telling me I should get a grant, often suggesting an NEH grant, for the work we do here, for the Crooked Cucumber Archives. I've looked into it, spent time on it, and it's possible yes. But it's not possible for me to do it. It's just too much. However, if you or someone you know, likes to write grant proposals, wants to write one for us, oh please let it be so. You or they could write the salary into the proposal. Need a job? Here it is. Thanks. - dc [Posted in Posts of the Do-it section]


6-03-12 - Going to the Back Porch Zendo for an afternoon sit and pot luck just outside of Occidental, CA.

Excellent Sebastopol Many Rivers Books and Tea also lists Back Porch Zendo on their Sonoma resources page.


6-02-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  65th lecture excerpt  - from 70-06-25.


Vedanta Society of Northern California - dropped by their Olema retreat center last Sunday on the way home and happened into their yearly gathering. Very friendly. Loved it. Like being back in India. - dc


6-01-12 - DC remembers Shunryu Suzuki and a bucket of crayfish.


For Charles Fox and Liz Tuomi:  O How I Miss You - by Hanford Woods


May


5-31-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  64th lecture excerpt  - from 70-06-25.


Mt. Root Sangha in Larkspur/Corte Madera, CA. Gonna go there to sit with Layla Smith tomorrow morning. - dc


Should you watch out if you have a Yahoo email account? I get emails that are obviously hacked saying stuff like "check out this amazing link" and I'm sure it's happening to others but I keep noticing this happening to Yahoo accounts. - dc


5-30-12 - Dennis Samson remembers Shunryu Suzuki lecture comment on suffering.


Get requests to exchange links quite a bit, mainly from sites I don't want to link to cause there's no reason and the requests are obviously mass mailed form letters. Usually I just erase them, but I liked this one. - dc

URL: http://www.inktalks.com

Title: Inspirational Talks

Description: The INK conference in association with TED is an annual conference that aims to fuel innovation and foster knowledge by bringing together world’s most fascinating speakers & doers. They provide inspirational & Motivational talks and videos of the world's most fascinating motivational speakers from a range of disciplines such as art, architecture, dance, design, music, science and technology.


5-29-12 - On shunryusuzuki.com - Begin to include improved audio - not sure what to call it. 66-01-21B lecture now has a second version marked AA - worked on by AW to improve audio quality. This is the first of about twenty problem audios Angus has worked on that will be put up here. He's also worked on another 70 or so that will be going up there as well. He's intending to do this work on all Shunryu Suzuki lectures to bring Suzuki's voice out as clearly and speed correctly as possible, easier to hear and understand. Including in both on the page with all lectures and in the smaller quicker loading pages by year. This problem set of lectures are now being transcribed, almost all for the first time. See the results in progress.

Feel free to comment on any of this work.

Please DONATE to help buy better software for this work and to give Angus some much deserved compensation. Just note "audio" and your donation will go entirely to this work. Or note "transcribe" and your donation will go entirely for transcription. Go to DONATE to do so and for more details. Eventually the whole Suzuki lecture archive will be in much better shape. It's going to take a lot of work by a number of people and some time, but the results will be appreciated.


Local guy, David Lee Hoffman, in a fight with authorities over worms and moats

Hoffman's Phoenix Collection of the finest teas in the world

filing in Misc


5-28-12 - Great photo of Zentatsu Richard Baker and Koyo Dan Welch at Dan's recent Mt. Seat Ceremony - and more.


DC note: I'm purposely leaving images off the What's New page so that it loads quicker.


Interesting take on the TED talks.


5-27-12 - A memorial service for Charles Fox will be held today at 2pm at the Gospel Flat Farm, 140 Olema Bolinas Road, Bolinas, CA (next driveway after the nursery).

PDF of the card for this memorial

DC remembers Charles Fox on the Charles Fox memorial page


5-26-12 - Just noticed this story was incomplete - Suzuki's advice to me upon my first trip home - in DC Brief Memories of Shunryu Suzuki - so it's finished now. - thanks Mark Bitner for pointing this out.


Stephen Nachmanovitch Free Play Productions


5-25-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  63rd lecture excerpt - from 70-06-17 (part 3).


Penn Jillette Accuses Obama Of Class Warfare on Drug Policy

Harm reduction - working to reduce the harm caused by drugs and the war on drugs

posted in Current Events/Engaged Buddhism


5-24-12 - Consolidated my personal brief memories of Shunryu Suzuki onto one page. Noticed the one on him dissing the moon landing was unfinished, more like unstarted - just the title and no story. Here it is - dc


Two unconventional enlightenment sites:

J. Stewart Dixon's Attainingpie dot com - and don't miss Attainingpie-page/2/

Jed McKenna's wisefoolpress.com


What DC did yesterday. Since I'm encouraging people to donate to this work now operating under the name of Crooked Cucumber Archives, I like to throw in an occasional report on how I'm spending my time. Read it and weep.


5-23-12 - On this day in 1959 Shunryu Suzuki arrived in America - at the San Francisco Airport. Read about it in Crooked Cucumber - Chapter Ten - A New Leaf.


The last taboo is denying us all a 'good death', warns Archbishop of York John Sentamu - from Briton's The Telegraph. - posted in the Death and Dying section.

I remember once talking to Suzuki Roshi and Okusan, his wife, about dying or death, something in that area. Don't remember how we got into it. What I remember is them both making the point that they've found Americans to be quite open about discussing death, not so afraid of it, that Japanese aren't like that at all, are in general very afraid of death and don't want to discuss it. I was really surprised to hear them say that. I still think, really? - dc [posted also in Brief Memories]


5-22-12 - Correspondence with Nona Ransom's Godchild and the Pouffe.


Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  62nd lecture excerpt - from 70-06-17 (part 2).


5-21-12 - Another key day in the Suzuki saga noticed from putting the photos from Crooked Cucumber up on cuke. On this date in Japan in 1959, 53 years ago, Shunryu Suzuki flew to the US for the first time. There are four photos in the book from that day - seven on the Crooked Cucumber photo page. Find them if you wish. He is so excited.

Also, from the Chronology of Suzuki's life: May 21: Leaves for San Francisco, via Honolulu, on Flight 610. [Per diary.] Age 55.


Stephan Bodian's School for Awakening begins this fall.


5-20-12 - Today is the 50th anniversary of Shunryu Suzuki's Mountain Seat Ceremony, May 20, 1962 to officially become the abbot of Sokoji, Soto Zen Mission in San Francisco. Just happened to notice this yesterday while preparing the photos from Crooked Cucumber to go on cuke, while writing the caption for this photo and the one below it taken on the day of the ceremony. Checked SFZC.org and didn't see anything which surprised me cause they're  doing so much for the 50th anniversary of the ZC. Checked the Chronology of Suzuki's life and there it was.

At this point kept thinking - about things to be done in these Crooked Cucumber Archives. Posting it on the Goals page in the Do-it section.


5-19-12 - The photos from Crooked Cucumber. Bout time. Note from main cuke photo page: Here are a few photos I had on hand. Soon I'll get all the photos from the book and lots more from Japan and America up here. I'll put in folks from Crooked Cucumber so you can see what they look like and even some of me.--DC, December 1998. Thanks to Christopher Modec-Halverson for getting the inset photos ready and to Charlie Conrad at Broadway Books for sending the PDF of the photos since I couldn't find them all and to Dan Kaplan  - and to Wendy Lewis at the SFZC for help with this . - dc


Paul Shippee sent a quote from Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche


5-18-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  61st  lecture excerpt - from 70-06-17 (part 1).


Paul Shippee - Ten Tips For Compassionate Communication


Happy birthday Shunryu Suzuki.


5-17-12 - Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #13 - 68-12-24.


Back from May 2012 Crestone Mt. Seat Ceremony for Dan Welch and related happenings. Here's a photo Steve Allen took of Katrinka and me.


5-16-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  60th  lecture from 70-06-13.


May 2012 Crestone Mt. Seat Ceremony for Dan Welch and related happenings. Moved posts on this event to this page.

Steve Allen took this great photo of the group that visited him and Angelique at Dragon Mt. Temple as reported on 5-14.


Corrections: Martin Macaulay was also with the group at Dragon Mt. mentioned on 5-14 as attested to by the photo posted today (see above).
Katalin (sp?) not Katrina in that same group photo
Ely is pronounced like feel-y not jell-y.
The cuke staff regrets these errors.


5-15-12 - Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #12 - 68-10-00-K.


On the road back to San Rafael from Crestone Mt. Zen Center and Dan Welch's Mt. Seat Ceremony to become the new abbot. On the way out Katrinka and I visited with Paul Shippee in his wonderful active and passive solar straw bale pressed earth adobe home - and his guest, sculptor Barbara Yates. ----- MORE

Katrinka and I are in Ely, Nevada, (pronounced like feely) on 50, in these parts called "the loneliest road in America." - dc


5-14-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  59th  lecture from 70-06-01.


On the road back to San Rafael from Crestone Mt. Zen Center. Dan Welch is now the abbot. Maybe we can get a guest list.

Sunday morning some of us went to Dragon Mt. Temple. ----- MORE

This morning at Main Street Bagels in Grand Junction - they offer Tassajara Bread. They make it here. Wonder what recipes they use. As I recall, the Tassajara Bakery on Cole Street in SF never used a recipe from the Tassajara Bread Book. - dc


5-12-12 - Today Richard Baker steps down as abbot of Crestone Mt. Zen Center and Dan Welch steps up as the new abbot. ----- MORE


5-11-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  58th  lecture.


On the way to CMZC - hours away. In Grand Junction. Main Street Bagels excellent - good loose tea. Day before yesterday sunset Overlook Trail in Zion grade A. Yesterday's Bryce beginning with the Hoodoos. Scenic 12 culminating through Capitol Reef the way to go. Skipped southern Utah's famed polygamy tour cause we needed sleep to be on time for tea at CMZC today at three. - dc


5-10-12 - Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #11 - 68-10-00-J


Beginnings of a glossary for Shunryu Suzuki lectures. - thanks Ray


5-09-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  57th  lecture.


On the way to CMZC - Got to Grand Canyon yesterday in time to see the last rays of sun illuminate this wonder from Mather's Point. Remember driving up there with Kelly (5) and Ethan Patchell (4) 33 years ago and watching them ignore my commands and run gleefully to jump off the edge. I couldn't see they were just going down a couple of feet. Met a moose walking to dinner. Now for Katrinka and me a few more hours along the edge then on to a repeat of almost five hours of driving and Zion for another spectacular canyon, a not too scary walk Clay and I went on two years ago, then less than two hours drive to Bryce to tent it. Pant pant. - dc


5-08-12 - Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #10 - 68-10-00-H


On the way to CMZC - Death Valley and Vegas extreme contrast but we do the same in both places - eat, sleep, walk. Walked about seven miles last night down the strip from downtown. Crowds. Lights. Enticements. Today Bellagio Monet show and on to Grand Canyon, another extreme. - dc


5-07-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  56th  lecture.


On the way to CMZC - Today repair sleep deficit, tea, Golden Canyon, Scotty's Castle, lunch in Beatty, Circus Circus, walk by the facades. - dc


5-06-12 - Life and Death Valley. Stove Pipe Wells, Salt Creek, Visitors Center movie, Furnace Creek lunch, Bad Water, Walk on hot rocks. Artist's Drive, Zabriskie Point - he made it a place for tourists from mining. Pitch tent. Eat at picnic table. Sleep under stars. - dc


5-05-12 - Jeri Marlowe, Alan's sister-in-law, remembers Suzuki Roshi and a few of us. - in Brief Memories.


Getting ready to leave tonight for 11 day drive to Crestone Colorado for the changing of the abbots at Crestone Mt. Zen Center. Richard Baker steps down and Dan Welch steps up. Will keep up with cuke and fundraising drive for Crooked Cucumber Archives which has so far brought in enough kind donations to keep the lights on here through the summer. Thanks to all. See DONATE and Do-it (for goals etc).


5-04-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  55th  lecture.


A memorial service for Charles Fox will be on May 27th at 2pm at the Gospel Flat Farm, 140 Olema Bolinas Road, CA

PDF of the card for this memorial

Charles Fox's sister, Sue Bower, read these prayers at his funeral.

Charles Fox memorial page


5-03-12 - Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #9 - 68-10-00-E


Suzuki student Alan Klein writes: I need some S p a c e -- away from cities, away from people--in Nature in a simple shelter, with the possibility of simply unwinding completely. Preparing to return as a whole person or to leave altogether. You may know of such a place, here or in another land. If so, i cannot possibly convey, nor you imagine, what a blessing it would be. Right now i am mired in southern California, needing spiritually and practically some possibility. Whether you can suggest something, or not, please let me know directly--my resources, materially and heart, are bleeding away, and i must move on.


5-02-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  54th  lecture.


Shodo Harada Roshi's One Drop Zendo site has a new look. He was my teacher in Japan 1988-1992. His US center is on Whidbey Island. - dc


5-01-12 - Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #8  from 68-08-25. This one was transcribed but marked as being partial because of sound problems so it was redone from restored audio to make sure. The two versions are being compared. - dc


Comments on the SFZC Alumni Retreat at Tassajara.


April


4-30-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  53rd  lecture.


 Back from the SFZC alumni retreat at Tassajara. Clay got me there.


4-25-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  52nd  lecture.


Another piece on Shunryu Suzuki by Stephen Gaskin from his book,

Monday Night Class - thanks to Mark Bittner


Three or four day Cuke break - Clay is driving me down to Tassajara today for the alumni retreat. We're planning on cruising down highway one, dropping in on some friends, enjoying the stars and air at five thousand feet at Chew's Ridge on the Tassajara Road, sleeping somewhere in that wilderness, and going in tomorrow for morning zazen. He'll be driving back to Santa Rosa tomorrow. Gotta bum a ride back Sunday and plan to throw something up here late. Till then farewell oh noble reader. 

More on what cuke work in the hopper for today and the next few. - dc


4-24-12 - Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #7  from 68-08-17.


Another piece on Shunryu Suzuki by Stephen Gaskin from his book Mind at Play in a chapter titled "A Visible Spark." - thanks to Mark Bittner


Ancient virus DNA thrives in us - BBC article wonderful to aid meditation on the questions of who am I? and what is this? What is self? My thought being one should be most skeptical about coming to any conclusion. - filed in Digressions.


4-23-12 - Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpts on precepts -  51st lecture.


First two excerpts from Stephen and Ina May Gaskins' books. Thanks to Mark Bittner for finding and transcribing two excerpts, one presented today. - dc


Taiyo has a website for his photos.


What DC's Doing update


4-22-12 - Happy Earth Day.

Al Gore on Earth Day

Earth Day Network

Cuke staff takes day off to honor our interconnectivity with the land, sky, water, animals, and plants. We will go forth into the world to hug rocks, dance with trees, dissolve into the  earth body. reflect on public policy, sing to the crushing treads of corporate and governmental robots which tower over us, crush our dreams, and disappear as we awaken. - dc


4-21-12 -  Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #6.


Ken Spiker took exception to the Chris Hedges column linked to recently

filed in the Current Events/Engaged Buddhism section.

Ken has some great Suzuki Roshi memories here on cuke. No time now to look for them. You do it - just put his name in the search box up top.


4-20-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts -  50th lecture excerpt. 


New RIP designations for names of people in the Acknowledgments of Crooked Cucumber.


4-19-21 - Help needed for Diane di Prima - on Shambhala Sun Space

on the Poetry Foundation site

Donate here

Diane di Prima on Wikipedia

Diane was a student of Shunryu Suzuki and other Buddhist teachers and is Poet Laureate of San Francisco. Get well Diane. - dc

Diane Di Prima cuke page


balloonsHappy birthday Clayton Chadwick, younger son, now 21. Clay was actually 21 before today, but his driver's license just shows his birthday. You see, Clay was not born on his birthday. more in DC misc


4-18-12 - Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #5.


Corresponding with Dana Gaskin Wenig, Stephen Gaskin's oldest daughter. He and she are going to come up with something for cuke to augment what we've got. Here's her note in Comments with a brief sentence in Brief Memories of Shunryu Suzuki.

There are many mentions of Gaskin on cuke such as this out-take from Zen Is Right Here (formerly To Shine One Corner of the World). Here's his Wikipedia page.

I know there are some other mentions of Suzuki in Stephen's books, at least one other. I've got it but it will take time to find it. I can think of one in Amazing Dope Tales that I can find the beginning of in Google Books:

I didn't know Suzuki Roshi, but I was slightly acquainted with him. I sat with him once or twice and went to hear him lecture a few more times. But I didn't have to go see him all the time, or spend a lot of time in his presence: He...

I'd like to complete this quote from that book. Thanks. - dc

[Thanks to Mark Bittner for finding and transcribing the full excerpt. - dc 4-23]


4-17-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts -  49th lecture excerpt. 


On the SFZC's 50th anniversary, DC reflects on why the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki is thriving. (Posting this in Brief Memories and posting this link in the new cuke section featured below)

50th Anniversary of the Founding of the SFZC cuke section. Got some ideas for it like presenting a complete listing of groups and teachers in the Shunryu Suzuki lineage. - dc


Speaking of thriving,

Critical review of Thrive movie and movement - Thrive is a bunch of New Age Libertarian, paranoid conspiracy theory, naive, wishful thinking, global warming denial hooey.

Thrive movie and movement - got it all worked out. Linked to on cuke last year.


Seeking some clerical help to help do things like that the above mentioned listing together, working on email lists and other tasks for fundraising, work on website. No experience necessary. - Contact DC


4-16-12 - Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #4.


First they came for the Muslims - Chris Hedges in Truthdig -

filed in the Current Events/Engaged Buddhism section.


What DC's Doing - since we're doing this fundraising drive for the Crooked Cucumber Archives which includes what you find here on cuke and shunryusuzuki.com and more, I thought I'd give a little running description of what I'm doing - more info than most would want - another example of cuke's Full Disclosure Policy.


4-15-12 - Sometimes gotta take it easy. So today just gonna write thank you notes to the generous folks who've sent support to the Crooked Cucumber Archives. Read all about it. And I think I'll make one of those thermometer like things to show how far we've gotten in reaching our goal. It will have an Antarctic look but we're not freezing to death. Thanks to all. - dc


4-14-12 - Visiting the grave site - Ned Hoke in Brief Memories (of Shunryu Suzuki)


Shunryu Suzuki on precepts -  48th lecture excerpt.  

Amazing how much of the entire lecture archive is in these excerpts. I remember Niels Holm (RIP) saying once, "Suzuki Roshi taught precepts, his whole teaching can be seen that way." - dc


Mary Quagliata Gallery

Mary on Vimeo  - 16 videos. Good going Mary.

Mary was an early student of Suzuki Roshi. I always thought of her as a potter, but there are wonderful paintings on her site. She lives in San Miguel de Allende and was at Genjoji for a year or so a few years back and I've got an interview with her in the backlog that I'm eager to get to. - dc


Friday the 13th - Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #3

Shunryu Suzuki Lecture Transcripts 2012 --- INDEX - lectures and comments added to the digital archive this year.


Don't forget Legendary Poets to Read at SF Zen Center tonight. Joko Dave Haselwood says Dianne Di Prima is not well and doesn't see how she can make it tonight. Get well, Dianne.

Dave's Cotati Zen group, the Empty Bowl Sangha, sits tonight.  Here's a link to his lectures. Cuke interview with Dave.


4-12-12 - An Appeal for Funding the Crooked Cucumber Archives Created and Sent out by Rachel Boughton of the Pacific Zen Institute on April 11, 2012


Shunryu Suzuki on precepts -  47th lecture excerpt.  (in which Part II begins)


4-11-12 - 2012 Drive to Raise Funds for the Crooked Cucumber Archives

Do-it page with Goals - Support Statements - Budget - Contributors - Posts

DC April 2012 appeal for support.


4-10-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 46th lecture excerpt.


Waking Up and Falling Asleep - by Mark Foote


4-09-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 45th lecture excerpt.


Legendary Poets to Read at SF Zen Center this coming Friday the 13th. (and because this is leap year we have two Friday the 13th's in a row.)

This is billed as a launch of the 3rd Issue of ZEN MONSTER

"We are Rebels" - Interview with Brian Unger, editor and publisher of ZEN MONSTER

Full disclosure: DC has a piece in Zen Monster: read it here. It's from this.


The Soy Milk Carton and Beginner's Mind - in DC Misc.


4-08-12 - Happy Buddha's birthday in the Japanese and Chinese tradition and Easter, day of our rebirth and the Northern Hemisphere's. - dc

Hsuan Hua's talk on Buddha's life.


4-07-12 - Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #2.

Shunryu Suzuki Lecture Transcripts 2012 --- INDEX - lectures and comments added to the digital archive this year.


A talk given by Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche at the City Center of the SFZC on May 27, 1971. - thanks Joe Galewsky


4-06-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 44th lecture excerpt.


Good Friday to you - death of the ego day. Here's Father Steve Frost's offering for the day: the Berkeley Core: FORAYS INTO THE PSYCHE OF BEING


4-05-12 - Shunryu Suzuki newly transcribed lectures in progress. Transcript #1.


Willem Malten writes from Santa Fe: Here are two articles and together will give people insight into what happened here in New Mexico, and how a new nuclear modernization facility was stopped and some of the strategic thinking that went into that. Read more from Willem

The two articles:

Activist's experience, passion culminate in LANL project delay

On Stopping the CMRR-Nuclear Facility, Nuclear Policy, and the Future of New Mexico


4-04-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 43rd lecture excerpt.


Tell President Obama to stop his war on medical marijuana. Join us in asking the President to finally put an end to the government's war on medical marijuana. Students for Sensible Drug Policy. Also along these lines check out the MPP and the Drug Policy Alliance. Millions hassled, busted, incarcerated, ruined while robber barons and war criminals aren't even bothered. Federal attorney in CA says medical marijuana sends the wrong message to the children. I say she sends the wrong message of persecution, putting people in cages for what she disapproves of. I wonder if she drinks alcohol. I don't. I haven't partaken of any psychoactive except caffeinated tea for years. To me oppression of others is the worst addictions. - dc


A rare moment caught - thanks Rene


4-03-12 - Beverly Morris Armstrong (Horowitz) Suzuki Stories #11 - Shhhh!


2012 Matsuoka Roshi Archive Project

Before Shunryu Suzuki and all the Soto Zen priests who came to America whose names we know, there was Soyu Matsuoka. - dc


On 3-29 posted the following but neglected to load the reworded appeal: Reworded the appeal from ten days ago for special gift for two software programs to work with Shunryu Suzuki audio. Go to donate software. My policy is to check every link after uploading but didn't notice the mistake. - dc


4-02-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 42nd lecture excerpt.


AW who's working to improve the quality of the audio of Suzuki Roshi lectures is working on this intriguing website:


cuke website usage - On the first of every month, I check out usage for my websites and noticed that usage was down on cuke and hits was more down. I attribute this to the simplified home page without all the messy stress-inducing links which I've been scolded for for years. I'm not going back though I'll be thinking of how to better make the home page and all the many subordinate pages and links displayed. - dc


4-01-12 - Taking a day off except for these nude photos of myself posted in the spirit of full disclosure.

Day off destination


March


3-31-12 - Beverly Morris Armstrong (Horowitz) Suzuki Stories #10 - You asked me how i came to Zen Center


Freedom Songs Pt. 2 - Hitchin' East


3-30-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 41st lecture excerpt.


A Story from Loring Palmer (the first in this new section, ZC Stories) - Cannabis Cookie Freak-out at Tassajara


3-29-12 - Beverly Morris Armstrong (Horowitz) Suzuki Stories #9 - Made out of Garbage!


PayPal donations to cuke dot com and the Crooked Cucumber Archives are now officially tax deductible.  Check out the new PayPal buttons on the Donate Page

There's a DONATE button for a one time generous donation and a SUBSCRIBE button for monthly recurring donations with options starting at $2 per month.

And I'll try to get to the Do-it page to further clarify the goals, budget, supporters, etc of cuke and the Crooked Cucumber Archives. - dc


Reworded the appeal from ten days ago for special gift for two software programs to work with Shunryu Suzuki audio. Go to donate software.


3-28-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 40th lecture excerpt.


Hungry but Scared dot com - super artistisimo whacko from Peter Valentine who was at the Charles Fox funeral. The evening service at Green Gulch yesterday was for Charles. - dc


Today's Haiku

Haikus confuse me
Too often they make no sense
Hand me the pliers.

- thanks Daya


3-27-12 - Beverly Morris Armstrong (Horowitz) Suzuki Stories #8 - Potatoes


Chronicles Onion presents It's Never Too Late - something new from the folks at Chronicles of CTR (Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche).


Today's evening service at Green Gulch Farm will be for Charles Fox.


3-26-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 39th lecture excerpt.


Charles Fox funeral was Saturday.


3-25-12 - Digital free day.


3-24-12 - Beverly Morris Armstrong (Horowitz) Suzuki Stories #7 - If It Bothers You


Michael Komatsu Doherty's shakuhachi


3-23-12 - RIP Charles Fox who died yesterday at 4:30 in the afternoon. Good show old friend. [Charles Fox memorial page]

There will be a small private ceremony for Charles soon and a larger memorial later to be announced.

 

 

 


Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 38th lecture excerpt.


Message from Reformed Whores to Rush and us - thanks E. Sawyer


3-22-12 - Beverly Morris Armstrong (Horowitz) Suzuki Stories #6 - Beer Nuts


M. L. of Commonweal in Bolinas came to Charles Fox's bedside yesterday. Charles has stopped eating and drinking - his advanced MS finally, after more than forty years, got to be too much to keep going. They've been best friends for forty years. He sat with the family and me and we talked some. Charles' son James said that he'd asked his father to give him a sign from beyond if he could after he'd died. [Read More]


3-21-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 37th lecture excerpt.


Charles Fox has stopped eating and drinking. Going there. Must finish quick piece on Kobun months late for book Vanja's putting together. - dc


3-20-12 - Beverly Morris Armstrong (Horowitz) Suzuki Stories #5 - Just Sit in the Kitchen


Q&A: Zen priest talks about launch of Marblehead center - Joan Amaral interviewed in the Wicked Local from the Marblehead Reporter. See post on Joan's Zen group there two days ago.


And a happy vernal equinox day to you. It began at 1:14am Eastern Time (Farmer's Almanac link).


3-19-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 36th lecture excerpt.


Check out Ray Watkins'  The best Tai Chi DVDs for Home Mastery. Ray is working on an overhaul of the cuke Shunryu Suzuki lecture transcripts as found here and on shunryusuzuki.com. Here's his blog for musings.


3-18-12 - Introduction to the Chinese Translation of Crooked Cucumber


Marblehead Zen Center in Massachusetts
Facebook link - on SFZC Sangha blog

The teacher is Myozen Joan Amaral   (who is a sweetiepie)

See interview link posted on the 20th.


Seeking special gift of $700 for two software programs, about 350 each, to work with Shunryu Suzuki audio. Go to donate software. It was 350 for one program but after consultation I realized it would be best to get both now. - Thanks, dc


Making a little headway on the fundraising front. Just did a new Donate page with a simplified address and appearance. Now there's a special PO Box for donations to go to. I'll pick them up, write a thank you and deposit them into an account controlled by others. Now going to work on a new non profit Paypal button with recurring payment option. The fiscal sponsor for this drive will be the Pacific Zen Inst.


3-17-12 - Beverly Morris Armstrong (Horowitz) Suzuki Stories #4 - Special Stones


Consider Crestone Mountain Zen Center as a possible venue for your group retreats.

They still have availability for 2012, and we are accepting reservations for 2013 and 2014. For more information please visit their website or call the office at 719-256-4692.

Crestone Mountain Zen Center is a year-round Zen practice and retreat center in one of the most secluded and extraordinarily beautiful places in the country. The Center is located on 240 acres of piñon and juniper forest, at the foot of majestic 14,000-foot peaks and above the vast, ancient lakebed of the San Luis Valley.

CMZC has been hosting meditation, yoga, music, dance, bodywork, writing, and psychotherapy groups for more than twenty years.


Seeking special gift of $700 for two software programs to work with Shunryu Suzuki audio. Go to donate software.  It was 350 for one program but after consultation I realized it would be best to get both now. - Thanks, dc


3-16-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 35th lecture excerpt.


On the way to the City Center for Della Goertz memorial. - dc


3-15-12 - Happy Ides of March though beware might be a better interjection, and not because Julius got it that day, for it was a day for military parades and the glorification of war into which we easily slide and with great difficulty depart.


Shunryu Suzuki and others on Peace and War


Science is the Only News from edge dot org. I remember saying to Baker Roshi that if I was in a hurry I only looked at the bridge column in the paper and if online maybe just a short BBC science article and he said that Stewart Brand said something like the title above. I like stuff like this cause I think it holds our superstitions to the fire but am skeptical about these opinions as well- dc


3-14-12 - Beverly Morris Armstrong (Horowitz) Suzuki Stories #3 - Roshi at the 92nd Street YMHA


One Pine Hall - Robby Pellet is a dharma heir of Shunryu Suzuki's son, Hoitsu, and is the teacher at this zendo in Seattle. Go to the site and find the newsletter link (March 11, 2012) which is obscure but the site is set up so that I don't see how to link to it, just to the site. Anyway, there's an interesting report on his visit to Japan and the tsunami disaster anniversary and Soto Zen. - dc


Jerry Bolick who's with the Buddhist Churches of America and appears numerous times on cuke (use search feature on home page to see them) writes on Kokoro, the present incarnation of the former Sokoji, in response to David Miller's email of a few days ago.


And now the Huffington Post has an article on the SFZC 50th. Guee I've got to start a cuke page on this. - dc - thanks Howie


3-13-12 - Two articles on the SFZC's 50th anniversary this year and a bit on a visit with Grahame Petchey who took care of the business necessary to make the SFZC an entity.

SFZC's 50 Years of Opening Hearts, Minds,
Julian Guthrie in the SF Chronicle - Monday, March 12, 2012
(only glitch - Green Gulch Farm was donated/purchased in '72 - dc)

Fifty years of the San Francisco Zen Center
By Adam Tebbe in Buddhadharma Online

A Visit with Grahame Petchey and a Suzuki Roshi calligraphy.

Zen Center 50 - SFZC's website for this year's events starting with

ANDERSON & ANDERSON IN CONVERSATION
An Evening with Laurie Anderson and Tenshin Reb Anderson

Benefiting the Restoration of Green Gulch Farm's Hope Cottage -
Thursday, March 15, 2012, 7:00pm


3-12-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 34th lecture excerpt.


Japan Finds Story of Hope in Undertaker Who Offered Calm Amid Disaster - NY Times - thanks Howie


3-11-12 - Another day off in honor of those who say the Sabbath is Sunday. "Yes, keep the Sabbath day, for it is holy. Anyone who desecrates it must die; anyone who works on that day will be cut off from the community." Exodus 31:12-15 - dc


3-10-12 - Day of rest in honor of my orthodox friends. - dc


3-09-12 - Beverly Morris Armstrong (Horowitz) Suzuki Stories #2 - Mind Should Be Everywhere


Two emails about Kokoro, the former Sokoji


Arigato, thanks, from Japanese affected by tsunami


3-08-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 33rd lecture excerpt.


The scale of the universe. And here's another version they did earlier. - thanks David Cohen. And here where it's being post in digressions along with links to prior universe scale posts


Bill Maher on being a Christian - in Current Events/Engaged Buddhism


3-07-12 - Beverly Morris Armstrong (Horowitz) Suzuki Stories #1 - There's time.


Representative Maureen Walsh touching Remarks on ESSB 6239 - on same sex marriage bill - in Current Events/Engaged Buddhism - thanks David Cohen


3-06-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 32nd lecture excerpt.


Della Goertz memorial coming up the 16th


3-05-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 31st lecture excerpt.


A Gangaji rap on who we are with mountains and music accompanying.


Solar System scale distances shown on space dot com - placed in Digressions and linked to a prior post about scale models of solar system. Almost all models or graphics we see are not even approximate scale. Another example that everything we are taught is false, or everything we think is off. Fun to keep trying though. - dc


3-04-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 30th lecture excerpt.


Bloodletting & Gate Crashing or Is Bodhidharma the Best Role Model for Westerners? - on Jack Elias' blog, with a mention of Crooked Cucumber

See comments on this at dchad misc - from Red Pine, Andy Ferguson, and DC

Finding True Magic is an eBook now.


It's easy to see we never enter the same river twice. It's harder to see we're not the same either.. - Kabumpkan


3-03-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 29th lecture excerpt.


For the digressions section - Gorillas visiting a camp - thanks Howie


3-02-12 - see yesterday and got Madeleine's name spelled right.


3-01-12 - working on fundraising letter and this site


February


2-29-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 28th lecture excerpt.


Changes coming to cuke.com, maybe for tomorrow. In the meantime happy Leap Day. - dc


2-28-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 27th lecture excerpt.


Things are bad.

Things are good.


2-27-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 26th lecture excerpt.


Wengers' Dragon's Leap Updates - lecture at City Center Wednesday, move on Sunday.


The flower photography of Jocelyn Konarski


Working on a page  - Do It - for fundraising drive for what we're calling the Crooked Cucumber Archives. It will show  cuke goals, have statements of support, thanks to the folks for their contributions of time and money, budget and fundraising goals.


2-26-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 25th lecture excerpt.


Ananda's widow, Vera Haile, comments after reading remembrance of Ananda posted here 2-18. Included at the end of that post.


Thoughts on cuke development


2-25-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 24th lecture excerpt. I got mixed up and did part two of this lecture yesterday and part one today. Wonder how that happened. They're ordered correctly in the running file of these excerpts. - dc


Austin ZC dharma talks page. DC talk there, the least of them all, 1-21-12.


Somebody That I Used To Know - different music presentation - thanks Howie


2-24-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 23rd lecture excerpt.


An Evening with Sylvia Boorstein and Lew Richmond

Skip the Oscars and go to Spirit Rock in Marin County, CA Sunday, February 26, 7:00pm - 9:00pm

Subject: Lew's new book, Aging as a Spiritual Practice

Go to page for this event at Spirit Rock site

Lew Richmond main cuke page


RIP Barney Rosset, Grove Press and Evergreen Review - Richard Baker's earliest ventures into publishing. Hannelore (Loly)Rosset, his 2nd wife, is whom he got to translate The Blue Cliff Record from the German case by case, until Cleary's book came out.

Interview with Loly Rosset

Interview with Don Allen who was an editor at or for Grove Press.


2-23-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 22nd lecture excerpt.


Solitary Confinement: Torture in Your Backyard - Tuesday, February 28th the First Congregational Church of Berkeley (FCCB) will be holding a viewing of the National Religious Campaign Against Torture’s new 20-minute film, Special guest, Sarah Shourd, who was one of three hikers captured in Iran and held in solitary confinement for 14 months. More details.


Copenhagen Philharmonic amazed commuters at the Copenhagen Central Train Station - Love these flash events - dc


2-22-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 21st lecture excerpt.


Cheerful Shambhala Day to our friends in the lineage of Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche and at the Chronicles of CTR

Check out the video interview on their site with Suzuki then Trungpa student Henry Schaeffer - thanks Howie. Adding this to the links on Henry's interview page here on cuke.


Ugh. Misspelled SFZC abbot Steve Stucky's name again. [more]


Another chance to sell out. Please Buddha, Please. Free me from these chains. I could get some righteous dental work and spend my waning days taking long walks with Katrinka.

On 2/22/2012 5:47 AM, Len wrote:

Hey,

       Is cuke.com for sale? Could you tell me asking price .Thank you.

Best regards,

                 Len

***

How about a million dollars?

David
cuke.com

2-21-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 20th lecture excerpt.


John Freese's blog - Loved his short, basic description of Buddhism and meditation. John is from my hometown of Fort Worth. He and his twin brother were for years monks with Thich Nat Hahn. John has spent time practicing elsewhere such as at Zen Mt. Monastery in Mt. Tremper, NY, and in Thiruvannamalai in Tamil Nadu India where I was last year for four months. Small world story. I met John because my mother knows his father through the Ft. Worth Opera and he came over to say hi and he told me where he'd been in India and I said, oh that's where I'm going. Another friend in Fort Worth inquired about where he could go for a retreat so I connected him with John we met with him and also just sent him this list of links which I share. - dc

deerparkmonastery.org/

siri.dhamma.org/

austinzencenter.org/

contemplativeoutreach.org/

spiritrock.org/

dharma.org/

thebuddhadharma.com/

Posting this in links.


The show Bill Moyers is back with is Moyers and Company. Yesterday linked to an old show.


Mental Health Hotline - very important information, just takes a few seconds. - thanks Gregory


2-20-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 19th lecture excerpt.


Bill Moyers' Journal - Good he's back. NO, that's a mistake, though those shows were great. That's the show from two years ago. The one he's back with is Moyers and Company


2-19-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 18th lecture excerpt.


Help Michael and Barbara Wenger move today to their new zendo home. See below.

On Wednesday visited the SF home Michael and Barbara Wenger have found for a home and zendo. Tagged along with Hoitsu (son of Shunryu) and Chitose Suzuki and a few SFZC and BZC luminaries. Thanks to Clare Hollander for the lift.

Michael Wenger wrote:

We've done it! We've found a home for Dragons Leap Meditation Center. 20th Avenue and Quintara. We will be moved in by March 1st and we expect to begin operating later in March or early April. It is just as we had envisioned it. A place for meditation, painting, and Dharma classes. Stay tuned for more information as it occurs. We will be starting a wish list for what we need to operate. First things first: Zafus. If you or anyone you know has extras, please contact us.

Next note from Michael:

After nearly 40 years, the dragon is moving We could use help preparing for the move Sunday afternoon, February 19th and 26th, from 1-5 PM at 370 Page street we will ready the launch site

This has been a long time coming, and I appreciate all of your help and support. We are just beginning, so let's keep going!

Please call if you can help. Contact Michael through his blog above or via cuke.com

Go to Michael's cuke page to see their new zendo home and more.

Here are some photos Clare Hollander took of a calligraphy session there.

See DC's poor attempt at calligraphy on that visit.


2-18-12 - Remembering Ananda Claude Dalenberg, Buddhist pioneer, humanist, our friend and dharma brother  who died four years ago today,

See Sweeping Zen's memorial for Ananda today.

Diane Dalenberg poem today for her dad

James Ishmael Ford


Buddhist Contemplative Care Symposium on Palliative and End of Life Care

website    facebook 

Filed in cuke's Death and Dying section


2-17-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 17th lecture excerpt.


Breaking a fifty year old vow - in DC Misc.


2-16-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 16th lecture excerpt.


Beautiful Thoughtlessness - Valentine received from Past Wife Experience #1 - thanks Daya


2-15-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 15th lecture excerpt.


What Kind of Buddhist was Steve Jobs, Really? - Most interesting from Steve Silberman, but the Tassajara connection doesn't ring a bell. If you have any memories of this please write. contact DC.


2-14-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 14th lecture excerpt.


Katrinka be my Valentine! a repeat request from 2010 and another Valentine song from 1983


2-13-12 - Mountain Seat Ceremony, Shin San Shiki

was good.  [more]


Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 13th lecture excerpt.


2-12-12 - Mountain Seat Ceremony today
Installation of Kiku Christina Lehnherr as
City Center Abiding Abbess
Sunday, February 12 at 3:30pm

Watch it live streaming.

It's great being here at the City Center of the SFZC. Stayed overnight. Loved sitting with so many people in the zendo before Hoitsu's lecture and then late night and early morning alone there - so so ... what's the word - something between deep and comfy. Should get a copy of his lecture up here. He told about Shunryu Suzuki, his father, cooking up the scraps of sweet potatoes and sometimes borrowing money from him when he was a teenager (and never paying it back). And at Shunryu's stepping down ceremony (maybe in 1962) saying something like he's stepping down here and next will be stepping up - as he did at Sokoji in America. Want to listen to the Japanese, not just the simultaneous translation for that. Lots of old friends here so far and today's ceremony will bring many more.  - dc


Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 12th lecture excerpt.


2-11-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 11th lecture excerpt.

Only the excerpt on 2-8-12 was from the Beginner's Mind lecture. I make the next post by copying and pasting the prior one and sometimes forget to notice a comment that's tagging along. And sometimes forget to change the date.  dc


Off to the City Center of the SFZC this morning for Hoitsu Suzuki talk and Paul Haller's stepping down ceremony (from being abbot) later in the day. On Sunday Christina Lehnherr will be installed as abbot. - dc

Watch it live streaming.


Our dear, sweet grandmother/ great-grandmother passed away last Sunday night at 10:00 pm peacefully. Della was 99 and a half years old and lived a rich, fulfilling life filled with love for all living things. She passed gently knowing her family loved her very much and ready to embrace her life beyond death. Della's wishes were to be interned with her husband and son all together at one time, this will take place at a private family service in Napa.

Helen Goertz Busby, granddaughter


2-10-12 - Just learned that on Sunday, February 5th our dear friend and dharma sister Della Goertz passed away peacefully at the small residential nursing home in Napa, CA, where she has been living for the last few years. She would have been 100 this coming July. Della was one of Shunryu Suzuki's first students.

Della's page


Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 10th lecture excerpt.


2-09-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 9th lecture excerpt.


balloonsOn this day in 1945 at 2:15 A.M. (I recall) at Harris Hospital in Forth Worth, Texas, I entered this world as an air breathing being. It's been a good ride so far. - dc

 

 


Discover How Meditation Helps People Suffering from Chronic Illness in Medicine and Meditation by Nancy Welch


2-8-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 8th lecture excerpt. This one is from the famous Beginner's Mind lecture.


Online review by Jesús Ángel García of Kaz Tanahashi's Shobogenzo translation and Dogen Lost and Found in Translation conference (with photos) about the release of the complete collection. Got this link with a request from him for entry to the gate of shunryusuzuki.com so am linking to his article and sending him the username and password as I do to anyone who so requests. - dc


Just made the What Was New page for 2012 and added the What Was New 2011 links to the What Was New pages going back to 1999. I'm to get all this reorganized this year. Doing this causes me to reflect on how to best do that. Also, looking back on 2011 What's New reminds me of how much got done last year in terms of getting a backlog of material up here on cuke. And that makes me think about how to best present this and the potential for this year in the upcoming fundraising drive. - dc


2-7-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 7th lecture excerpt.


Erik Davis is a writer into Techgnosis and Expanding Mind.


2-6-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 6th lecture excerpt.


Thanks Linda Speel for sending the link to this illustrated teaching story which clarifies an important aspect of cyber-practice.


See negative reviews of the essay linked to here 1-29-12.


2-5-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 5th lecture excerpt.


Austin Zen Center now has a video of a song I sang, Travelin' Alone, after the Friday pot luck dinner. Thanks Kim Mosley for putting this up and adding the words. - dc


2-4-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on precepts - 4th lecture excerpt.


Andy Ferguson adds to the comments on Chinese and translating it into English as posted 1-29-12.


2-3-12 - What did Shunryu Suzuki have to say about precepts? Here is the 3rd lecture in the digital archive with that term.


I just learned that dear friend Moriyama Daigyo Roshi has been missing since the tsunami in Japan last year. He was the priest at Sokoji, where the SFZC began, from 1970 to 73. Read more on this site for him.

And here's a notice from last March on Wild Fox Zen.

This site has more details on the search for Moriyama. The last day he was in contact was Feb.18th and the tsunami wasn't until March 11th. - dc. Thanks Enda O'Toole


2-2-12 - What did Shunryu Suzuki have to say about precepts? Here is his 2nd use of that term found in the digital archive from a lecture given on July 22nd, 1965.


Excuse me for linking to this song. It's almost painfully super cornball and gushy though rather amazing in its delivery and has got a message like John Lennon's Imagine except for the most culturally conservative crowd. I even wonder if it's lip synched. Think Lawrence Welk. I'm always somewhat puzzled at so-called Christian values people when they turn their backs on those less fortunate and clamor for war (as in Ron Paul being booed when he suggested the Golden Rule be applied in US relations with other countries). when care for the poor and peaceful relations with others are the most repeated social messages of Jesus.

For something along these lines with more substance, check out cuke's favorite evangelical Christian spokesman, Jim Wallis and his Sojourners.

So I'll file this in CurrentEvents\EngagedBuddhism rather than Cuke the Arts Music. - dc


Another link to drive people away was that commercial meditation site which I asked if I should link to on 1-31. Our old friend in Munchen, Edgar Arnold wrote:

I answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOO! NEVER!!!

OK. I won't.


Speaking of scams, just got an email from a friend with her website and blog links below, her actual email signature and address, whose bags were lost in Spain asking for a loan cause her cards were taken and passport and all and I recognized it as a scam and emailed her, not hitting respond which would have surely gone to the bad guys, and she said no she's not in Spain but in Venice due to romance and couldn't warn me cause not only did they hack into her Yahoo account and get her address book, but they erased it then and all her emails. Sorry about the hacking Dianne but congrats on the romance. Here's her website - Tibet and Dharamsala travel and more. Neat stuff. Have linked to her here on cuke before.


2-1-12 - What did Shunryu Suzuki have to say about precepts? Here is his first use of that term found in the digital archive. Thanks Jenny Wunderly for preparing this series.


January


1-31-12 - Visited the Dallas Meditation Center today and joined in on the 11:30 - 1:00 zazen with Maria Kannon ZC folks. That group's teacher is Ruben Habito and I think I can say they're part of or at least out of the Sanbo Kyodan school (Harada-Yasutani-Yamada-Aitken). Brother Chi Sing is the Spiritual Director of the Dallas Meditation Center. He's a Huston born, Dallas raised monk in the Thich Nat Hahn lineage. Impressive center catering to various groups and alternative therapies. Thanks for the great Korean lunch Chi Sing.


I got an email asking me to link to the following site and then he'd link to mine. The email subject line was Value Exchange Request. I never seek links or try to improve my web standing.:

http://www.learning-modern-meditation.com

Should I link to it? - dc

E.A. wrote: I answer: NOOOOOOOOOOOO! NEVER!!!


1-30-12 - Added Chapter Three - Higher Education --1924–1930 to the the Notes on Crooked Cucumber folder but no notes for a while. Probably will get the whole book down first.


Bill Moyers interview with Gretchen Morgenson on Corporate Clout in Washington on  Moyers & Co.


1-29-12 - Language Imperialism, Concepts and Civilization: China versus The West - By Dr. Thorsten Pattberg

Sent by Eric Arnow with a copy of his letter to the professor - that's posted on Eric's cuke link page.

See negative reviews of this essay.


TWIT - This Week in Tech - TWIT.TV - lots of good stuff, great science shows. Out of Petaluma and run by Leo Laporte and his gang.


1-28-12 - Added Chapter Two - Master and Disciple--1916–1923 to the the Notes on Crooked Cucumber folder but no notes for a while.


On 1/27/2012 11:51 AM, Ken wrote:

Hello,

 I'm interested in cuke.com , could you tell me the price if it's sale? Thanks and have a nice day.

With Best Regards,

Ken

DC responded:

Good. I get these offers now and then but haven't found the right buyer yet. How about a million dollars?

David

cuke.com


1-27-12 - Lots of good new stuff on Shunryu Suzuki Roshi Facebook Page.


Age Activated Attention Deficit Disorder - though I've always been this way. - Thanks Rene Pittet III


1-26-12 - "I didn't say that." - A brief memory of Shunryu Suzuki by DC


Druid Heights, around the corner from Green Gulch Farm, home of Alan Watts and other fellow seekers and sages from the past and present considered for heritage status. See NY Times article. - thanks Steve Tipton


1-25-12 - Shunryu Suzuki on WikiQuotes


THE HEALING NEEDED IN OUR WORLD:

PSYCHOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES ON BUDDHIST MEDITATION, NONVIOLENT COMMUNICATION, ECO-PSYCHOLOGY, AND PATHS TO A NEW CONSCIOUSNESS

 by

Paul Shippee

Paul Shippee cuke link page


1-24-12 - THE TRIKĀYA - Edited from six Lotus Sutra Lectures. Scanned from Wind Bell by Edgar Arnold.


RIP Johnny Otis whose band I was fortunate to hear play in Santa Rosa (with the Sawyers) and whose radio show was broadcast from Sebastopol where we'd have breakfast and tea and listen to him spin the discs and rap on rhythm and blues history. He started a church and choir that Elin joined but it fizzled because the only type of sermon he knew was hellfire and brimstone and the people who came just wanted to sing. One of the great local characters in Sonoma County. - dc


1-23-12 - Happy New Year of the dragon!


Nicolas Pierotti - running for president with a memory of Shunryu Suzuki - in Brief Memories.


Father Steve Frost's Clear Light Missiles blog.

Steve separated his FALL SERIES blog posts into their own blog with the great name of the Clear Light Missiles Blog since, he says, they are hopefully the final statement summing up his whole 40 year NEPSIS project that Lew Lancaster put on line at UCB. Its a new layout for his theological/philosophical statement with paintings.

University of California, Berkeley site: Nepsis

Art and Poetry Nepsis site under development


1-22-12 - Get this neat letter  emailed now and then. Never get tired of it. It's billed as a response to Dr. Laura's rant against homosexuality as a Biblically endorsed sin. Read it and its history on Snopes at this link.

1-21-12 - Loved the visit to the Austin Zen Center located in an attractive neighborhood in a neat older home that used to be the Quaker meeting house. Good to see abbot Kosho and director Colin and talk with lots of neat folks. Good food at pot luck. Visited old friends John and Julia Jackson. Read about John in Part I of Freedom Songs. Crashed the last hour of an Adyashanti retreat. Second time to see him. Had dinner and lively talk with Stephen Boyd at a Greek restaurant - lots of mutual friends and acquaintances - and headed back north to Fort Worth via impressively huge and complex freeways. Austin used to be the modest size city I could drive into and easily find where I wanted to go. Now it feels like LA till I land, coming down from the third tier of freeway maze. Tons more traffic. The drive used to be four hours to or from Fort Worth. Got back at night in two and a half. - dc


1-20-12 - Off to Austin to the Zen Center there. Pot luck tonight at 6:30 and a talk tomorrow at 10:30. Austin ZC is cool - and warm. - dc


1-19-12 - Haven't put anything up yet today. -------------That was at midnight last night when I had to get the index or home page back up. How about this for today - a page on Facebook featuring my favorite Buddhist motto which was a gift to cuke.com from Jackie Celko. Art by Brian Howlett.- dc


1-18-12 - SOPA/PITA Blackout day - posted this for the home page.


1-17-12 - Here's how the MLK parade in Fort Worth went. Later that day I dug up old and made new notes about my bumbling experience in the civil rights movement in 1964 planning to post something but I just ended up with over four pages of notes most of them a single line, fifty lines a page. Will try to get something writ on that.

Paul Krugman's MLK column


1-16-12 - Stream of Consciousness site has two pages of Suzuki Roshi quotes.


Went to the parade today in downtown Fort Worth for Martin Luther King Jr. It was touching. I reflected on the past. I think I'll take a walk to a coffee shop to drink tea and write something on that. - dc


Grapevine pastor, wife hit the sack to talk about sex - another local (near Fort Worth) story to share.


1-15-12 - Here's a list of Japanese and Buddhist terms from Crooked Cucumber (almost 500) just sent to Wei Qun in Beijing. She's going to take out the ones she doesn't need help with. Then the list goes to Tozen Akiyama (Hopeless Tozen) for kanji, Japanese characters, then back to Wei Qun.


The art of Yeachin Tsai - Yeachin translated Not Always So into Chinese. Here's her daily art blog.


1-14-12 - Events page from Lew Richmond's web site, mainly readings for his new book, Aging as a spiritual practice.

Lew Richmond cuke link page


Shunryu Suzuki comments on the importance of practice periods and on If you are truly involved in the development of our way - from a Fall, 1967 Wind Bell now as text. - thanks to Edgar Arnold for transcribing this onto disc.

And in the former of these, we have another  phrase “most important” as found in Shunryu Suzuki lectures #135

Also, a misspelled word was corrected from the Wind Bell version.

Thanks to JR III for the use of his scanner to get this and other Wind Bell Suzuki lectures and quotes entered here and elsewhere on the online collections so that they are widely available.

And thanks to JR IV for figuring how to get the audio files of Suzuki lectures off the hard drive AW sent and thanks to him for his work to improve the audio quality of the lectures, a large ongoing project.

And thanks to Ray Watkins for proofing the recently included Suzuki lecture.67-08-24CU. - dc


1-13-12 - Happy Friday the 13th.

Added Chapter One--Childhood to the the Notes on Crooked Cucumber folder but no notes for a while.


1-12-12 - There's one mistake in Crooked Cucumber I knew of that was discovered since the last change. It's in the Errata section of CC herein. In going over the book to make a Japanese and Buddhist terms list for the Chinese translation, found two other mistakes: in Acknowledgments, Chie Suzuki (Hoitsu's mother) should be Chitose Suzuki (his wife). And the other is a typo in Sources. "Skoko and Mrs. Okamoto" should be Shoko.


The Griffin Bros in Fort Worth do weird music and put it on YouTube. I want to do that too - music and other stuff. No time for that now but just wait. Tom did the cover art for me for the Boat of Dreams cassette done back in '86. - dc


1-11-12 - Got the Introduction for Crooked Cucumber up to add notes to but it will be a while before any notes are added.


The Union of Concerned Scientists has moved their doomsday clock one minute closer to doom. I read it today but can't find it now. Anyway, don't worry about it. Everything's perfect. But on the other hand, if anything comes up to nudge that minute hand back some, of course we'll do that. - dc Posted in Species Threats.


1-10-12 - The Shunryu Suzuki lecture 67-08-24CU mentioned below on 1-08-12, a new addition to the on disc/online archive. This lecture needs to be proofed again against the Wind Bell or a scan of the Wind Bell from which it came. - volunteer sought [volunteer found - thanks to Ray Watkins for finding a few mistakes]. Thanks again Edgar Arnold for entering it onto disc. - dc


Dick Hensold in Concert: Northumbrian Smallpipes and other Strange Beasts. West Coast starting in Sebastopol January 19th, ending in Tacoma February 7th.


1-09-12 - Save the Date!

In honor of its 50th anniversary, the San Francisco Zen Center is pleased to announce two very special offerings to be held at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center (Zenshinji)

Alumni Celebration Weekend Retreat
April 26 – 29, 2012

50th Anniversary Sesshin
April 29 – May 4, 2012

DC note: Shunryu Suzuki arrived in the US in May of 1959 and people started sitting with him right away, but he wasn't officially installed as the abbot until May of 1962 and the SFZC wasn't officially named and incorporated until August of that year. See Shunryu Suzuki chronology.


Made a little progress on the Notes on Crooked Cucumber - got up the Front Matter - but not many notes, mainly gotta concentrate on the index and words the Chinese translators need the characters for. More


Just getting ready to zap today's changes to cuke through air and wires to your computer, thinking of the amazing progress and rapid development in various scientific fields - computing, communicating, media, medicine, and ways to destroy each other. Reflecting on the news, debates, reporting, politics - that area is not moving fast, is still in Alice in Wonderland nutzoid territory. We're a psycho planet trying to wake up to sanity. Good luck to us all. - dc


1-08-12 - The phrase “most important” as found in Shunryu Suzuki lectures #134. Two new "most important" uses uncovered in a lecture and discussion recently scanned by DC from the fall, 1967 Wind Bell, and entered onto disc by Edgar Arnold in Munich. This lecture is being entered into the disc/online archive archive of Suzuki lectures along with two other small Suzuki statements from that same Wind Bell which Edgar also just entered onto disc. Right now I'm naming this 67-08-24CU (the date attributed by the Wind Bell) with another lecture and a shosan ceremony for that date already. That's possible - it was at the end of a sesshin. The lecture will be posted soon and I'm scanning another group of lectures for Edgar. Thanks Edgar! - dc


"The trouble with quotes on the internet is that it's hard to determine whether or not they're genuine." - Abraham Lincoln

- thanks Gregory


1-07-12 - Al Tribe with a brief memory of Shunryu Suzuki - and a poem.


Events page from Lew Richmond's web site, mainly readings for his new book, Aging as a spiritual practice.

Lew Richmond cuke link page


Check out the fine art of Catherine Anderson whom I remember from Green Gulch back in the mid eighties.


1-06-12 - First day of Notes on Crooked Cucumber and the first note on Notes on Notes on Crooked Cucumber.


Kazuaki Tanahashi cuke link page


1-05-12 - Introduction to The Teacup and the Skullcup: Chögyam Trungpa on Zen and Tantra by David Schneider - which draws on Trungpa's relationship with Shunryu Suzuki, Kobun Chino, Edo Tai Shimano, and Bill Kwong.

 

Chögyam Trungpa cuke link page


Yehudah Alan Winter and his mate Joanie are on a 2 month journey through Central America. In Nicaragua right now, Granada through Christmas then a service project in the North. Follow their blog. Alan was a student of Shunryu Suzuki.


1-04-12 - The phrase “most important” as found in Shunryu Suzuki lectures #133 - from his last lecture - and that's the last "most important."


Results of cuke's solstice greeting (otherwise known as cuke spam).


1-03-12 - The phrase “most important” as found in Shunryu Suzuki lectures #132 - from one of his last lectures at Tassajara.


DC personal update


1-02-12 - The phrase “most important” as found in Shunryu Suzuki lectures #131


The word of the year this year in Japan was kizuna meaning bond as in they bonded together and helped each other when disaster struck.

 


1-01-12 - A very happy New Year from all of us at cuke.com.

A Shunryu Suzuki New Year's story




What Was New from 1999 to this year index

***************

How to donate to this site and the work DC does

home | what's new |
contact DC