RICHARD JAFFE is the Chair of the Department of Religion at Duke University. He received his Ph.D. in religious studies with a concentration in Buddhist studies from Yale University in 1995. Dr. Jaffe is a specialist in modern Japanese Buddhism. He is the author of Neither Monk nor Layman: Clerical Marriage in Modern Japanese Buddhism (2002) and Seeking Shakyamuni: World Travel and the Creation of Modern Japanese Buddhism (forthcoming in Japanese). Currently he is working on a book about Japanese Buddhist travel and the transformation of Buddhism in late-nineteenth century Japan.

Richard Jaffe Duke University people page - with a photo of him in someone's very messy office.

Suzuki Roshi and the Modern Soto Denomination - Sati Conference  May 30, 1998 - by Prof. Richard Jaffe

Sati Conference page with a link to the section the SFZC Wind Bell with Jaffe's talk.

Shunryu Suzuki teachers and heirs

4-27-15 - Congrats to Richard Jaffe & Elaine Maisner on their 30th!

See photo and read about it.

Books by Richard

Seeking Śākyamuni:
South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism.University of Chicago Press, 2019

General Editor, Selected Works of D. T. Suzuki-volume iv.
University of California Press.

12-31-14 - The first volume of the Selected Works of D.T. Suzuki, which is on Zen and edited by Richard Jaffee, was published by University of California Press in November.  Volume 2, which contains a selection of Suzuki's writings on Pure Land Buddhism, edited by James Dobbins, will be published in January.  Richard is the general editor for the Selected Works, which will be four volumes in total, as well as editor of the forthcoming one-volume Suzuki Reader.  The link to the publisher's website.