cuke.com
- an archival site on the life and world of Shunryu Suzuki and those who knew
him and anything else DC feels like - originally a site for
Crooked Cucumber: the Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki
cuke.com
- an archival site on the life and world of Shunryu Suzuki and those who knew
him and anything else DC feels like - originally a site for
Crooked Cucumber: the Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki
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Report on the Shunryu Suzuki Media Archive with a Focus on Lectures Submitted by David Chadwick May 25, 2008 This is a Shunryu Suzuki Legacy Project draft report for Lew Richmond and Steve Stucky
ABBREVIATED CONTENTS AND PRIORITY POINTS [SSL = Shunryu Suzuki Lectures] [SFZC = San Francisco Zen Center] PART I: THE STATE OF THE ARCHIVE A. Introduction B. Inventory and Data Base 08 C. Recent Archival Work - Many SSL original tapes located at Watts studio and will be moved to Ino office at City Center on Tuesday, May 27th,, the earliest possible. D. Conclusion - There has been a lot of good work done with the Shunryu Suzuki media materials and they have been taken care of fairly well, but the time has come to pay more attention to this diverse treasure and to take better care of it. The archive needs immediate attention at every level if it is to be well preserved. PART II: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ALL MATERIALS A. Regard this archive as a delicate treasure never to be neglected. Organize it, secure it, preserve and protect it, multiply it, and make it available. B. Seek out Shunryu Suzuki lecture tapes and transcripts not yet included.
E. Don’t lump SS archiving in with other SFZC archiving. F. Preserve all media and materials without discrimination. Save that for the next level of editing and presentation. PART III: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE AUDIO ARCHIVE A. The most precious component of the archive is the original tapes which should be kept securely under strict control and played for archiving only – not for listening.
C. Make a highest possible quality digital backup of the entire audio archive with copies for centers in Suzuki lineage on hard disc and on DVD. D. Make CD sets of the whole master cassette set in the same way as the Nothing Special set was made so that right away we can have a working digital copy of the archive. See appendix B E. Make new master cassettes for any that are missing. F. The two Esalen Lectures are available for Zen Center to obtain by writing a letter. One set of masters were lost in a fire which destroyed the huge Esalen tape archive in Monterrey. IV. THE PRINT ARCHIVES A. Update and upgrade the print archive digital and hard copy, verbatim and non verbatim (where there’s no tape to check against). B. Include in archive those non verbatim SSL not included C. Review and evaluate all untranscribed tapes with sound problems and transcribe as many as can be. D. Review all non verbatim SSL and check for error – not edit but proof. E. Create new CD of SSL transcripts and other materials with printed version V. OTHER ARCHIVES A. Moving Image Archive - Archive the films of Shunryu Suzuki according to highest accepted standards. B. Still Image Archive - Archive the photos according to the highest accepted standards. C. Non Media Archive - Objects that belonged to or were used by Suzuki should be kept in a special place like the Shunryu Suzuki Archive Room. V. AVAILABILITY AND PRESENTATION A. As custodian of the this legacy of Shunryu Suzuki’s teaching, the SFZC should make all the raw and edited materials freely available for scholars and students to study and work with. B. There should be at least complete set of CDs and tape copies available at the SFZC dharma centers and at sister centers, starting with the City Center to protect the originals and cassette masters from being used. C. Make sure tapes of SSL that have been available in the bookstore continue to be D. Make Nothing Special set of SSL CDs and bound verbatim transcripts available to wider group E. Make an entire enhanced digital audio archive of SSL available at the various centers F. Internet - Making the whole archive available on the Internet would go a long way toward solving the problems of availability and presentation.
VI. CONCLUSION – THERE IS NO END TO ARCHIVING APPENDIX A: Summary of Shunryu Suzuki Lecture Data Base 2008 [CL08] APPENDIX B - Recording Information and Advice
APPENDIX C – Examples and Precedent
APPENDIX D: History of Shunryu Suzuki Lecture Archiving The most important thing done with the Shunryu Suzuki lectures in recent years is the excellent CD set with transcript of forty carefully chosen SSL called Nothing Special. APPENDIX E: Notes APPENDIX F: Thanks to: PART I: THE STATE OF THE ARCHIVE A. Introduction The Shunryu Suzuki Media Archive (SSMA) consists of four types of media - audio, print, still images, and moving images - each in analogue and digital forms. The San Francisco Zen Center is the custodian and presumed owner of almost all of these materials. Starting in early April of this year I have investigated the major body of this media archive: the audio and print versions of Shunryu Suzuki’s lectures (SSL). The purpose was to assess the state of the archive and to make suggestions as to how to proceed in order to preserve this body of teaching so that it can be read, listened to, studied, analyzed in complete and high quality form, both now and into the future.
1. There are two basic categories of Shunryu Suzuki lecture transcripts – those with tapes and those without. In the compilation of lecture transcripts made by Bill Redican and later worked on by Shinshu Roberts under the authority of Michael Wenger, those transcripts that could be and were checked against a recording were identified as verbatim (V) and those that could not be checked against a tape were labeled non verbatim (U). SSL audio media is analogue and digital. Analogue are the tapes. The tapes are in sets or disbursed. The sets are called originals and masters. Each audio lecture has one or two original tapes, either reel to reel or cassette. Most of them are cassette. If an original is missing, a second generation copy takes its place in the original set. The master archival reel to reel set of tapes is at Mark studio in San Anselmo. [See appendix B] From the master reel to reel set a master cassette set was created on especially high quality, thick, TDK tape no longer available commercially. There are also copies of the originals, copies of those copies, and copies of the master cassettes. The only digital copies of SSL that I know of are in the 40 lecture CD set with spiral bound transcripts called Nothing Special. Copies of these CDs were distributed to the Branching Streams groups in the Shunryu Suzuki lineage. In the SFZC library I counted two complete sets. 2. In the course of working on this report, I created a database in Excel, a chronological list [CL08] which I am using for the inventory of the Suzuki lecture archive. This data base is extensive, complicated, and ongoing and is not included as an appendix except as a summary. 3. See Appendix A: Summary of Shunryu Suzuki Lecture Data Base 2008 [CL08] 4. A summary of this work in progress is that there are 315 transcripts in the last CD that went out. 232 of these transcripts are verbatim and were checked against tapes. 79 are transcripts labeled "non verbatim" that have no corresponding tape in the archive. I’ve collected 61 non verbatim additions to add to the transcript collection. In addition there are a number of improved (proofed) transcripts that are ready to enter. There are a lot original tapes missing but I think most of them are with the master archival tapes at the home and studio of Mark Watts. 5. Notes on other items included in the CL08 data base * The SSL archiving work done from 1999 to 2003 emphasized making archival copies of the original lecture tapes and verbatim transcriptions of as many of those tapes as could be understood. Lecture transcriptions and edited versions without tapes to check them against were not dealt with as thoroughly. Edited versions were not included in the archive. * Gordon Geist, whom I’ve collaborated with for years (translator of ZMBM and NAS into Norwegian) has done "light edits" (minimum changes for readability) of 45 verbatim lectures (GGLE) and proofed 31 of the earliest Wind Bell lectures on the Blue Cliff Records (also checked against text Suzuki was speaking from) and proofed lecture excerpts and gists (GGC). He does about one lecture a month and will soon retire and try to increase his output. * The entire first CD of SSL transcripts are online and searchable at www.gurnaney.com/suzuki - username: [private] - password: [private] [someday these won't be private but that will take a little time - Untill then, if you want to access these lectures, make an effort] Reb Anderson’s lectures on Vasubandhu www.gurnaney.com/vasu also online * One of the shortcomings of the CD of SSL transcripts is that the lectures are in MS Word with footnotes, macrons, and other formatting. It’s good to have it like that but this online website of the SSL in text format created in 2003 by Anil Gurnaney is more widely usable and universal. Anil is sending me the entire archive in text file to add to the CD of transcripts. This is a great improvement to the CD. Words will be much easier to search for. [See Appendix E, note 1] * I did not inventory film or photos - still and moving images. This should be done right away. See below. C. Recent Archival Work 1. The inventory of SSL audio tapes, transcripts, edited versions, and related materials and inquiry into what to do next has been going on since early April, 2008. 2. Located eight missing master cassette tapes and two missing original tapes were located. 3. In order to follow the basic archiving principle of keeping different copies of the archive in different places, 197 SSL original cassette tapes moved from Mark Lancaster closet to Ino office. Master cassette set left in Lancaster’s office closet. Copies were temporarily left there. 4.Many SSL original tapes located at Watts studio and will be moved to Ino office at City Center on Tuesday, May 27th,, the earliest possible. This is urgent – a fire there could destroy both many originals and all master archival copies together. 5. Box marked ZMBM ms contained 48 SSL transcripts not in the archive - obvious verbatims though not checkable for there are no tapes for any of them. Thanks to Diana Gerard for pointing them out. Made three sets of copies of these transcripts with one copy going to Mark Lancaster’s office closet, one to mine, and one to Gloria Coonan for entering onto disc and into the archive. I’ve already scanned and corrected the first lecture in this series and it’s on disc. It may have been Gloria who made the original transcripts. The edited versions in the box were also copied. I already have many of them on disc as Marian Derby’s original ms for a book that became ZMBM. Other edited versions may have been done by Trudy. Didn’t yet copy Trudy’s editing drafts. Moved this box into the Ino’s office with the SSL original tapes which are marked as originals and as "not to be played". 6. Gita in the City Center is making a copy of the master log of the SSL tape archive compiled by Bill Redican. 7. Transcribed the Esalen SSL tapes which will be ready to be entered into archive after they’re checked against the tape again. 8. The Gordon Geist 45 light edits and 31 proofed early excerpts and lectures mentioned above are an excellent example of what can be done to improve the archive and make it more accessible.
D. Conclusion There has been a lot of good work done with the Shunryu Suzuki media materials and they have been taken care of fairly well, but the time has come to pay more attention to this diverse treasure. The archive needs immediate attention at every level if it is to be well preserved for future generations. PART II: PRIORITY RECOMMENDATIONS FOR ALL MATERIALS A. Regard this archive as a delicate treasure never to be neglected. Organize it, secure it, preserve and protect it, multiply it, and make it available. Never let the thought, "it’s been taken care of," take root. Think instead, "What should be done now?" B. Seek out SSL tapes and transcripts not yet included in this archive. Time is running out both for the audio tapes and the people involved. This to me is right up at the top in terms of priority. Lew Richmond, Michael Wenger, Ed Sattizahn, Peter Schneider and others have stressed the importance of locating other tapes and transcripts for archiving ASAP. Try again to find the Los Altos tapes. Send out a mailer on the search for lost lectures. Make phone calls. Pay visits. Emphasize to people who might have tapes the importance of not playing them because they might have only one play left. I’d suggest that anyone who has a lost tape or transcript should get a whole copy of the archive as a gift. Check again with other groups and teachers and former students of Suzuki. C. Create a permanent full time archivist position. There is so much to do. They need an assistant too and volunteers. The archivist would make regular reports to the board of directors and abbots who should constantly be reminded that assuring preservation of the Suzuki archives is their solemn duty. D. There should be a secure place to house the primary Shunryu Suzuki archives and other archives of the SFZC and established secondary places for copies of these archives. Important archives should not be in a wooden building. The City Center building at 300 Page Street is the most secure of the SFZC buildings in that area though it doesn’t pass standards set by university archives such as USF and UCB. Some copies of the archives should also be kept in established University or other professional archival establishments built considering seismic, fire, temperature, humidity and other factors. The key archiving principles of variety of methods and redundancy of copies should be followed. E. Don’t lump Suzuki archiving in with other SFZC archiving. This work should proceed unlinked to other work which would drag it down. This refers to funding and timelines for this work but not necessarily to the place where they are kept or the authority structure that governs them. F. Preserve all media and materials without discrimination. Save that for the next level of editing and presentation. G. The archivist should develop an Archiving Policy Statement which will always be subject to amendment. H. Archivists should keep up with what’s happening in Buddhist and other archiving and cultivate expert friends of the archive. Part of the archive should be standards and procedures, other examples, and precedents of archiving. See appendix C. I. Possibly the Suzuki archive could be part of a wider organization that includes not only the SFZC but other groups and teachers and students in the Suzuki lineage as well. That’s the way I see it and relate to it. I support Lew Richmond’s proposals that every teacher and group in the Suzuki lineage should be able to have a complete copy of the SSL archive which would logically extend to include the whole SS media archive. This not only gives these teachers and students access to these core materials but increases their odds of surviving far into the future. [See Appendix C, Lewis Lancaster] PART III: RECOMMENDATIONS FOR THE AUDIO ARCHIVE A. The most precious component of the archive is the original tapes which should be kept securely under strict control and played for archiving only – not for listening. For years we’ve thought of the Watts master cassettes as the new highest rung on this ladder. However, according to audio archivists familiar with new developments in master restoration, this is no longer the case. Evaluation of the originals and masters should be conducted to see which set would be best for digital archiving, but archivists contacted for this report assume the originals will be the best to use. [See appendix B] B. Move master archival reel to reel 10" tapes from Watts studio to more secure location. Watts studio is a wooden building above a steep tall hillside slope of bay trees in the driest year in Marin history. This is an archivist’s nightmare. Watts himself mentions it. USF library has offered a spot that Dr. John Nelson attests would be secure. Priority Storage near the SFZC has a 5’X5’ space – fireproof, humidity and temperature controlled, secure, 2nd floor - would cost about $1740 the first year. The storage I use near my house is excellent with all those features and much cheaper – about $225 for the first year. We’re now paying Watts $2000 a year. As I type firefighters are battling high winds and fires not far away. C. Make a highest possible quality digital backup of the entire audio archive with multiple copies stored in multiple locations and on various media according to current state of the art archival methods. This should be done for purposes both of having higher quality restorations and for preserving the tapes. With new methods, the quality of the sound of Suzuki’s voice can be captured more accurately; some tapes and words that cannot be understood now will be audible with these new methods. Test samples can be made so we can judge for ourselves. Regardless of how successful these new methods are, expert opinion concurs that the tapes should definitely be digitally copied. [See appendix B]. D. Make CD sets of the whole master cassette set in the same way as the Nothing Special set was made so that we have a quick working digital copy of the archive. Get it on hard disc as well. Cost to master these CDs – about $15 each before quantity discount. Subsequent copies are more like $2 each if made there. [See bottom of appendix B] E. Make new master cassettes for any that are missing. There appears to be one missing for sure and some others missing maybe – have to check closer with the master log. In CL08 15 are marked as possibly missing. F. The two Esalen lectures are available for Zen Center to obtain by writing a letter to the Human Potential Audio Foundation that now owns them. Mark Watts is the chairman of the board. One set of masters were lost in a fire which destroyed the huge Esalen tape archive in Monterrey. [See Appendix E, note 2] G. Go over master log carefully for important notes such as those indicating which tapes should be redone from master reel to reel at Watt’s to master cassettes. H. Evaluate all tapes with sound problems. Try to figure out which tapes Watts worked on to make understandable which appear not to have been transcribed. He thinks about five. What happened to them? An older figure was twelve but Watts says seven were too difficult. Twenty-seven in all are marked as having sound problems. [See digital audio archiving suggestions in appendix B] I. Try to locate any leftover blank TDK special cassettes that were used for the master cassette set for Watts to use in making other master cassettes. J. Move SSL tape copies from Mark Lancaster office closet to temporary place in library or somewhere where they can be stored separately and inventoried with other copies. Review recent inventory of all tape copies (as distinct from the original and master sets) at the three sites and integrate data of SSL tape copies in CL08. Extend this inventory to other groups. K. Find 7" reel to reel 1st archival copies from the mid seventies done by Levine and Katz. L. Add any original tapes found to collection in Ino’s office which is possibly a temporary location. M. Add interviews with Suzuki family and temple members to audio and print archive. N. Add Peter Coyote reading ZMBM to the audio archive. Why not have him read entire book? IV. THE PRINT ARCHIVES A. Update and upgrade the print archive both digital and hard copy, verbatim and non verbatim. B. Include in archive those non verbatim SSL not included C. Review and evaluate all untranscribed tapes with sound problems and transcribe as many as can be. Note which SSL tapes are beyond our ability to understand and transcribe. D. Review all non verbatim SSL and check for error – not edit but proof. Pay special attention to Lotus Sutra lectures both verbatim and non verbatim. E. Create new CD of SSL transcripts and other materials with printed version 1.Add SSL transcripts not previously included in archive or on prior version of CD - 2. Add text version of SSLs 3. Add proofed non verbatim lectures – give these the attention they deserve 4. Add edited versions of SSLs – Derby, Dixon, Weitsman, Wenger, Thanas, Cabarga, Fikes, Brown, Geist, etc 5. Add all Wind Bell SSL, early SS lecture notes and excerpts and other WB material attributed to Suzuki. 6. Try to identify each lecture with an editor 7. Add new material to lecture index 8. Make first line index up to date F. Inventory all older transcripts to make sure those lectures are all included in the CL08 list, thus included in the archive. G. Go over master log to see what notes affect the verbatim transcripts. Some seem not to have been done. H. Go over first line index on CL08 and check entries that have a first line to make sure all have transcripts and vice versa. I. Inventory, catalogue, and archive all pre verbatim collections of SSL transcriptions J. Identify clearly all pre verbatim [where tape verification has been done] and pre proofed [for non verbatim] transcripts as such. K. Decide which older versions should not be available in the libraries, etc and what to do with them – destroy, quarantine, isolate, make available. L. Do more light edits of SSL so there is a complete set of more readable almost verbatim lectures. Allow multiple sets of light edits. Always identify editor and date of editing. M. Create a glossary of words in SSL with macrons and without for various uses, one being that it can be a place to check words in the text versions of SSL to see if they have macrons or not in the Japanese. N. Review transcripts of Peter Schneider’s interviews with Suzuki and provide verbatim versions for the archive and CD which I did long ago. Edited versions with notes are necessary to understand some of it but still there should be a verbatim version. Currently only edited versions are on the CD and my web site. O. Collect from lectures all comments by Shunryu Suzuki on his past. P. Create other collections from the lectures such as we have on the San Do Kai, Lotus, and Eko, most of which won’t be done in groups like those. For instance, I just had a request for lectures he did that related to the Heart Sutra and Prajna Paramita in general. Q. Wenger suggests to get SSL on Genjo Koan, Mel and Tanahashi’s work on that, and Shohaku Okamura’s stuff together. R. Wenger says some Genjo Koan lectures missing - neither tapes nor transcripts. Follow up on this note. S. Provide sets of edited lectures as well as the verbatim for people to read. Clearly label who edited and when and if a verbatim or earlier transcription is available. T. Change "Suzuki-roshi" to "Suzuki Roshi" in the CD of transcripts. Wenger and DC opinion. Consider using "Shunryu Suzuki" more. U. Include in archive Berkeley Barb article on Suzuki and a few others from back then. V. Other Related Suggested Tasks 1. Copy Trudy Dixon’s editing drafts for ZMBM. 2. Do a more thorough history of these lectures and this archiving. 3. Locate backup files of prior archiving work and add to SS archive (Redican, Shinshu). 4.Archive all the Wind Bells period – front to back. Some there are only a few copies left. 5.Copy sewing books hand written in Japanese from Suzuki library and return there then send copies to Diane Burr for her work and hopefully for translation. Promised Gil Fronsdal. 6. Look for other books and materials like this in City Center, mainly upstairs in that tatami room where he did dokusan. 7. Collect articles on and mentions of Suzuki from books, magazines, and newsletters and scan them into the printed archive. 8. Have information on other related archives. [See Appendix C - Examples and Precedents] V. OTHER ARCHIVES A. Moving Image Archive - Archive the films of Shunryu Suzuki according to highest accepted standards. Lew Lancaster suggests contacting the Pacific Film Archive. Digital and analogue formats are both still in use with film archiving. Terry Delsing says that if we value the information on those films we should run not walk them to a film archivist. The Sandokai film was transferred to digital video Mini DV at San Francisco Cideo Transfer Center. Wonderful work has been done with these films and more can be done in the future, but only if they survive. Enter them into the digital archive with multiple copies. We should evaluate the condition of the originals and copies, consult with experts, and do what is to be done soon. B. Still Image Archive - Archive the photos according to the highest accepted standards. They have a lifespan. All Suzuki era photographs whether including Suzuki or not should be evaluated and archived as experts advise with backup copies in numerous locations. Suggest funding this separate from the whole big photo archive in order that it get done soon. People in the photos should be identified. We could use the Internet as an aide in getting that done. C. Non Media Archive - Objects that belonged to or were used by Suzuki should be kept in a special place like the Shunryu Suzuki Archive Room. The little book he brought with him when he came over on the plane should be retrieved and put there. The insides of Miss Ransom’s Buddha which Grahame Petchey has should be there. I have an obi of Suzuki’s that could be there. I had a zagu but it was stolen at Green Gulch. The hand written sewing books from the library should go there. They’re not his – maybe Mitsu’s or Tomoe’s. VI. AVAILABILITY AND PRESENTATION A. As the present custodian of the legacy of Shunryu Suzuki’s teaching, I suggest that the SFZC make all the raw and edited materials freely available for scholars and students to study and work with. We should continue to work with these lectures - editing, distilling, selecting, interpreting – to make the teaching in them more accessible, but the original lectures, however obscure, should also be available. There should be transparency – an original to go back to so that the processes of editing and selection etc can be known. The SFZC would still own them and be the only party which could make consumer products from them - books, CDs, videos, photos, t-shirts. The most important point is that if someone wants to read or listen to any of Shunryu Suzuki’s lectures, they should be able to. The audio CD and transcripts of the Nothing Special set cover a good deal of such need if they were made more available. They are now at the SFZC library and at some other centers in the Suzuki lineage. It’s not really presented well though. There’s no one there at all these days. I don’t know how people find out about them or access the materials. Thought should go into how to present the print and audio and let people know how they’re available. B. There should be at least complete set of CDs and tape copies available at the SFZC dharma centers and at sister centers, starting with the City Center to protect the originals and cassette masters from being used. C. Make sure tapes of SSL that have been available in the bookstore continue to be – in all three centers and available to sister centers. Inventory these tapes. Make CDs out of them? D. Make Nothing Special set of SSL CDs and bound verbatim transcripts available to wider group than the Branching Streams – to Suzuki lineage groups like Dharma Sangha Crestone and Germany and Goat in the Road and Sonoma Mt. Center for starters. E. Make an entire enhanced digital audio archive of SSL available at the various centers - on DVDs and hard disc and through pod casts on the Internet. Create selections and excerpts from the entire audio archive for listening and distribution. F. Internet - Making the whole archive more available on the Internet would go a long way toward solving the problems of availability and presentation. Considering the examples of other archives (see appendix C) and briefly looking into them, I cannot help but notice how dominant the Internet is in archiving and making the material in archives widely available. There should be a web site just for Shunryu Suzuki media archives – print, audio, still and moving pictures - which could also house related materials and oral and written history such as that on cuke.com. A Shunryu Suzuki archivist would be free to take anything from cuke.com and off my computer and from my papers as well. I see cuke.com as being much more temporary than a Shunryu Suzuki archival web site. Of course, as mentioned earlier, the entire first CD of SSL transcripts are online and searchable at www.gurnaney.com/suzuki - username: <private> password: <private>. So it is on the Internet securely with password, just not officially. If you add what’s on cuke.com to that and the SFZC and especially the Berkeley sites, and elsewhere, there’s quite a bit. That’s the Internet for you. What I’m talking about here though is there being a Shunryu Suzuki archival web site that will be more complete and dependably long term. G. FUNDING - To get all this work done of course there needs to be funding. That is something to be discussed by those who receive this proposal. It is suggested that we not wait for the SFZC to fund this but that we seek funds immediately from the alumni as Lew Richmond suggests, and other interested sources. VII. CONCLUSION - THERE IS NO END TO ARCHIVING There will be an endless amount of work to do to preserve the Shunryu Suzuki archives and there will be new information and methodology to keep up with. Archiving technology is constantly changing. It’s important to archive equipment and software when possible and continually transfer into new formats knowing that the reading machines of the past may soon be obsolete. Older methods such as carving in stone should not be ignored. As Dr. Lew Lancaster points out, digital media is more fragile than people realize and analogue methods are not to be discarded hastily, yet it would be foolish not to digitalize electronic media these days with the highest appropriate quality. We should also preserve with utmost care the original analogue media and equipment when possible and return to it when the evaluation of experts suggests to do so. In archiving preservation it is best to move ahead on multiple fronts and spread out as much as possible. Diversity and redundancy. An archive is a living entity. It is like a garden though in a slower time frame. Turn around and it’s decaying. Ignore it and it will die. Archivists believe in impermanence, live with it, and humbly realize that anything short of eternal vigilance is capitulation to disease, old age, and death of what they are trying to preserve. Eventually the archivist loses and all is lost to be reborn at another time and place, yet for a while we will have helped to pass a torch to light the way. We are all the archivists of the legacy of Shunryu Suzuki. We must not let this light grow dim and go out before its time. APPENDIXES APPENDIX A: SUMMARY OF SSL DATA BASE 2008 [CL08] [as of 5/24/08] On the left column in this data base is a number that stands for every entry. At present, there are 434 lines in this data base. Each line stands for a unique print or audio item – most of them SSL but some of the early ones especially are quite brief and some represent entries in Redican’s archive list which proved empty or some sort of mistake. Suzuki’s funeral tapes are two lines, a few were just chanting, and there are a few lectures by other people that take up space. There are a number of entries without tapes and a number without transcripts. To me there’s maybe a ten percent confusion factor when comparing the different lists and collections of tapes and transcripts each entered into a column of the data base. There are columns for various audio and print versions, edited versions, notes, first lines. One column that I don’t have filled in yet and which will be helpful in understanding what there is and what there isn’t is the column for significant notes from the master log. 434 – Lines and growing – not all representing distinct SSL 315 - Entries checked as having a transcript on latest 2004 CD of SSL 232 - Verbatim transcripts – marked V on 2004 CD of SSL 79 - Non verbatim – marked U on 2004 CD of SSL 4 - ? – unclear if there are transcripts or not on 2004 CD of SSL 119 – Lines without transcripts on original list 61 - Additions ready to add to CD and printed archive of lecture transcript which break down as: 48 – lectures from ZMBM ms box not on list (1 was included in prior CD somewhat edited) 2 – Esalen lectures - have transcripts and cassette tapes (can get original & maybe master) 2 – lecture fragments in closet 9 – Early Wind Bell excerpts 376 – transcript count with 2004 CD list and the 61 above that are ready to add 58 - lines left to explain after subtracting 61 from 119 27 – because of sound problems there is no transcript 31 – various reasons for no transcript – a number were found to not be Suzuki lectures 399 – in first line index including no transcript for sound problem (includes the 61 to be added from above) 197 original tapes counted – almost all are SSL 96 – original tapes couldn’t locate – discovered Watts has many with reel to reel masters will have new count on 5-25 after retrieving these originals and separating them from the master reel to reels 293 – total lectures in original tape count (some lectures have two tapes) 275 - lectures on master cassettes made from Mark Watt’s archival master reel to reel 15 - master cassette missing or unaccounted for (most will be for good reason I think) 3 - can’t explain 290 – total lecture in master cassette count (fewer than number of tapes) 222 - entries in Mark Watts master archival reel to reel set (somewhat different from number of lectures) obviously incomplete list because Mark counted about 281 master reels. The counting started with the cassettes after the reel to reel originals had been done and went to 206 and there were about 75 reel to reels originals. But we didn’t actually check them. He was too busy. There are 255 pages in the master log created by Bill Redican with some of those pages standing for a number of lecture tapes. There are some lecture tapes from which verbatim transcripts were not obtained. Many of those are from the 27 tapes identified as having sound problems. Also noted were: 7 – published in WB – Lotus Sutra lectures with tapes but no verbatim transcript 4 – not yet done APPENDIX B: RECORDING INFORMATION AND ADVICE From Mark Watts of the Electronic University on the SSL archival masters Mark Watts has, according to his estimate, 281 master archival reel to reel tapes, 75 without catalogue numbers and 206 with. The former were made from reel to reel originals and the idea of numbering didn’t come up till Bill Redican brought in the cassettes. Something like that. The tape recorders used were four Studer A810, two of which were usually being worked on and calibrated while the other two were in use. The master archival reel to reel tapes at Mark Watts’ studio he recorded he says in 1996 but I’m sure it was after that [get the dates] on ¼" wide 10" diameter Scotch mastering archival no-print tape – maybe #680 he says - at 7 ½ IPS. This is two track tape used to copy mono recordings. Mark says that on one channel he rolled off everything over 10k and on the other rolled off above 8.5k and took some lower end off and boosted the 3.5k to 5k range slightly - the consonant enunciation range. Mark thinks he worked on about five tapes that were hard to understand to make more understandable copies. Another seven were beyond his ability at that time but these days they might be doable he says – by others who do that sort of work. Mark says the original tapes were of many, maybe thirty variations, not in bad shape and should still be pretty good. Little shed. Had to bake a few that were sticky. A lot were copies of originals. Some were mislabeled. He recalls having been paid $35,000 for these tapes to be made plus one master cassette to be copied from each of them. He suggests that digital copies off these cassette masters would be adequate for our needs. He says that WAV files might be best but that he imagined that if we made high quality MP3s ourselves we wouldn’t be able to hear the difference. Or, he said to use master cassettes to make WAV files to hard disk and make highest quality MP3s from WAVs to DVDs for distribution. He says some say the largest stable hard drive is 160 gigabytes, while others won’t go above 80. Mark suggests we use an Aiwa Pro or Marantz tape recorder for playback when making digital copies. Clean the heads after each pass. Barkley Ogden, Conservation Lab, Bancroft Library *Digital WAV file yes is the best archival method though it is not perfect. It can be garbage. *So you have to do as high a capture as you can which is a matter of capture rate and range *WAV is the essential preservation format of the moment. *Since any digital copy can become corrupted, you need multiple copies. *Since any location can be subject to fire, earthquake, theft etc, need multiple locations *Look for places to put your archive where you can maintain ownership *The Internet archive in SF would put up a copy of the archive for free *It’s important to go back to the analogue original if capture technology improves but analogue won’t survive much longer because of the deterioration of the media and the equipment becoming obsolete. There won’t be any reading devices in time. *The most essential ingredient of an archive is the archivist and oversight that makes sure that the archive is being tended to and upgraded. To leave it alone is to let it die. Terry Delsing, audio archivist, LA Terry Delsing is a recording engineer and award winning sound editor (Walk the Line) who, as a private contractor, has done master restoration of over 1000 albums for Warner Music Group. He says the machine used and tape used in the Mark Watts archiving project was archival but not the tape speed. He says that 7½ IPS is a noisy speed. He says of course those copies are valuable and should be protected – preferably moved to a fire proof location – but they are likely not the best copies to use to make a digital archival set of tapes. He also says it doesn’t really matter because developments in audio archiving and restoration in recent years are so amazing that nothing we would have done ten or even five years ago would compare. He has offered to evaluate the archive for free and suggests another engineer, Ricky Sanchez to work with the original tapes to create a high quality digital master which will capture not only the information but more of the sound qualities of Suzuki’s voice. He suggests that he listen to (and look at on screen at) a few samples of the original tapes and cassette masters to determine the next course of action. He and Sanchez would make a sample so we could listen and compare what we’ve got with what we would get. Sanchez says he would probably have to work for five hours or so on a one hour tape. Interestingly, Delsing says that the highest level WAV file – 24 bit 192k - is overkill for spoken word, that nothing over 69 is necessary so that 24 bit 88.2k digital recording is all he would suggest for a digital archive of the SSL. At that rate it’s less than one gigabyte for an hour lecture which means that the whole audio archive could go on a 250 gig hard drive. Ricky Sanchez says that the newer 250 gig hard drives are stable and being used for archiving and that there should be multiple copies of that drive anyway. Delsing says he might even suggest that the standard 44.1k used for CDs would be sufficient to capture all information which would mean a 125 gig hard drive would be sufficient. He also mentioned a recent format called one bit which is said to exceed analogue in quality and range which might be suitable for a digital copy of the archive but maybe not. This is the sort of very high level tape restoration that we dreamed about ten years ago. Now it can be done. Also, now we are paying attention. I suggest we do it now before we go back to sleep. We can raise the money and do it. Roberto Zimmerman, Hi Speed Duplication and Recording Supply Co., SF DC comments - This lab mastered the 40 lecture CD set for the SFZC and made the copies. There are 42 or so CDs. Cost to master these CDs – about $15 each before quantity discount. Subsequent copies are more like $2 each if made there – something like that – didn’t write down. The sample rate is 16 bit 44.1k. That’s standard CD quality. It’s fine for listening and possibly all these master cassettes need for full capture. APPENDIX C: EXAMPLES AND PRECEDENT John Nelson, Associate Professor of East Asian Religion at the University of San Francisco suggested that I mention a few examples of the archiving of a spiritual teaching. We need look no further than the Jesuits who are associated with USF and who have preserved not only the teachings of St. Ignatius and others in their church, but the teachings of Buddhism and other religions as well. I know they’ve also been bad at times like when they excommunicated Meister Eckhart, but they’ve also helped to spread Buddhism. Gita Gayatri (sp?) helped me a good deal with the inventory of the SSL archive at the City Center. Gita is from Kerala in India. While we were working we talked about the state of the Suzuki archive and what could be done to improve it, and she commented that where she comes from every teacher has a special building for their archives. We could ask Lew Lancaster to give a talk on the archival work he has been doing for years. He has been involved in a wide range and exhaustive depth of Buddhist archiving and may have preserved more Buddhist teaching than anyone else on this globe in the history of the world. The following quote comes from cuke.com. The link to it doesn’t work right now so I can’t attribute it to anyone: "Lewis Lancaster will no doubt go down in history as the leading pioneer in our time in terms of his energy and foresight in encouraging, organizing, and networking a wide range of the first generation of digitized Buddhist Studies textual and cultural resources." Lew Lancaster suggest that we look into the California Digital Library which is both an archive and the online catalogue serving all ten campuses of the University of California and the state government of California. At some point we would probably want to get our archive into dark storage at UC San Diego. No formatting for that – all ASCII – text files. I guess that doesn’t include any sound or film. Lew has other archives he suggests we look into. A Suzuki archive could also be part of his growing Electronic Cultural Atlas Initiative which John Nelson was also involved with at the first. To be part of it there must be longitudinal and latitudinal cross-referencing which wouldn’t be hard for Suzuki because he was mainly in a few places and we know where they are. We should keep an eye out on what others are doing in this area, note inspiring examples abound such as Gil Fronsdal’s audiodharma.org, and note the ease of finding and reading Jack Kornfield’s lectures on the web. ________________ How Trungpa Rinpoche’s Archives Are Being Taken Care Of: an impressive example A message that went out to Shambhala members: Parinirvana 2008: What the Archives and All of Us Can Celebrate This Year. Or How We Saved the Vidyadhara’s Voice, If Not Forever Then for a Long More than twenty-five Shambhala centers and other Dharma centers around
the world have contributed financially to this effort, so that in addition
to the master files, we also are installing libraries of Trungpa Rinpoche’s
voice on CD around the world. His voice will be preserved on four continents
so far. Mipham Rinpoche. We have an extensive collection of material by Khenpo
Tsultrim Khamtso Rinpoche. We’d like all of this material to be available
"on demand" on a giant server! I am also writing today to thank the Audio Recovery Staff (Gordon Kidd, Chris Levy, and Sandra Kipis) and the donors: the centers and individuals who have supported the Audio Recovery Project. Three cheers for these donors. Centers: Ontario United States of America Birmingham Shambhala Centre, Birmingham, Alabama Colorado Asia Other APPENDIX D: HISTORY OF SHUNRYU SUZUKI LECTURE ARCHIVING In the early days some students took notes of Suzuki’s lectures from which excerpts and then longer versions were published in the Zen Center’s fledgling publication, Wind Bell. In 1965 Marian Derby broke the taboo against taping in Los Altos and soon it began in San Francisco. Reel to reel taping (for transcribing, at times one lecture taped over the prior) gave way to cassettes and by 1969 copies were being made of these cassettes. There was no security though and people would borrow both copies and original lecture tapes and many wandered off. After Suzuki’s death gradually more importance was attached to preserving his lectures, more cassette copies were made and the originals were somewhat more carefully guarded. In 1976 Michael Katz who had been in charge of AV at the Lindesfarne Institute on Long Island came to San Francisco to archive the Suzuki lecture tapes on higher quality ¼" inch tape 7" reel, a job that had been started by Rick Levine. Michael had to return to the East Coast before the job was completed and it remained incomplete. In the mid nineties I got involved with SSL because of working on Crooked Cucumber and got obsessed with the idea of reading them all and thus getting them all together. I got everything I could off of SFZC computers which was mainly lightly edited version by Tom Cabarga and Brian Fikes and I guess Mel, can’t remember - that’s an inventory area yet to be done. Somehow I got involved with Pat Phelan’s student, a professor named Jose Escobar, and sent him every lecture there was on disc and started sending him the paper transcripts and he did one a day till close to everything we had was on disc. I was in contact with Michael Wenger on all this. He was interested in archiving and was working on editing SSL. He got me and Bill Redican together and we were looking into tape archiving and we met all sorts of neat people like Jim Wheeler who worked with the Nixon tapes and Mark Watts with his Electronic University. SFZC decided not to let Escobar continue with transcribing from tapes and he sent me back the professional transcriber I’d sent him so everything came to a standstill because we were all too busy. I sent out a fundraising letter to 400 people asking for money to be sent to the SFZC for the purpose of archiving Suzuki’s lecture tapes and transcripts, donating the first 1000 from Elin and me. Others got involved and a lot of money came in. Redican was hired and Mark Watts was selected to do the reel to reel archival copies and I stepped back from all that and they did a great job. Mark Watts says he did most of the tape copying in 96. Redican continued making the verbatim transcripts and working with the whole archive until the money ran out. After Redican left, Shinshu Roberts took over in some capacity and she did a great index for the SSL and transcribed a couple of tapes that hadn’t been done before. Redican had told me there were about a dozen tapes that Watts need to work on more carefully if they were to be transcribed. I donated $1000 toward that. Since then not much has happened with the SSL archive. There’s been work done on editing lectures and on film, but the general idea was and is that all that was taken care of. The most important thing done with the SSL in recent years that I know of is the excellent CD set with transcript of forty carefully chosen SSL called Nothing Special that Michael Wenger put together and distributed to the Branching Streams network of affiliated Zen Centers. Early last year even before he was installed new SFZC abbot Steve Stucky and I began communicating about the SSL archive and other aspects of preserving Suzuki’s legacy. I offered to do a report on the state of the archive with suggestions as to what might be done further. Here is the first draft of that report. APPENDIX E: NOTES Note 1 - On Text SSL Transcripts Anil Gurnaney developed the text version of the SSL transcripts when he was Reb Anderson’s anja and Reb couldn’t read the Word files with his older Mac computer. This site has been up for five years. Anil wrote a letter or email to ten SFZC people about it with one positive response from Vicki Austin. I told him he’d probably be told to take it down but that never happened. Mainly it’s been ignored. I copied the whole site with a program called HTTrack Website Copier that Anil told me about. I’ve been using it in my computer and assumed it was no longer on the web. I didn’t mention it on cuke.com because SFZC hasn’t agreed yet to share SSL that widely. But it’s still there for anyone to use who knows the password. Who should know? Note 2 – The Esalen Tapes The originals should be in Salinas in storage unit of HPAF – Human Potential Audio Foundation which gained ownership of the Big Sur tapes. Mark Watts is chairman of that board which presides over these tapes. According to Mark, the board follows Paul Herbert’s (founder of Big Sur Tapes) policy to return tapes to the organization of those who made lectures if they submit request in writing. Paul Herbert said they also needed consent of the speaker. They no longer belong to Janica Fox. She is in Marshall and has a master which we might consider buying from her even though she lost a court case and legal ownership. Note on terminology: I asked Casey at the Internet Archive what to call the whole archive of lectures, film, and photos and he said Media Archive with the sections being audio, print, moving image, and still image – the last two rather than film and photo. APPENDIX F: THANKS TO: Richard Baker Roshi, former abbot of the SFZC, abbot of Dharma Sangha Crestone Mt. ZC in Colorado and Johanneshof in Germany Terry Delsing, recording engineer, editor, archivist with entertainment industry, LA Charles Eckman, Associate Dir. for Collection Development, Bancroft Library, UCB Timothy O’Conner Fraser – film and video advice Diana Gerard, SFZC library Gordon Geist, translator in Norway Anil Gurnaney, creator of text version of SSL archive Dr. Lewis Lancaster – Buddhist archivist superlative Mark Lancaster, VP of SFZC John Nelson, professor of Buddhism at USF Barkley Ogden, founder and head of Conservation Lab, Bancroft Library, UCB Yvonne Rand, Goat-in-the-Road Bill Redican, former archivist, SFZC Lewis Richmond, Vimala Sangha Shinshu Roberts, former archivist, SFZC Ricky Sanchez, recording engineer, LA Peter Schneider, Beginner’s Mind Zen Center Steve Tipton, professor of sociology and religion, Emory University Michael Tsang, owner of Midi Music in Santa Rosa Dana Velden, SFZC Corporate Secretary Mark Watts, Electronic University Mel Weitsman, Berkeley Zen Center Michael Wenger, former head of studies and archives at SFZC Roberto Zimmerman, Hi Speed Duplication and Recording Supply Co., SF My apologies to anyone who’ve I’ve forgotten to mention. |
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