Zen Conversations

Conversations with North American Zen Teachers

Nelson Foster

Ring of Bone Zendo and East Rock Sangha Nelson Foster begins our conversation by telling me, bluntly: “As I’ve said to you before – fair warning – I really think this is a story of Zen communities and organizations, sanghas. Teachers come and go, but the Dharma stays with the Sangha. I see a focus…

Richard Baker

Dharma Sangha Centers –   “There was a psychic at Tassajara that I visited with my best friend, Bob, and my sister,” David Chadwick tells me. David is Shunryu Suzuki’s biographer and chronicler of the San Francisco Zen Center. “He was a very powerful psychic, and we’d each gotten readings which were kind of cool.…

David Parks

Bluegrass Zen – I was a member of an amateur bluegrass group while in university, so am charmed by the idea that there is Bluegrass Zen community in Lexington, Kentucky. It’s resident teacher, David Parks, was born in Phoenix, Arizona but grew up in Kentucky. “When I was born, my father was a doctor with…

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