Monthly Archives: February 2023

In 2023, Donna Kowal was appointed co-director of the Rochester Zen Center along with John Pulleyn. When I interviewed her in October of 2021, she was the Head of Zendo at the Center’s retreat house located at Chapin Mill, where I once practiced Tai Chi Chuan beside Philip Kapleau’s grave, then laid a stone onContinue reading “Donna (Dhara) Kowal”

Chris Amirault is a practice leader with Shining Window Zen in Tulsa, a satellite center associated with Boundless Way Zen in New England. When I ask if being a “practice leader” puts him on tenure track, he says, “You know, that’s part of what I’m trying to figure out, whether I am on tenure track,Continue reading “Chris Amirault”

Rick McDaniel’s two-book set, Zen Conversations and Further Zen Conversations, goes to the horse’s mouth – Zen teachers themselves – to open up the evolving tale of North American Zen. Most of the contemporary teachers interviewed are homegrown, having trained in the US or Canada, not in Japan. Many did so with first and secondContinue reading “Rafe Martin’s Foreword to “Further Zen Conversations””