May 2026 – Richard Bryan McDaniel

Philip Whalen

Adapted from The Third Step East – For many people in the 1950s and early ’60s, their first encounter with Zen came not from reading Philip Kapleau’s Three Pillars of Zen or Shunryu Suzuki’s Zen Mind, Beginners Mind but rather from reading Jack Kerouac’s 1958 novel, The Dharma Bums. By the 1940s, information about ZenContinue reading “Philip Whalen”

John Tarrant

Pacific Zen Institute – I first interviewed John Tarrant at his home in Santa Rosa in 2013. His was the third interview I conducted in this project, and I was still finding my way as an interviewer. I did a second interview with him last November; it was my 289th. He is Australian and grewContinue reading “John Tarrant”