Conversations with Rebecca Li Rebecca Li is a second-generation Dharma heir of Chan Master Sheng Yen, whose Dharma Drum Foundation now has affiliate centers in fourteen countries. “The first time I met Master Shen Yen in person,” she tells me, “was when I was in grad school, and he visited Los Angeles. It was veryContinue reading “Sheng Yen”
Author Archives: Rick McDaniel
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 focusContinue reading “Nelson Foster”
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.Continue reading “Richard Baker”
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 withContinue reading “David Parks”
Guy Gaudry
London, Ontario, Zen Center – Guy Gaudry is the director of the London Zen Center in Ontario. He grew up in a small town in British Columbia – Hope – where he was introduced to Buddhism in a pharmacy. “In Hope, our only source of information was the local drug store. It was a veryContinue reading “Guy Gaudry”
Tess Beasley
Pacific Zen Institute – Tess Beasley, although located in Connecticut on the East Coast, is the current board president of the Pacific Zen Institute on the West. And she grew up far from either ocean in Utah. “Neither of my parents were Mormon. They ended up there by just strange karmic circumstances and decided toContinue reading “Tess Beasley”
Joko Beck
A conversation with Peg Syverson – Joko Beck died in 2011, before I began doing these interviews. I never met her but have spoken with several people who knew her. Peg Syverson was one of the most informative of these. Joko was the founder of the Ordinary Mind School of Zen and became one ofContinue reading “Joko Beck”
Leonard Marcel
Seven Thunders – Leonard Marcel is a founding member – and current teacher – of Seven Thunders Zen Sangha in Portland, Oregon. He is also a retired psychiatrist and Jungian analyst. He grew up in Brooklyn, ten blocks away from Bernie Glassman’s home neighborhood. “We never knew each other, and, of course, he died aContinue reading “Leonard Marcel”
Pat Hawk
Abridged from Catholicism and Zen – Combining Zen practice and Catholicism is based in “the recognition in experience of a resonance between the two traditions. Many Catholics remark, after their first Zen experience, that it is what they have always been seeking.” So wrote the first Catholic priest born in America to receive Dharma transmission.Continue reading “Pat Hawk”
Richard Bryan McDaniel 