Author Archives: Rick McDaniel

Adapted from The Third Step East – The story is told that in 1876, a Japanese fisherman—or possibly an itinerant Kegon monk— named Senzaki came upon the body of a recently deceased woman on the Russian Kamchatka peninsula which extends southward towards the archipelago of Japan. At the woman’s breast, there was a newborn childContinue reading “Nyogen Senzaki”

Mu Sang Sa Temple, Korea – When I was gathering background material on the Korean Zen Master, Seung Sahn – founder of the Kwan Um School – I was advised to interview Dae Bong Sunim, the former abbot and current guiding teacher of Mu Sang Sa Temple in Korea. I only had his Dharma name,Continue reading “Dae Bong Sunim”

Crimson Gate Meditation Community, Oakland, CA – Megan Rundel is a Dharma heir of Joan Sutherland and the guiding teacher of the Crimson Gate Meditation Community in Oakland, California. She grew up in Houston, where her father was a member of the Physics Department at Rice University. The family religion, she tells me, was science.Continue reading “Megan Rundel”

Adapted from The Story of Zen – The transference of Buddhism to the west began in the post-Darwinian period at the end of the 19th century when rationalists began to have difficulty accepting the absolutes of the Christian creed but still  wanted to believe that there was a spiritual dimension to human life. As aContinue reading “Shaku Soen”

Howling Dragon Zen, Vermont – A book on physics first drew Jim Bastien to Zen Practice. He was working at Boys Town – the Catholic orphanage in Nebraska – “when I came across this book called The Tao of Physics by Fritjof Capra. I don’t know if you’re familiar with that book, but he wroteContinue reading “Jim Daikan Bastien”

Clear Water Zendo – Vallejo, California In 1875, a Russian woman named Helena Blavatsky and an American Civil War veteran, Colonel Henry Olcott, established the Theosophical Society in New York City. The term “theosophy” was coined from the Greek words theos (god) and sophia (wisdom) and was intended to convey the idea of a “divineContinue reading “Mary Mocine”

Shunryu Suzuki and Richard Baker In 2013, a small inheritance allowed me to undertake a pilgrimage to some of the major Zen Centers throughout North America. I had written a book – The Third Step East – about the pioneer figures who brought Zen to this continent, and although they were now all dead, theirContinue reading “San Francisco Zen Center”

Dai Bai Zan Cho Bo Zen Ji, Seattle The first ancestor (patriarch) of the Chinese Chan tradition was the Brahmin monk, Bodhidharma, who is credited with bringing the teaching to China from India. The opening koan of the Blue Cliff collection describes his meeting with the Emperor Wu, estimated to have taken place around theContinue reading “Rick Gendo Testa”

Deep Streams Zen, Los Angeles, California “I first encountered something like Buddhism when I was a freshman at CCNY,” Joseph Bobrow tells me. “I took a psychopathology lecture class with this dynamic teacher who was very Freudian but very open-minded, so I decided to take another class from him, a survey course on contemporary psychotherapyContinue reading “Joseph Bobrow”