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Appamada Zen Center, Austin, TX Peg Syverson and Flint Sparks are the Senior Teachers at the Appamada Zen Center in Austin, Texas, although Peg lives in a suburb outside Chicago and Flint lives in Hawaii. The nature of Zen Centers has changed since the COVID-19 outbreak, and now many centers do much of their workContinue reading “Peg Syverson”

Dharma Rain, Portland, Oregon Kakumyo Lowe-Charde is the Dharma heir of Gyokuko Carlson. After serving as co-abbot of the Dharma Rain Zen Center in Portland, Oregon, with her in 2017 and ’18, he became primary Abbot when she retired in 2019. Dharma Rain itself, he informs me, is currently on a fourteen-acre site which hadContinue reading “Kakumyo Lowe-Charde”

Joyful Mind Zendo, Rockville, Maryland An undated profile of Martine can be found at https://rbmcdaniel.ca/2026/07/29/martine-taikai-palmiter-2/

Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi was in the unique position of having teaching authority in three lineages, Soto, Rinzai, and Sanbo Kyodan (later called Sanbo Zen). No one was more qualified to promote Zen in the West. Born in 1931, he was a teenager during the American occupation of Japan and was intrigued by the soldiers heContinue reading “Taizan Maezumi”

Stone Willow Zendo, Spokane, WA Daya (Dianne) Goldschlag explains how the Stone Willow Zendo in Spokane, Washington, got its name. “In front of my house in Spokane is a big rock named Shunryu.” She has a soft-spoken – at times, almost shy – voice. “And there’s a wonderful story behind the rock coming here. It’sContinue reading “Daya Goldschlag”

Village Zendo, NYC Pat Enkyo O’Hara, the Abbot Emerita of the Village Zendo in New York City, grew up in Tijuana. “My mother was one of those wild people in the ’40s, and, when I was three, she divorced my dad who was this strict Catholic – alcoholic but strict Catholic – and ran offContinue reading “Pat Enkyo O’Hara”

Manzanita Village Retreat Center, San Diego County, CA Caitriona Reed is one of the co-founders of the Manzanita Village Retreat Center in San Diego, California. I note the remnants of a British accent, and she admits that she’s from the UK. “I came here on holiday forty years ago and forgot to go back. IContinue reading “Caitriona Reed”

When, in 2013, I began the set of interviews which were the basis of Cypress Trees in the Garden, I was still pretty naïve about the state of Zen in North America. I had assumed that the sites I had arranged to visit would be more or less similar to the center where I hadContinue reading “Josh Bartok”

Zen Mountain Monastery [This is an abridgement of my chapter on ZMM in Cypress Trees in the Garden.] John Daido Loori, the founder of Zen Mountain Monastery, had been dead for four years when I visited ZMM in 2013 to conduct a series of interviews. On my second day, I was introduced to the monastery’sContinue reading “John Daido Loori”