I’m preparing a talk on the development of the Boundless Way Zen project for our upcoming annual mahasangha meeting on the 6th of June. I was working up a list of dates that could be seen as significant markers, or beginning points for Zen in the West. There are a number of them.
That’s when I noticed that yesterday, fifty years ago, Shunryu Suzuki arrived in the United States to assume the position of resident priest at Sokoji temple which at the time served an almost entirely Japanese and Japanese descendent congregation.
Soon people who had been reading Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac and other early admirers of Zen started coming by and asking if he were a Zen master. He would demure on that but say he sat zazen very early in the morning and if they wanted they could join him.
Many, many, did.
I learned the basics of Zen meditation from one of his students at Sokoji when it was still at that original site, 1881 Bush Street, itself originally a synagogue.
Eventually the convert community that grew around him reorganized as the San Francisco Zen Center. And in time both the SFZC and Sokoji would find new homes.
While my practice would move in other directions within the Zen traditions, I remain ever fond of that gang and their work and their founding teacher.
I cannot describe my gratitude to the roshi and to that community.
They gave me my life…
Endless bows.
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