These entries were my
on-line journal of a pilgrimage I undertook from March 2013
through September 2014, during
which I visited Zen Centers throughout North America. The tour took me from San
Francisco, on the west coast, to Portland, Maine, on the east; from Montreal in
the north to New Mexico in the south. I interviewed
more than 75 teachers and
otherwise significant individuals (the doctor operating a Zen-sponsored
hospice, the former wife of a well-known teacher now dead), as well as senior
and not-so-senior students. In almost all locations, I was welcomed warmly and
had the good fortune to encounter impressive, friendly, and approachable
individuals who responded to my (at times impertinent) questions with frankness
and good humor. Meeting them was a joy and deepened my respect for both the
tradition and the practice of Zen.
The material
gathered in these interviews form the basis of Cypress Trees in the
Garden, published by the Sumeru Press.
This blog was a journal of “first impressions.” The discipline I imposed on myself
was to compose each entry within twelve hours of the interview and to do so
extemporaneously, typing the first 800 words to come to mind à la Jack Kerouac
(who was, like me, something of a Zen dilettante). I did go back to correct
spelling, grammar, and errors of fact brought to my attention, usually by the
subject of the piece; otherwise they remain largely unedited.
The
entries are, of course, in inverse order. They read better if one starts with
the first—San Francisco—and moves forward in time to the visit to Great Tides
in Portland, Maine.
rickmcdaniel@bellaliant.net
