Weitsman, Mel

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi came to the United States in 1959, leaving his temple in Yaizu, Japan, to serve as priest for the Japanese American congregation at Sokoji Temple in San Francisco. In 1967 he and his students created the first Zen Buddhist monastery in America at Tassajara in the coastal mountains south of San Francisco. Suzuki Roshi died in 1971 at age 67, a year and a half after delivering his teaching on the "Sandokai". He may have had a premonition of his coming death when he said that it was common for Zen teachers in the Soto tradition to lecture on the "Sandokai" near the end of lif...