Cuke Audio Podcast

Richard Jaffe was a student at the San Francisco Zen Center for years. He went on to become a leading Buddhist scholar who has spent a lot of time in Japan and knows Buddhism and especially Soto Zen there thoroughly in Japanese. He’s a professor of religion at Duke University retiring this or next year. His first book was Neither Monk nor Layman: Clerical Marriage in Modern Japanese Buddhism followed by collections of the writings of D.T. Suzuki. On Duke’s site it says: Richard Jaffe specializes in the study of Buddhism in early modern and modern Japan. In particular he has focused his research and teaching on the transformations that took place in Japanese Buddhist practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Jaffe's current research centers on the role of D.T. Suzuki in the globalization of Japanese Buddhism in the twentieth century. He also has questions for me later on in this podcast,

Shinshu Roberts was at the SFZC for years and 18 years ago founded the Ocean Gate Zen Center on 41st Avenue in Capitola next to Santa Cruz with her partner Jake Kinst. The website is oceangatezen.org She recently published Meeting the Myriad Things: A Zen Practitioner’s Guide to Dogen’s Genjokoan. She worked for years on the Shunryu Suzuki archives. Hear about that and more in this podcast.

June Crow began her study and practice of Buddhism in l968 when she met Shunryu Suzuki. She was known as June Omura back then. I, DC, remember her from Tassajara in the early seventies. She met Chogyam Trungpa of the Tibetan Kagyu and Nyingma lineage at Tassajara and became his student and a meditation instructor and teacher with his group. She’s still actively teaching with it today, living in Halifax, Nova Scotia,  where Trungpa moved his Shambhala center long ago. Hear about this and more in this podcast conversation with June and me. 

  Helena Bee has been in charge of online programs for the San Francisco Zen Center for four years. Her practice has been centered at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center since she first went with friends as a guest. This podcast is a conversation rather than an interview.

Bob Halpern began attending session at Sokoji with Shunryu Suzuki in 1965 while living in LA where he helped Taizan Maezumi get his zendo going. He and I were best friends and troublemakers at Tassajara and sometimes in the city. We went over all that thoroughly in a podcast years ago. In this podcast he tells about becoming a Chogyam Trungpa student in 1971 and being his first personal attendant. He brings us up to the present time where he finally calmed down and for twenty years has been running morning and early evening  meditation for the Shambhala group in Halifax, Nova Scotia, where Trungpa moved his center to in 1986.

Gerald Weischede was one of Richard Baker’s first German students. They met in Germany at a workshop or seminar that Baker was giving. Gerald went to Santa Fe to study with Baker when he had his center there and later, with the help of his wife Gisela helped Baker get Crestone Zen Mt. Center going. He was the first director and first shuso. He and Gisela for 20 years have led a Zen community called Lebendiges Zen in Göttingen, Germany. He’s also a psychotherapist and teaches in a university and has published five books. In this podcast he talks about all this and more.

This is a follow-up podcast with Robert Britton, Bob to me, in which he focuses, using his many decades of applying the Alexander technique to sitting. He was at the SF Zen Center for ten years. He became an Alexander teacher and still is. For 39 years he applied what he’d learned from the Alexander technique at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music helping musicians sit, hold and use their instruments so that they don’t create physical problems. He’s helped many people at Zen Center and beyond in how to sit, stand, walk in a healthy way. Learn about Bob Britton and sitting—and more—in this podcast with him.

DC (me) tells more Tassajara stories as an addendum to the to the Tuesday Dec. 9 SFZC Zoom event with Edward Brown answering participants questions we didn’t get to and elaborating as I do in podcasts. Find link to Dec. 9 Zoom event, A Night of Tassajara Stories, at cuke.com/TOC-DC.htm.

Robert Britton, Bob to me,  was at the SF Zen Center for ten years. He became an Alexander teacher and still is. For 39 years he applied what he’d learned from the Alexander method (if I can call it that) at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music helping musicians sit, hold. and use their instruments so that they don’t create physical problems. He’s helped many people at Zen Center and beyond in how to sit, stand, walk in a healthy way. Learn about it in this podcast with him.

Kirk Rhoads spent years at the SF Zen Center then moved to Yaizu Japan where Shunryu Suzuki’s home temple Rinsoin is located. In this podcast he talks about how his path led to Zen, his years at Zen Center and Japan where he became close with Hoitsu and Chitose Suzuki, and his return to America. He also talks about the Kent Rhoads Foundation which he founded in honor of his late brother. The purpose of it is to provide support so that more people can afford to attend Zen retreats and practice periods, a noble goal. See kentrhoadsfoundation.org/

Mary Mocine had visited Tassajara a couple of times but her first practice experience was at a mindfulness retreat with Yvonne Rand at Green Gulch. She was at Zen Center for a number of years and in this podcast she also shares experiences with various teachers and temples in Japan. She had a sitting group in Vallejo for a couple of decades.

Barton Stone joined Shunryu Suzuki for zazen very early on. He's a peace activist, expert carpenter, gardener, poet, and now practices Zen with with the Stone Creek Zen Center in Graton, CA. We'll have the phone chat, read his poems and an old interview. - This is an encore presentation from an August 29, 2020 podcast when Cuke Podcast was only five months old.

Rick McDaniel has written nine books on Zen, the last of which is to be published by Monkfish title Original Face. He’s done hundreds of interviews with Zen folks all over America and Canada where he lives. His website is titled Richard Bryan McDaniel - Zen Conversations and Profiles and is found at rbmcdaniel.ca. Listen to the podcast and learn how all this came to be.

Taiyo Lipscomb came to the Zen Center in the mid seventies and was there for 23 years, becoming one of the folks who run the place. His story is unique as is he. Listen to the podcast and you’ll see.

John Liles is a long time student of the Atlanta Zen Center. In this podcast we hear about it and its founder Soyu Matsuoka and he tells about an inspiring time he had for a month at Tassajara this recent summer.

DC talks about the three weeks he and his wife Katrinka spent at Dharma Sangha's Zen Center in the Black Forest, a visit with Vanja Palmers at his home on Mt. Rigi in Switzerland just below Felsentor, the Zen practice center he founded. And more.

Every day for many years, we at Cuke Archives have posted daily lecture excerpts. They're all over the place in terms of representing Suzuki's teaching, how much context is missing, or how appealing they are. I comment on all this. - DC

At Dharma Sangha's Zen Buddhist Center in the Black Forest with Katrinka for three weeks. Talk about spending time with Zentatsu Richard Baker and Tatsudo Nicole Baden and some mundane stuff.

Barrie Mottishaw is a landscape artist who spent years at the Jones Farm on Quadra Island, a Zen community that was started by students at the San Francisco Zen Center. Learn about that and more in this podcast with her.

Just what it says in the title - DC reads the Preface to Tassajara Stories. Full title - Tassajara Stories: a Sort of Memoire/Oral History of the first Zen Buddhist Monastery in the West--the First Year--1967. Publishing date for the book/audio book/ebook is S3ptember 23, 2025.  Go to cuke.com to read reviews and so forth.