Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind
Original Audio Lectures
Shunryu Suzuki
Free streaming and download at suzukiroshi.sfzc.org and the Shunryu Suzuki Audio Archive.
Source: San Francisco Zen Center / Suzuki Roshi Audio Archive
The original audio recordings made at Sokoji and the early San Francisco Zen Center between 1965 and 1969 — the lectures that, after Suzuki Roshi's death, his student Trudy Dixon edited into the most-read Zen book in the English language. The audio survives. It is the only direct recording we have of Shunryu Suzuki teaching: the slight broken English, the long pauses, the distinctive 'eh?' between sentences, the laughter. For students of Soto Zen anywhere in the world, these tapes are a relic.
The original Suzuki Roshi audio archive — the only direct recordings of the founder of American Soto Zen.
The sangha responds.
More foundational talks from Zen.
Realizing Genjōkōan
Genzo-e Lecture Series
Shohaku Okumura — Uchiyama Roshi's principal disciple, the founder of Sanshin Zen Community in Indiana, and the leading English translator of Dōgen — gives the Genzo-e (extended sesshin Dōgen-study) lectures on the Genjōkōan. These are the definitive English-language teachings on Dōgen's most central fascicle. Okumura works the Japanese, the Chinese sources, the Indian Buddhist substrate, and the contemporary practitioner's mind, all at once. There is no other figure doing Dōgen scholarship in English with this depth.
The Eight Gates of Zen
John Daido Loori — founder of Zen Mountain Monastery in upstate New York and one of the principal architects of training-temple Zen in America — gives his foundational teaching on the Eight Gates: zazen, study with a teacher, academic study, liturgy, right action, art practice, body practice, and work practice. The Eight Gates framework remains the most complete, integrated training curriculum any Western Zen teacher has built. The talks are the syllabus.
Being with Dying
Lecture Series on Buddhist End-of-Life Care
Roshi Joan Halifax — Upaya Zen Center abbot, medical anthropologist, and the principal architect of Buddhist chaplaincy training in America — distills four decades of bedside work into a complete curriculum on dying. The lectures cover the contemplative care of the dying person, the caregiver's own contemplative life, the ethics of presence, and the protocols for the final hours. They have shaped chaplaincy programs at hospitals, hospices, and Zen centers across the world.