Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘The Japanese Zen masters of today are trying faithfully to carry on their teaching against tremendous odds. Furthermore, they are bound by a traditional system which, as regards many of its forms, is a relic of the feudal age. All are aware of this, but the great problem facing them is how to adapt to modern life and thought without losing the very essence of Zen itself. The West’s, to them, unanticipated interest in Zen and the slightly reviving interest of Japanese laymen may help to point the way.’ (The Zen Koan)

As so often, browsing in the blog archive brings many barely-remembered treasures. When I posted this quote before, we were working on digitising chunks of the SFZC audio archive. This week, I was browsing through old Wind Bells as the fine folk at cuke.com had brought up an interesting question about dates for some of Suzuki Roshi talks, and found that some of the recordings I refered to before had been quoted there.