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.
Michael Wenger is Dean of Buddhist Studies at the San Francisco Zen Center..
Mel Weitsman is the former abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center and current abbot of the Berkeley Zen Center.
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 life.
Suzuki Roshi died in 1971 at age 67, a year and a half after delivering his teaching on the Sandokai .
In 1967 he and his students created the first Zen Buddhist monastery in America at Tassajara in the coastal mountains south of San Francisco.
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
