Brooklyn Zen Center | A New York City Soto Zen Buddhist Temple
Shunryu Suzuki Roshi

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, a Japanese Zen Buddhist priest belonging to the Soto tradition, came to San Francisco in 1959 at the age of fifty-four. Already a respected Zen master in Japan, he was impressed by the seriousness and quality of "beginner's mind" among Americans he met who were interested in Zen. As more and more people of non-Japanese background joined him in meditation, San Francisco Zen Center came into being and Suzuki Roshi was its first abbot. He was undoubtedly one of the most influential Zen teachers of his time. Some of his edited talks have been collected in the books Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind and Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai.