In a lineage tradition like Zen, your understanding, manifestation, and expression of the Dharma is deeply influenced by your teachers, and by their teachers. Whether you are a member of my Zen Center, Bright Way Zen, or a fan of this podcast, you may appreciate stories of my teachers Kyogen and Gyokuko Carlson in this live talk.* (*Most of my episodes are produced specifically for podcast listeners, but I am on sabbatical in August.)
Zen Studies Podcast episodes are generally produced specifically for podcast listeners – one the strengths of my show – but I go on sabbatical in August to take care of things I usually can’t get around to, and to renew my creativity. This sabbatical offering is a recording of a live talk I gave at Bright Way Zen; I hope you will enjoy the informality and spontaneity of it.
I called this talk “stories of my teachers.” I became a lay student of Gyokuko Carlson in 1996, received monastic ordination from her in 2001, and Dharma transmission in 2010. From the beginning, however, I had a second teacher in Gyokuko’s husband Kyogen Carlson. The Carlsons founded and guided Dharma Rain Zen Center together, as I discuss in this talk. You couldn’t really have one of them as a teacher and not the other. This talk ended up being primarily about Kyogen, as it happened on the same day as our Founder’s ceremony, commemorating his death and the profound debt of gratitude our Sangha holds with respect to him (and Gyokuko, of course, but she’s still around and you don’t do Founder’s ceremonies for living people).
I hope you will enjoy! I’ll be back in September with regular episodes, I hope you’ll tune in, thanks for listening!
Endnotes
Carlson, Kyogen (Sallie Jiko Tisdale, editor). You are Still Here: Zen Teachings of Kyogen Carlson. Boulder, CO: Shambala Publications, 2021.
Metzger, Paul Louis, with Kyogen Carlson. Evangelical Zen: A Christian’s Spiritual Travels with a Buddhist Friend. Denver Colorado: Patheos Press, 2015.
