Elberon Zen Circle continues to host speakers who give talks, lead workshops, classes, and programs on Zen practice and education. For information on programs in progress, please check our web pages regularly: Discussions / Classes and Special Events.

Many of EZC's guest speakers are Senior Dharma Teachers in the Soto tradition of Suzuki-roshi originating at San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC). Below is a list of some of the speakers who EZC has had the honor to work with over the past several years.

Shosan Victoria Austin is the current President of SFZC. She has practiced zazen since the early 70's. A Zen priest, she received dharma transmission with Sojun Mel Weitsman. Since 1984 she has taught yoga for sitters and is a certified Iyengar Yoga teacher.

Edward Espe Brown has practiced Zen and cooking for over thirty years. He is the author of The Tassajara Bread Book, Tassajara Cooking, and The Tassajara Recipe Book and coauthor with Deborah Madison of The Greens Cookbook. He was ordained as a Zen priest by Shunryu Suzuki in 1971 and has lived at all three of SFZC's temples over a period of twenty years, fulfilling a wide range of responsibilities. He worked at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco in the early 1980's and has been teaching cooking classes since 1985. His newest book is called Tomato Blessings and Radish Teachings. He began practicing yoga in 1981. His school of Zen encourages sitters to move if they have become traumatized and allows for groaning and wisecracks. He is the editor of the long awaited second collection of talks by Suzuki Roshi, entitled Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen. Receipes.

Darlene Cohen, M.A., LMT, earned her graduate degree in physiological psychology in 1966 and began sitting at the San Francisco Zen Center in 1970. She was ordained as a zen priest in 1999. While living at Green Gulch Farm, Zen Center's temple in Marin County, she developed rheumatoid arthritis, which had also plagued her mother. This painful and crippling disease led her to explore the potential of her meditation training to address chronic pain and catastrophic situations. In 1980 after receiving her certificate as a massage and movement teacher from Meir Schneider, the reknown Israeli self-healing teacher, she began instructing people with chronic illness in various meditation and concentration practices, many of them involving comforting movement. Her website.

Jiko Linda Cutts is co-abbess of SFZC. Shecame to SFZC in 1971, where she practiced with Suzuki Roshi, Zentatsu Richard Baker, and Tenshin Reb Anderson. She was ordained as a priest in 1975, and has lived at Tassajara and the City Center. She received dharma transmission from Tenshin Reb Anderson in 1996.

Norman Fischer is a former abbot of SFZC. He began practicing at Zen Center in 1970 and was at Tassajara from 1976 to 1981 and from 1981 to the present he has been at Green Gulch Farm. A Senior Dharma Teacher and founder and teacher of the Everyday Zen Foundation, his teaching focuses on the relationship between meditation practice and ordinary everyday life. He is a poet, having published six books, the most recent Jerusalem Moonlight (San Francisco: Clear Glass Press, 1995)—an exploration in prose of his Jewish and Buddhist roots.

Zenkei Blanche Hartman has been co-abbess of SFZC since 1996, in residence at City Center. She began sitting in 1969 at the Berkeley Zen Center with Sojun Mel Weitsman and in San Francisco with Suzuki-roshi. She was priest ordained in 1977 by Zentatsu Baker-roshi and received dharma transmission with Sojun Mel Weitsman in 1988. She is a longtime teacher of the practice of sewing Buddha's Robe (rakusus and okesas).

Hozan Alan Senauke is a Soto Zen priest and teacher in the tradition of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. He was ordained by Sojun Mel Weitsman in 1989. Alan is presently serving as head of practice at Berkeley Zen Center in California. From early 1991 through the end of 2001, Alan was Executive Director of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship and is presently an Interim Coordinator there. As one of the founders of Think Sangha, a group of Buddhist-activist intellectuals and writers, he continues to work as a social activist around national and international issues of peace. Alan has been a student and performer of American traditional music for nearly forty years.

Revised 3/4/06 10:32