Katagiri Transcripts
Kikan Michael Howard
Dainin Katagiri Roshi was one of the pioneers who brought Zen Buddhism from Japan to the United States. (“Roshi” means “respected elder teacher.”) Katagiri Roshi’s talks, recorded from 1979 to 1989, contain a huge volume of material not included in the four books compiled from his teachings. Audio recordings of his talks are generously made available by Minnesota Zen Meditation Center, but since Katagiri was a non-native speaker and the recording quality varied, he can be difficult to understand. To try to translate “enthusiastic but somewhat jumbled English” to “fluent English” for a new audience, here these talks are carefully transcribed and read by second- or third-generation student Kikan Mike Howard. New episodes will be posted regularly, going through the talks in order.