Saturday, March 20th, 2021 at 1-2:30pm : Guest speaker, author Barbara O’Brien will answer questions about her book Circle of the Way; A Concise History of Zen from the Buddha to the Modern World
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Barbara Hoetsu O’Brien’s adventures in Zen began in 1988, when she first made a formal commitment to study with a Zen teacher, the late John Daido Loori of Zen Mountain Monastery, Mount Tremper, New York. In the years since she studied with other teachers in other Zen lineages, most notably the late Jion Susan Postal, who taught in New Rochelle, New York. Jion’s transmission lineage was from the San Francisco Zen Center. Over the years Barbara struggled with fitting Zen practice into a life of child-rearing and job-holding. Eventually, long after the children were grown, she chucked it all and lived in the Fire Lotus Zen Temple in Brooklyn, New York, for a time.
Along the way Barbara noticed that even senior Zen students have only vague ideas about how the school of Buddhism called Zen originated and developed. Further, these days the word Zen is tacked on to a variety of commercial products, from computer processors to soap, which suggests most people in the West still have no idea what Zen is, other than some exotic Asian thing. So, she committed herself to explaining Zen ― as much as explaining Zen is possible ― and explaining Buddhism as well.
Barbara has written about Buddhism for Tricycle, Lion’s Roar, and the Guardian Comment Is Free website. She gained a considerable following while serving as the resident expert on Buddhism for About.com from 2008 to 2016. The Circle of the Way is the fruit of years of research and direct experience that tells the story of Zen.
Barbara originally is from the Ozark Plateau region of southern Missouri, where she is currently riding out the epidemic. She has a bachelor’s degree in journalism from the University of Missouri and worked for many years in the book publishing industry.