A message from DC and Cuke Archives: doing our part to help preserve the legacy of Shunryu Suzuki and those whose lives cross his.

Dear Friend,

It’s been a couple of years since we sent out an update on what’s happening at Cuke Archives.

After eleven years collecting and refining the most memorable personal anecdotes about the founding of Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, the first volume of Tassajara Stories appeared this fall, published by Monkfish. I’m working to complete the next two volumes and their audiobooks. There’s more than that to come if I keep at it, but for now completing the Tassajara Stories trilogy and the weekly podcasts is what absorbs the majority of my attention.

Here’s a brief picture of what else has been happening.

We continue doing what we’ve been doing for decades—working with the Shunryu Suzuki lecture archive, entering more lectures—verbatim, minimum edits, other edits, audio, whatever we created, could find, or link to—such as the Engage Wisdom transcript and audio presentation. Go to Cuke Update for more.

There are daily Shunryu Suzuki lecture excerpt posts with an image on the Cuke Daily Blog, Instagram, Facebook Cuke Archives, Bluesky, and to email subscribers. The oral and written history content of cuke.com is slowly and constantly expanding giving a more thorough view of the people and events that are touched and have been touched by Shunryu Suzuki’s time in America. More than anything Cuke Archives is the story and stories of people.

For many years I did the daily lecture excerpts while Peter Ford concentrated on getting cuke.com and shunryusuzuki.com better organized and easier to navigate. He’s still doing that but now he also presents those excerpts. One thing I feel we fall short on is posting about all the new material in the archive as it appears. That’s my fault. I get so focused on the work I’m doing I keep failing to get around to sharing the news. I’ll try to do better. Meanwhile, some of the additions and improvements to the archive that have happened in the last few years you can find at Cuke Update.

I’m still involved with the ongoing development of every aspect of Cuke Archives and on average have several hours of communications daily, but since the last update I’ve been increasingly engrossed in what we call special projects—mainly creating books and audiobooks and recording podcasts. The podcasts consist mainly of talks with a wide gamut of guests involved with or somehow related to the Shunryu Suzuki lineage and the centers and groups that have sprung from it. Cuke Podcast page.

We depend on your contributions to keep all this work going. Donations through PayPal, check, or credit card can be made by clicking on this Donate link or on the  primary pages of cuke.com and shunryusuzuki.com.

For a contribution of $125 or more, we will gratefully send you a copy of the newly published Tassajara Stories, a hardback which retails for $33.99.

Check what others are saying about Tassajara Stories.

There’s more to Tassajara Stories than stories about Tassajara. The Preface to the book will make that clear.

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Another way to look at what we do is that it’s a way for us to all say hello to each other. Updates such as this one are sent out less than once a year. If you are open to receiving a few more messages in a year, please reply “opt in” to join the special Friends of Cuke Archives mailing list.

Thank you and take care.

David

“We’re all bozos on this bus.” - Firesign Theater