Sep 30, 2020
Issan Dorsey, Roshi, who famously transformed from a wild drug addicted traveling drag queen to a Zen Monk, which misadventures are hilariously & richly recounted in his biography “Street Zen” by David Schneider, here at the Hartford Street Zen Center & Maitri Aids Hospice where he was Abbott and which he founded in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood. He himself succumbed to Aids in 1990, and his successor at the center was none other than poet Philip Whalen, who had recently become a Sensei. (snapped by Allen, 1988)
Street Zen, out of print for ages, was just reissued by Shambhala Publications last June.
(at Hartford Street Zen Center - Issan-Ji Temple, San Francisco)
