Regarding Kobun Chino: An Annotated Text

Author: the pacific desperado

ISBN 9781947532724 (softcover)

368 pages

During the late 1960s and through the 1970s, several Zen teachers from the Japanese Soto tradition arrived in Central California. Among the youngest of these was Kobun Chino Otogawa—after a two-year residence at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, he assumed duties as abbot of three smaller outposts. In this volume, a former student reproduces a short lecture and 101 brief remarks from talks Kobun gave at the Santa Cruz, Los Altos and Spring Mountain Centers over a period of eight years.

To newcomers to Chino Sensei’s talks, he seemed to speak in broken English. However, those who kept coming back realized that his command of the language was uniquely eloquent.