Acknowledgments

Conceiving a project like this and getting it launched is delicate and tricky; support is especially crucial and deeply appreciated. My special thanks go to Paula England, who has through the years kept me in touch with her path of training and learning with Shinzen Young. When I described to her, by e-mail, the plan I was hatching to ask Buddhist teachers to tell me their path stories, she went to work, telling Shinzen about it and also recommending the project to two other teachers with whom she had studied, Gil Fronsdal and Shaila Catherine. Very few sociologists are also long-term, sincere Buddhist practitioners; her help and support was special.

My friend, the writer and Zen monk Zenshin Michael Haederle, was also critical at the beginning and in moving this project into the interview phase. We talked over preliminary thoughts and began shaping the central ideas that informed the interview design. He played an active role in selecting teachers to invite, and participated, sitting in my dining room, in the interview with Ken McLeod. When chapters 12 and 13 were in rough draft, he went over them with editing and interpretive suggestions.

An important little nudge came when I met Shinzen Young at the 100th birthday celebration for Joshu Sasaki and told him about what was going on in my head at the time. He liked the idea, and when he later officially launched the project by giving the first interview, I had a precedent in hand to give the project some legitimacy.

Two boosts came much earlier. I wrote an article back in 1985 relating my experiences with Zen to the teachings of George Herbert Mead, and sent the paper to my old friend Norm Denzin, a leading figure in symbolic interactionism. I only asked for comments, but he liked it enough to publish it in an annual series he edited. The second boost was similar. I had written a manuscript in 1982 in which I pulled quotes from the written records of selected Zen, Sufi, and Christian mystical teachers. After finishing it I had a strong (and correct) feeling that I didn’t know what I was talking about. But my old friend Leonard John Pinto (another Buddhist sociologist, but with a strain of Catholicism thrown in) read it and urged me to send it to an academic press. I’m glad I didn’t take his advice, but I have remembered his encouragement these many years.

The third, and last, Buddhist sociologist I know of, David Preston, gave important comments and suggestions through several phases of the writing. Thank you, David.

From here on, there are two main, more or less discrete roots to review. The first is in science, especially sociology and most especially symbolic interactionism. My introduction came in an undergraduate course with the late Aubrey Wendling, who also sent me on to graduate work at the University of Washington with Robert E. L. Faris, S. Frank Miyamoto, and my dissertation advisor, Otto Larsen. While teaching at UCLA I was privileged to enjoy stimulating interaction with Ralph Turner, Mef Seeman, and Harold Garfinkel. And especially, although I have never met them in person, my deepest thanks to Peter Berger and Thomas Luckmann for writing what was one of the maybe six most important books of the twentieth century, The Social Construction of Reality.

Turning to sociologists not primarily known as symbolic interactionists, I owe so much to my year of postdoctoral study with Harrison White, for what I learned about both mathematical sociology and being a responsible but widely searching scientist. From Warren TenHouten, my friend and colleague at UCLA, I learned about neurosociolinguistics and the implications of right-left hemisphere functions for social behavior. And finally, Charlie Kaplan, a pure spirit of living inquiry, has supplied wonderful touches of positive energy through the years.

Outside of sociology, my cognitive psychologist friend, Peder Johnson, not only helped with my questions and provided a bit of education in that field but also let me use his lab to carry out some priming experiments during an earlier stage when I was looking for a way to do research on semiawakened consciousness. Also at the University of New Mexico during the 1980s, the linguist Vera John-Steiner helped me with her subject and gave me support during the early phases of my work on awakening, and Richard Coughlin of the Sociology Department collaborated on research on worldviews.

The only neuroscientist I know in person is Jim Austin, and his work is featured throughout the book. But the published research on meditation has provided information that helped structure my more cognitive work. Special thanks also go to Julie Brefczynski-Lewis for taking the time to reply to my inquiry about aspects of her work.

I want to thank my colleagues and students at the Institute for Social Research, University of New Mexico, for providing a supportive and stimulating environment during the years when my research centered on evaluating early childhood programs. The same is true for the dedicated people involved in the programs I was evaluating, especially Andy Hsi and Bebeanne Bouchard, UNM Pediatrics. From them and others throughout the nation who are working to help poor children and their families I learned about approaches in practical psychology that apply to all people. Among the many in this group, I want to single out Victor Bernstein for the insights he opened up for me.

The second major root of this project was nurtured by people who in one way or another are Buddhists, or at least fellow travelers. My thanks to Gary Snyder for his reply to something I sent him many years ago, in which he commented on the (unworkable) research ideas I was hatching at the time and gave some advice about Zen teachers.

And then there was my formal training. I feel indebted to the late Joshu Sasaki for the ten years I spent with him. He opened doors, showed me there was a world full of wonder there to learn about, and started me on the practice and path that has continued since. Sandy Stewart was the head monk when I started, and I also learned from him. Since then, so many wonderful friends have come into my life through Rinzai-ji Zen centers that I can only mention a few. The Bodhi Manda Zen Center in Jemez Springs, New Mexico, was my sangha for many years, and my friendships from those years are still treasured (one, whom I met in the hot springs, I later married). My thanks to Seiju Bob Mammoser and Hosen Christianne Ranger for running Bodhi at the time and for marrying us. Sue York and Chris Worth have been through so much because of the Sasaki scandal, and I thank them for their contribution to my understanding of its impacts. Just during the past year I have benefited from talks with David Rubin and Brian Lesage, both Buddhist teachers and former Sasaki monks.

Finally, enormous thanks go to the teachers whose interviews are reported here, for their absolutely critical contributions to the book and the help and stimulation they gave outside of the interviews. Three anonymous reviewers went over earlier drafts carefully and provided important and helpful comments. The book draws heavily (in fact depends) on the work of several scientists whom I thank collectively. They receive enough attention in the book to make their contributions evident. And of course, thanks to Jim Austin, who has firm roots in both science and Buddhism. I especially appreciate his telephone calls, checking up on me and giving support.

I suppose my editor at Columbia University Press, Wendy Lochner, was just doing her job when she responded to the first draft by saying she would like to hear more about some things I said in the closing chapter. It took me another two years to say more, and that chapter grew into four (chapters 14–17). But it was what I wanted to do anyway, and I feel privileged to have had the opportunity and encouragement.

My thanks also to Lynda Miller for technical help with computer programs and the photographs.

And of course, at the end of the acknowledgments comes the author’s wife, Anne Cooper. She has more than earned that place of honor: she transcribed many of the interviews; read, advised on, and edited drafts as I finished them; took care of the photographs and contributed artistic suggestions; and made me promise not to gush about anything else.