Dainin Katagiri Roshi was one of the prominent Zen masters who brought Soto Zen Buddhism from Japan to the United States. (Roshi is an honorific meaning distinguished elder teacher.) Audio recordings of many of his talks are made available online by Minnesota Zen Meditation Center. But since Katagiri Roshi was a non-native English speaker, he can be difficult to understand. On this website, I carefully transcribe these talks as an aid to understanding them. You can read these transcripts on their own, or, ideally, follow along while listening to the recordings, which are referenced at the top of each talk.

On close listening, it becomes apparent that Katagiri Roshi frequently backed up and corrected his choice of English words and grammar as he spoke. I attempt to apply his own in-stream self-corrections in a style of intelligent transcription. My intent is to stay as true as possible to Katagiri Roshi’s actual, complete words, while also honoring what he was intending to say. This generally has the effect of smoothing out the grammar a bit, making the talks easier to read and understand. Each talk requires multiple listens over many hours to carefully transcribe in this way. That said, please be aware this entire transcript archive is an ongoing work in progress. No transcript here is every completely finished – the corrections just get smaller and less frequent. (Hopefully.)

Words where I am unsure of the best transcription, or where I am adding words to make the meaning more clear, are usually presented in brackets, [like this]. Significant nonverbal sounds are noted [in brackets with italics]. Sections that are unintelligible are marked [unintelligible], or sometimes […], depending on what makes the text more readable. And transcriber comments adding additional information are placed in parentheses, (like this). The timecodes embedded in the transcripts generally serve as section breaks, in addition to helping match up the text to the audio recording.

Katagiri Roshi’s talks are a treasure trove of Mahayana Buddhist teaching. With the assistance of the people who recorded and preserved the talks, and later those who put them online, he left behind – intentionally or not – what is essentially an online university in Soto Zen Buddhism, specifically addressed to Americans. The talks also convey something of his enthusiasm, and particularly, his sense of humor. For one good entry point into Katagiri Roshi’s teaching, see the Fundamentals of Zen series.

– Kikan Michael Howard

Katagiri Roshi’s talks are being used with permission of Minnesota Zen Meditation Center. For more information, visit The Katagiri Project Home Page.

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If you have comments or questions, you can email me.