Peter Schneider (Zen priest) Peter Schneider (Zen priest) Peter Schneider (born 1937) is a Sōtō Zen priest, founder of Beginner's Mind Zen Center, located in Northridge, California. Peter and Jane Schneider were early students of Shunryu Suzuki-roshi in the 1960s. Both served as Suzuki-roshi's jisha (personal attendant) in the early years of the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. Peter and Jane also assisted in transcription of his dharma talks for later publishing. Following Suzuki-roshi’s death, they accepted scholarships from the San Francisco Zen Center to study Buddhism in Japan. They lived and studied in Japan from 1973 to 1995. They founded the Beginner’s Mind Zen
An Introduction to Zen Buddhism after the 1927 publication of his book "Zen Essays", which he decided would be "too heavy" as an introduction to Zen for beginners. Suzuki intended the resultant volume, 1934's "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism", to be used as a companion with the contemporaneously published "Manual of Zen Buddhism". "An Introduction to Zen Buddhism" was published in 1934 in Kyoto by the Eastern Buddhist Society. The Marshall Jones Company of Boston oversaw first publication in the United States. The 1939 German language edition was published with a preface by Carl Jung. In 1949, the book was reprinted in London and New