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
Zen lineage charts in bringing Zen practice to the west. Although the membership of Sanbo Kyodan is small, 3,790 registered followers and 24 instructors in 1988, "the Sanbõkyõdan has had an inordinate influence on Zen in the West". His westerns students have spread out via Taizan Maezumi. Zen lineage charts Zen lineage charts depict the transmission of the dharma from one generation to another. They developed during the Tang Dynasty, incorporating elements from Indian Buddhism and East Asian Mahayana Buddhism, but were first published at the end of the Tang. The idea of a patriarchal lineage in Chan dates back to the epitaph