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
The Way of Zen traces the origin of Zen Buddhism as a synthesis of Chinese Taoism and Mahayana Buddhism. Watts introduces the reader to a variety of Eastern philosophical concepts such as wuwei, The Middle Way and anatman. Watts portrays the western philosophical tradition as being intrinsically limited by the strict adherence to logical structures as opposed to eastern philosophy which is not bound by these structures. The Way of Zen The Way of Zen is a 1957 non-fiction book on Zen Buddhism and Eastern philosophy by philosopher and religious scholar Alan Watts. It was a bestseller and played a major role in introducing