Insights into
Baker Roshi’s
Life & Work
Baker Roshi’s life’s work
Baker Roshi’s life’s work has centered around three main areas: Practicing and evolving the teachings of Buddhism; establishing locations for shared practice, and exploring how language shapes our views and our minds. Here, you’ll find insights into his thinking and work. As you scroll down, you’ll find a biographic journey through the main stations in his life.
Buddhist Practice
„Buddhas arise from our human life. From where else could they arise! All our categories arise from our human life. Buddhas are a category of being. Buddhas are one of the potentials of our human life. An Ideal Potential. The Ideal Potential. We can feel it. We know it. And the degree to which we know and know we know it, can transform us into Buddhas.“
- Zentatsu Baker Roshi
Here, you’ll find access to articles by Baker Roshi, sharing his view on some of the teachings and practices of Buddhism.
Locations for Practice
Do We Really Need Practice Centers?
Is a meditation hall essential, or can we practice alone? What difference does the location make, and what impact does practicing together have?
Baker Roshi views Practice Centers as “A Location that Locates You.”
In these short videos, you will get a sense of the atmosphere and practice at the Dharma Sangha Practice Centers.
- Video 1 highlights the stunning landscape, art, campus, and buildings at Crestone Mountain Zen Center (CMZC). In this setting, Baker Roshi discusses the essential foundations of practice.
- Video 2 captures daily life, seminars, and practice rituals at the Zen Buddhist Center in the Black Forest (ZBZS), giving a sense of the shared practice and mutual support that unfolds at a Practice Center.
Both Dharma Sangha Centers embody the same core principles and daily routines, cultivating a unique environment for collective practice.
Crafting Experience Through Words
Baker Roshi works with the power of language, creating spaces for profound experiences. In the summer of 2023, Baker Roshi, for the first time, presented poems and Dharma riffs together with Rüdiger Kurz (the violone in the intro) and Joss Turnbull (the drum in the outro). We are sharing "Centering – After Bob Creeley" here. You can order an art print of the handwritten original. In the future, more recordings and prints of his other poems will be available.
Poetry
Click here to listen to a recording of the poem
It's all about Centering
After B. Creeley
to come to love's place
to feel again
to see again
all the care
peculiarities
tenderness
of her, him
for whom
to be no other
was a new fate
a huge fate
a new love as well
too
Life Stations
A person’s life shapes their work - and vice versa. We have focused on those biographical aspects that were especially formative from the perspective of Baker Roshi’s life as a Dharma practitioner. We hope you’ll enjoy this journey.
Childhood and young adulthood:
Richard Baker was born in Maine in March of 1936. During his childhood and teenage years, his father worked as a highschool science teacher in Culver Indiana; a Professor of Engineering in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania; and as Assistant Head of Research at Grumman Aircraft, in Long Island. Richard sometimes speaks of an experience when he was ten or eleven that continuously informed his path as a practitioner. Once, he told his father that 12 o’clock doesn’t exist. His father asked what he meant. Richard said, “Well, it may be a minute to twelve, a half ‒a‒minute, a millionth of a minute to twelve, and then it is a millionth of a minute after 12. So there is no time‒dimension to 12.” His father said, “When something is approached and passed, we can say it exists, even if its length of existence seems non‒existent.”
Baker Roshi today says: Much of my practice awakened through staying with or around this question and my father’s response. He says, there is approaching approaching and calling it the present.
A Young Adulthood
Despite his family’s modest means, Richard Baker’s scholarship allowed him to attend Harvard College. His father had been a graduate student and Teaching Fellow there, and one of his ancestors was a founder of both the college and the town of Cambridge. While such family history was acknowledged, it held little importance to Richard. Academically, he performed well, yet his primary interest lay in who was teaching rather than in what was being taught. Although he found some teachers impressive, none seemed to offer a path that differed from conventional, non‒innovative, or, as he described it, “heedlessly amoral” thinking.
Reflecting on the socio‒cultural environment of the 1950s, Richard noted the era’s affluence, population growth, new forms of leisure, the influence of TV, a capitalized optimism, short‒sighted internationalism, provincialism, militarism, and the perceived security of nuclear weaponry as unsettling elements he could not accept. He felt that these societal patterns, especially those supporting military stockpiling and the potential use of nuclear arms, were deeply flawed and morally wrong. As a result, he refused to participate in the military draft.
After his third year, Richard left Harvard and joined the Merchant Marine, where he spent two years traveling to places like Ethiopia, Lebanon, Iran, Iraq, South Africa, Mozambique, and Madagascar. Eventually, he returned to Harvard, only to leave once more, this time relocating to New York. There, he worked for Grove Press and immersed himself in the Abstract Painting and emerging Beatnik Poetry scenes.
Richard found capitalist society undeniably creative but ultimately destructive and morally bankrupt, leading him to reject participation in it. In his first two years out of college, he worked with Grove Press and in book distribution in New York and San Francisco. Subsequently, he joined the Department of Adult Education at UC Berkeley, where he spent five years. As the Assistant Head of the Engineering and Sciences Extension and a Societal Programmer for the Liberal Arts Extension, he developed public classes and organized significant conferences, including the Berkeley Poetry Conference in 1965 and the LSD Conference in 1966.
Meeting Suzuki Roshi:
In 1960, Richard Baker moved to San Francisco by Greyhound Bus. The following year, he met Suzuki Shunryu, who was known simply as “Sensei” at the time, the Soto Zen Priest serving the Japantown community. Interest in Suzuki Sensei was growing among non‒Japanese locals, and George Fields, the owner of an esoteric bookshop, suggested that Richard attend one of Suzuki’s evening lectures at Sokoji, the Soto Zen Mission Temple. From the very first moment Baker saw Suzuki, he was deeply impressed. It wasn’t just the teachings that captivated him; it was Suzuki’s presence and the authenticity with which he embodied his teachings. As Baker later reflected, “For the first time, I saw someone embodying the world as it ought to be lived. He was the answer to my hope that someone like him existed.” This encounter led Baker to begin practicing Zazen with Suzuki Sensei and a few other Western students.
During this period, Baker was juggling multiple responsibilities. He was employed at the University of California, Berkeley, in its Extension division for adult education while simultaneously working on a PhD in Japanese studies. He lived in San Francisco with his wife, Virginia, and their young daughter, Sally. His busy life led him to adopt a mantra to navigate the constant demands, a phrase that he regards as his first turning words in Zen: “nothing to do and nowhere to go.” He recalls that every time he felt rushed or burdened with tasks, he would repeat to himself, “Nowhere to go; nothing to do.” This phrase began to transform his outlook, shifting his experience from a hurried existence into a space of stillness and potential where he could truly live.
As interest in Suzuki Sensei’s teachings grew, more Westerners began gathering around him. Don Allen, who edited The New American Poetry, 1945–1960, had recently returned from Japan with news that Suzuki Sensei was, in fact, a Zen Master and should be addressed as Suzuki Roshi. This recognition further solidified Suzuki’s role, eventually leading to the founding of the San Francisco Zen Center as more people coalesced around his teachings.
So far, so good! More life stations coming soon...
