Rev. Danny Fisher

Via Daniel Burke at the Religion News Blog: The day after the legendary singer-songwriter’s first American concert in fifteen years, the New York Times catches up with Leonard Cohen for an interview about Zen, music, spirituality, and money. The “Grey Lady” writes:

After a five-year stint in a Zen Buddhist monastery and various legal distractions, he is back on the road: an undertaking that seems to combine his quest for spiritual fulfillment with an effort to regain his financial footing, lost when his former business manager made off with his money while Mr. Cohen was living as a monk on a mountaintop above Los Angeles.

Cohen has lived off-and-on at the Mt. Baldy Zen Center in Mount Baldy, CA. I blogged about one of my trips to Mount Baldy a couple years ago in this post.

[Photo by Fred R. Conrad for the New York Times.]

Image via Digital Tibetan Buddhist Altar.

Via William Harryman over at Integral Options Cafe:

Over at his blog Monkey Mind, our friend and past interviewee James Ishmael Ford posts a report he co-authored with Taitaku Pat Phelan and Elihu Genmyo Smith entitled “A Report on Lay Dharma Transmission in North American Sōtō Zen”. As James notes, the report has not been widely distributed, but is nonetheless “an important reflection on an interesting and compelling aspect of the development of Western Zen” that should be read. Take a look.