Rev. Danny Fisher

The late Robert Aitken Roshi.

I’ve previously written about the “Shimano Archives”, a collection of letters held at the University of Hawai’i at Manoa Library Archives, and the furor surrounding their contents.  In a summary of the letters, co-authors Stuart Lachs and “Vladamir K.” write:

The letters cover the period of 1964 through to 1984 and are devoted to the interactions, directly and indirectly, between [the late Diamond Sangha founder Robert Aitken Roshi] and Eido Shimano Roshi of the New York-based Zen Studies Society. Although there are some letters between Shimano and Aitken, and between Aitken and his Japanese teachers Soen Roshi, Yasutani Roshi, and Yamada Roshi, many are to others in the wider American Zen movement. The letters are concerned primarily with the…alleged sexual misbehaviour of Eido Shimano Roshi that first arose in 1964 in Hawai’i, where Aitken Roshi is based.

Until last year, the letters had been part of a sealed holding of Aitken Roshi’s personal papers in the archives.

In response to a comment request from Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, the Zen Studies Society (ZSS) issued a statement for publication, which noted that Eido Shimano Roshi and his wife had stepped down from the board of directors of the Zen Studies Society (ZSS).

This just in, by way of our friend and past interviewee Kobutsu Malone: the Shimano Archives has posted excerpts of audio footage from the last interview ever granted by Aitken Roshi.  The interviewer was Joel Whitney, a freelance reporter for Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, and the excerpts include discussion of Eido Shimano Roshi.  You can listen here.