Issan Dorsey
| Issan Dorsey | |
|---|---|
| School | Sōtō |
| Personal | |
| Born |
March 7, 1933 Santa Barbara, California, United States |
| Died | September 6, 1990 (aged 57) San Francisco, California, United States |
| Senior posting | |
| Based in | Hartford Street Zen Center |
| Title | Roshi |
| Successor | Steven Allen |
| Religious career | |
| Teacher |
Shunryu Suzuki Zentatsu Richard Baker |
Issan Dorsey (March 7, 1933 — September 6, 1990), born Tommy Dorsey, Jr., was a Sōtō Zen monk and teacher, Dharma heir of Zentatsu Richard Baker and onetime abbot of Hartford Street Zen Center (HSZC) located in the Castro district of San Francisco, California. Earlier in his life he had worked as a prostitute and a drag queen, and had struggled at times with drug addiction. He died of complications from AIDS in 1990.
He established the Maitri Hospice at HSZC for students and friends dying of AIDS during the spread of the epidemic in the 1980s—the first Buddhist hospice of its kind in the United States. Numbers of his students and colleagues have observed that Dorsey was the embodiment of a bodhisattva.
Issan Dorsey was born as Tommy Dorsey, Jr. in Santa Barbara, California in 1933. He was raised as a Catholic and was the youngest child of ten siblings. As a boy he aspired to become an entertainer and studied dance and piano. While in junior college he became dissatisfied with his life, so he left school and joined the U.S. Navy. In the military he was able to fulfill his childhood dream of being an entertainer, putting on shows at his base and on television shows. During the Korean War Dorsey and a male lover were expelled from the Navy, leaving him to spend several years in and out of employment. He finally settled into a job as a waiter for a bar in North Beach, eventually becoming a performer there as a drag queen. His shows were a success and he traveled in a road show known as The Party of Four. On the road in the 1950s he would sometimes work as a prostitute at shows and afterhours, developing a nasty methamphetamine addiction during this period. On the road during his shows Dorsey was introduced as, "Tommy Dee, the boy who looks like the girl next door."
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