Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center

Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center
Zendo at Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center
Basic information
Location	1972 Rock Street, Mountain View, CA 94043
Affiliation	Sōtō
Country	United States
Website	www.kannondo.org
Architectural description
Founder	Shunryu Suzuki
Completed	1964

Kannon Do Zen Meditation Center provides Sōtō Zen practice in the San Francisco Peninsula and the South Bay. Named after Kannon, the Buddhist personification of compassion, the center provides a supportive environment in which Americans can experience traditional Zen teaching.

Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki arrived in San Francisco from Japan in 1959 to be resident priest of Sokoji, the Japanese-American Soto Zen Mission in San Francisco. In 1961, he and his new American Zen students founded the San Francisco Zen Center. (The early history of Zen Center and Suzuki's life in the U.S. are well documented in his 1999 biography Crooked Cucumber by David Chadwick.)

In November, 1964, a "sitting group" was set up in Palo Alto. The first morning zazen and lecture was held at 1005 Bryant Street in Palo Alto. An evening group was later established in Redwood City. In 1965, the morning group moved to Marian Derby's home in Los Altos, joined by the evening group a year later. Meditation was followed by a brief lecture and an informal breakfast, with family-like discussions with Suzuki at the breakfast table. In a tradition that continues at Kannon Do, tea and cookies were served following the weekly lecture.

In 1965, Derby tape-recorded and transcribed Suzuki's morning lectures. From 1968, Trudy Dixon edited the lectures into a book, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind, published in 1971.

In 1966, the garage was converted to a meditation hall in the style of Sōtō Zen temples in Japan, to Suzuki's design. Construction, by Sangha members, began in June, 1966. Haiku Zendo, named for its seventeen cushions that matched the number of syllables in a haiku poem, was officially opened on August 4, 1966.