Howard Lazzarini holds a degree in Japanese Language and Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. He spent 12 years in Japan and for several years during that time, in the early 1970s, practiced Soto Zen at Antaiji, a small temple that was located in the north Takagamine section of Kyoto. There he met his first teacher, Kosho Uchiyama Roshi and sat in the shikantaza style of Uchiyama Roshi and Dogen. After returning to the US he began studying with Shohaku Okumura Roshi of Sanshin Zen Community in Bloomington, Indiana, where he took lay ordination. He translated The Sound that Perceives the World in close collaboration with Okumura Roshi and Shoko Hayashi Lazzarini, his wife. He currently lives in Everett, Washington, and practices with the Everett Zazen Group located in Everett.

Please see below for more information about his upcoming translation, The Sound That Perceives the World: Calling Out to the Bodhisattva by Kosho Uchiyama, as well as the Everett Zazen Group:https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/The-Sound-That-Perceives-the-World/Kosho-Uchiyama/9781614299516

https://everettzazengroup.org/

We discussed growing up in the San Francisco Bay Area in the 1960s and becoming a merchant mariner, finding Antaiji while hitchhiking in Japan and his early experiences with Zen, Kosho Uchiyama Roshi’s life and relationship with the Kannon-gyo, reconnecting with Shohaku Okumura Roshi in the US and starting the Everett Zazen Group in Washington state, and the importance of letting go of likes and dislikes and "opening the hand of thought."