Customer Reviews

Street Zen: The Life and Work of Issan Dorsey

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3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(2)

 

 

I can appreciate that folks who knew Issan Dorsey found this watered down. I, however, didn't, and I loved the book. It's a great counter to the prissiness that tinges most zen literature. This was the first thing I read that made me think, "Well, if he was a zen teacher, maybe zen is something I want to explore."

For those who knew Issan and studied under him, please write books! He is an important teacher for the messiness and reality of this world, rather than the cozy sterility of a monastery, and I would love to know more about him.

I read the reviews of this book before purchasing it. As a queer writer in Spirituality and Religion I have a great deal of sensitivity about heterosexist bent towards gay characters and history. So, David Sunseri's review of the book sat perched on my shoulder as I read this book.

Having finished this book I have to say that I am left seriously questioning Sunseri's criticism of the book. It is a wonderful story and a tender account of a remarkable person. Having read this book and appreciating the care given to speak to the myriad parts of Issan Dorsey's (full) life story, I have to wonder if Sunseri isn't speaking from a place of internalized homophobia. Nowhere did I find the "sensationalizing" of homosexuality that Sunseri and Harper Leah (?) mention.

In fact, I am now left to believe that Sunseri and Leah would prefer a completely sex-free, queer-free reading of Dorsey's life.
If the book had sensational parts, that's because parts of Issan Dorsey's life were sensational and outrageous. That's not heterosexist bias dear ones. Heterosexist bias would be to "clean up" those stories and de-queer Dorsey. Fortunately Schneider doesn't suffer from any such prudery.

A closer reading of Sunseri's reviews show what is clearly a bitter bias towards anything involving the entire Soto Zen community. Sunseri states that quite vividly in his review of Robert Winson's "Dirty Laundry."

Fortunately, I don't suffer from that bias. I approached this book wanting to know more about this intriguing person, Issan Dorsey, who, by all accounts, wasn't afraid to embrace the totality of his life's existence and who has left a legacy of caring for others in need.

Do not miss this book if you're interested in a truly remarkable story of a Gay pioneer and spiritual elder. It is not the complete story. But it is one of the stories and it deserves to be read. Perhaps members of the Hartford Zen Center complaining about the lack of Issan's "teachings" in the book could get off their zazen pillows and publish them. I'm sure they have more access to it than anyone.

I read this book because I heard about a renowned Buddhist named IssanDorsey at a dharma talk. I'm gay myself, and hearing that Issan Dorsey was also a gay man made me interested in finding out about his life. So, I popped his name into a search engine, and ordered this book from amazon.
Up until recently, my relationship with religion in general has been a bad one. The tendency of Western religions to preach hate toward my kind has made it all but impossible for me to participate in any of them. Legislators on both sides of the political aisle have used religion as a vehicle for either passing laws to restrict my freedom or turn a blind eye to these efforts, for fear that any support for my community would render one 'unelectable'. None of this has made for a very good advertisement of religion for my community.
Buddhism struck me as being fundamentally different, and when I read this book, I realized just how different it was. Issan Dorsey was from my side of the tracks, and instead of preaching self-loathing to him, Buddhism taught him how he could make a major difference in the lives of those who needed him the most.
I'm pretty inspired to give this Buddhism thing a try now. I've never heard of a religion that doesn't judge people before. Maybe this is the one for me.

I didn't know Issan Dorsey, but reading this book made me wish I did if only because he seemed a terribly interesting person and the course of his life is...well...amazing. I highly recommend it. As a gay man with an interest in Buddhism, this book was like a door opening.

I agree to some extent with some of the earlier reviews, I felt the author wrongly at times treated Issan Dorsey's homosexuality as somewhat of an exotic freakshow. But over all the author did a wonderful job of portraying the heart and nature of Issan. My only criticism would be sensationalizing Issan's sexuality. The earlier criticism one reviewer made that the book was flawed because a heterosexual was writing about a homosexual is extremely simplistic.

I found this book extremely inspiring. The life of Issan Dorsey is a must read for anyone who has ever felt dragged down, left out, and mentally or physically ill. That should include everyone!

This work is so important to both the Buddhist community and anyone who has any inkling of how to create community. Isaan Dorsey was an example of the best teachings of Jesus and the best promises of Buddha. Kudos to David Schneider, et. al, for their exhaustive work and beautful tapestry. -TJ, Santa Fe, NM, USA

My impression from this book was it was a story of a present day Bodhisattva.
A story of a man whom lived life fearlessly. Who lived as a Herman Hesse's Narcissi but in reality not between book covers. In this book I felt was a true betrayal of the concepts of the Bodhisattva. Issan seems to have had spontaneously.


Earlier statements of cheapness is sad.Value statements betray a judgment and lack of Bodhisattva sentiment. Was Milarepa's story a cheap story? The fact that murderer he was? Or is it part of the story of that Bodhisattva's life? I find Issan Dorsey's life neither cheap or over blown. I have known others with similar lives so the fellow whom judges this book as " straight " has a "bent" view. Again cheapness ...well it saddens me to hear a student of Dharma make such a statement.

I ran into this book by complete chance, in the "Spirituality and Religon" section of the Half Price Books store in Corpus Christi, Texas. Picture an intellectually curious sailor leaving the service, about to peer into the unknown life of a civilian. It was early spring of 1995 and I was undergoing an existential crisis for all sorts of other reasons as well. This book not only helped to settle me down, it inspired me to travel to San Francisco and to visit the San Francisco Zen Center, something I did later that summer.

I found this book to be a wonderful tribute. It is real and it is honest, two hallmarks of not just great writing, but of just about anything great.

I did not finish this book with a strong desire to have met Issan. The people who knew him best describe his life and personality quite vividly and compassionately. Would I have loved to have hung out with this man and to experience him first-hand? Of course I would. But strong characters like Isaan live on people's hearts as much as they do in the pages of a book. It is the teaching that endures. And in this crazy world of ours, his teaching has reached all sorts of people, myself included.

This book was one of the main reasons why I started practicing at the Hartford Street Zen Center, which Issan helped found, and his life story still inspires me. This biography is at times shocking, entertaining, and suspenseful, and his journey to become an important figure in western Zen and the LGBT community by practicing compassion in a time of crisis is something that anyone can draw inspiration from. By the end of the book, you get the feeling that you know Issan at least enough to appreciate his sense of humor, his fearlessness, and his unapologetic and direct way of dealing taboo subjects like sexuality, drug abuse, and disease. I recommend this book to everyone, especially those who are interested in LGBT history, the HIV/AIDS crisis, and modern Zen practice.