Zentatsu Richard Baker ✓

About Zentatsu Richard Baker

Richard Dudley Baker is an American Soto Zen master, the founder of Dharma Sangha—which consists of Crestone Mountain Zen Center located in Crestone, Colorado and the Zen Buddhist Center Black Forest in Germany's Black Forest. As the American Dharma heir to Shunryu Suzuki, Baker assumed abbotship of the San Francisco Zen Center (SFZC) shortly before Suzuki's death in 1971. He remained abbot there until 1984, when he resigned his position after it was disclosed in the previous year that he and the wife of one of SFZC's benefactors had been having an affair. Despite the controversy connected with his resignation, Baker was instrumental in helping the San Francisco Zen Center to become one of the most successful Zen institutions in the United States.