Mr. Glassman said the issue "that grabbed the Zen students was the plight of the single-parent, homeless family."

These people were talking like some of the Zen students and acid mystics George had known.

Zen student and author Barbara O'Brien has said that "Buddhism has no concept of sin."

Brother David, who that morning had offered to the Zen students a succinct and incisive exposition of the Apostles' Creed, shook his head.

Those who find themselves coming regularly and becoming Zen students can become members to offer regular support and express their commitment.

The Zen students must also do rigorous meditation exercises, sitting in silence in prescribed positions, to achieve their desired mental states.

Shohaku Okumura has called the colleciton "a classic text that is still studied by Zen students today."

But at the last minute, one of Hideo's Zen students had come to him with a spiritual crisis, and he'd asked to be replaced.

At first there were only a few monks there, but soon word spread, and Zen students began to come from all over the country to study with Hakuin.

In 1961, he and his new American Zen students founded the San Francisco Zen Center.