Renshin Bunce is a Soto Zen Buddhist Priest who received Dharma transmission in 2013. She worked as a hospice chaplain from 2010 until she retired in 2022. Her latest book is Remembering Myogen Steve Stücky.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download
Renshin Bunce:
The impetus for the book was, I am, as you said, a Zen teacher. And Steve Stücky died ten years ago. At the time of his death he was one of the Abbots at San Francisco Zen Center. When he was made Abbot, he had not lived at Zen Center for, I don’t know, 20 years or something. So he was quite a surprise. He was Abbot for seven years when he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. And that was enough time for people to, I would say, begin to get to know him. His death was an enormous shock. So I have found in the years since his death that I was repeating stories about Steve to my students. So the point to the book was to gather those stories in the hopes that some kid who has become so curious about Zen that they’re coming around one of the Zen Center buildings. And they go in the bookstore and they’ve heard about this Steve Stücky. Who was he? So what I was hoping for, this is good. This never occurred to me before. What I was hoping for was to concretize his – make permanent his – teachings.