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Dogo

In humility is the greatest freedom.

About Me


Rev. Dogo Nanshin Barry Graham Sensei
• I'm just a man trying to live life with kindness and without causing harm - a daily vow and a daily failure.
• I'm from Scotland, but have wandered far, and now live in Phoenix, AZ, where the orange blossom meets the smog.
• I used to be a boxer. Someone hit me hard enough to knock some sense into me, so I quit.
• Now I'm a Zen Buddhist monk, a social activist and a writer.
• I've had four novels and a book of stories published: Of Darkness and Light (Bloomsbury 1989), The Champion's New Clothes (Bloomsbury 1991), Get Out As Early As You Can (Bloomsbury 1992), The Book of Man (Serpent's Tail 1995), and Before (Incommunicado 1997).
• Some people think my books are a cry for help, and some people think they're pretty good. The Times (London) called me "a young master," back when I was young and masterful. Details called me "one of the real literary finds," back when I was real literary. Booklist said my writing was: "unrelenting and brutally honest . . . Graham has a visual style and writerly voice that are all his own: timely, urban, and powerful." Irvine Welsh, who wrote Trainspotting, called The Book of Man "haunting and evocative . . . resonates with the redemptive power art has over life."
• My book on Zen, Kill Your Self, will be published by New World Library in 2009.
• I've written articles for a number of American and British publications including Harper's, Parabola, Details, New Times (Phoenix), The Arizona Republic, Las Vegas Life, Las Vegas Weekly, Scotland on Sunday, The Herald, The Scotsman, and the Edinburgh Evening News.
• My poetry has been published in magazines and anthologies, and I've had a stage play and a short film produced.
• At performances, I recite chapters of my novels from memory.
• I consider Arizona my home.
• I've witnessed two executions, invited each time by the prisoner, not the state.
• I'm on the Board of Directors of The Engaged Zen Foundation .
• I'm the Abbot of The Sitting Frog Zen Sangha , and I also have a blog .
If you would like to support our activities, all donations will be accepted with profound gratitude.

My Interests



abandoned buildings, anthropology, architecture, death penalty, Arizona, Basho, birds, Bodhidharma, books, boxing, Buddhism, cats, Ch'an, Chinese poetry, class issues, Cometbus, cooking, country music, culture jamming, design, Dharma, Dogen, ecology, environmentalism, ethnopoetics, folk music, frogs, gardening, graffiti, haiku, hip hop, Hiroshige, history, Hokusai, Howard Zinn, Ikkyu, independent comic books, insects, Issa, Japan, Japanese art, Japanese poetry, journalism, lizards, martial arts, movies, narcocorridos, noir, NPR, old photographs, performance art, poetry, progressive politics, public transport, punk rock, Ryokan, Santoka, Shodo Harada, Shunryu Suzuki, snakes, Sonoran Desert, spiders, Stonehouse, tanka, tea, urban decay, wildlife, writing, zazen, Zen, zines, zoning, town planning,

I'd like to meet:

Yo' mama.

Music:

Greg Brown, Leonard Cohen, Philip Glass, Curtis Mayfield, The Everybodyfields, Kronos Quartet, The White Stripes, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Wu Tang Clan, Michi Regier, Shonen Knife, Johnny Cash, Sonic Youth, Lonna Kelley, Merle Haggard, Dolly Parton, Alejandro Escovedo, Bob Dylan, Laurie Anderson, Frank Sinatra, John Cage, Harry Partch, Hoyt Axton, RL Burnside, Warren Zevon, The Heroes Are Horses, Patti Griffin, Mer

Movies:

Tarantino, Cronenberg, Sonny Chiba, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai, Sin City, Lost in Translation, Why Has Bodhidharma Left for the East?, Raging Bull, The Godfather, Payback, Get Carter, Takashi Miike, Kiyoshi Kurosawa, Ringu, The Limey, Eight Mile, Casino Royale, The Bourne Identity, The Bourne Supremacy, Blood Simple, Shaft, Spring, Summer, Winter, Fall... and Spring

Television:

No

Books:

I've heard that mine are pretty good.Also: Elmore Leonard, Charles Bowden, Michael Pollan, Larry Fondation, Yasunari Kawabata, Natsuo Kirino, Kenzo Kitakata, George V. Higgins, George Pelecanos, Dennis Lehane, Gary Snyder, Jaan Kaplinski, Red Pine, Joan Didion, Barbara Ehrenreich, Yosano Akiko, Li Pai/Li Bai/Li Po, Tu Fu, Wang Wei, Han Shan, Dennis Cooper, TS Eliot, Stewart Home, Thomas Merton, Jon Kabat-Zinn, Dogen, Brian Michael Bendis, David Mack, Junichiro Tanizaki, Sy Safransky, Hal Sirowitz, Charles Bukowski, FX Toole, Charles Willeford, David Goodis, Jim Thompson, Christopher Kimball, Jim Harrison, David Mamet, Eric Schlosser, Jimmy Breslin, Love and Rockets, Adrian Tomine, Ryokan, Miri Yu, Ryu Murakami, William T. Vollmann

Heroes:

The Buddha, Dogen, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, Fred Rogers, Muhammad Ali

My Blog

My blog

My blog is here.
Posted by Dogo on Wed, 19 Oct 2005 03:45:00 PST