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Obituary for Thomas C.
"Tim" Buckley Jr.
West Bath, ME - Thomas
Buckley, Ph.D. whose name in religion was Jōkan Zenshin, died after a brief
illness at his home in West Bath, Maine on April 16, 2015. The cause of death
was cancer.
Tim, as he was called by family and friends, was an
anthropologist, essayist, expert sailor, Zen priest, and often a poet. In 1965,
he moved to California to study with Shunryu Suzuki, the Japanese Zen master.
He was active in the founding of San Francisco Zen Center and its monastic
center at Tassajara. After 1971 he also studied and practiced with his second
teacher, Harry Kellett Roberts, raised in the medicine traditions of the Yurok
Indians of northwestern California. Tim continued working with Mr. Roberts
until his death in 1981 and was his spiritual heir.
Educated at St. George's School, Harvard College and the
University of Chicago, where he received his Ph.D. in Anthropology, Tim was
broadly published and well known for his work in Yurok Indian ethnography and
ethnohistory. He taught in the department of Anthropology and the American
Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts Boston from 1980 until his
retirement in 2001.
A Buddhist from the age of 18, Tim was ordained as a Soto
Zen Priest in 2011, founded the Great River Zendo in West Bath, Maine and
received Dharma Transmission in the Shunryu Suzuki lineage in 2014.
He is survived by his wife of 36 years, Jorunn Jacobsen
Buckley, his son Jesse, two grandchildren, other family members, his adoptive
brother Tracy McCallum, and by many close friends and students.
Arrangements are under the direction and care of Brackett
Funeral Home, Brunswick.