Peter Schneider's email on Tim Buckley's passing

From: Peter Yozen Schneider 

Subject: [SZBA-Full-Member-Email-List] Zenshin Tim Thomas Buckley

Date: April 16, 2015 8:31:48 PM CDT 

Dear Everyone, 

I am sorry to have to announce that Tim passed away a little before noon at his home in Maine.  As many of you may know, he was diagnosed to have Stage Four lung cancer about a year ago.
He had practiced at Tassajara in the late sixties and then had left to get married and eventually to practice with Harry Roberts.  Tim went on, per Harry’s suggestion, to go back to Harvard to finish his bachelor’s and then to the University of Chicago to get his Ph. D. in anthropology. He subsequently taught at the University of Massachusetts campus in Boston and to write seminal works on the anthropology of menstruation and on Yurok Indian spirituality. His nickname among his Yurok friends was Too Tall. Several years back, when we had settled in Los Angeles, we connected again. He had wanted to open a zendo where he lived in Maine and I ordained him.  He subsequently founded the Great River Zendo and last year received transmission.  

In the past several months, his good friends and Suzuki Roshi lineage teachers John Bailes and Joan Amaral have been coming up from Massachusetts to help Tim close down the zendo and prepare for his passing and at the end to take turns in caring for him with his wife Jorunn.  As I write this, they are there with her to help with the next steps.

Tim was always tall in many ways, right from when he studied with Suzuki Roshi until he left today. 

Palms together,

Yozen Peter Schneider

SZBA is the Soto Zen Buddhist Asso.

thanks Taigen Dan Leighton for forwarding this. - dc

photo from Tim's Facebook page - link to it on Tim Buckley cuke page