Joko Dave Haselwood

is a Soto Zen priest and guiding teacher of Empty Bowl Sangha in Cotati, California. A Dharma heir of Jisho Warner –Roshi, he began his Zen practice in 1963 with Shunryu Suzuki –Roshi at Sokoji in San Francisco. After leaving Sokoji he married and raised children, moved to Sonoma County, California, and immersed himself in psychoanalysis in the Gurdjieff tradition. Poet Joanne Kyger invited him to come to Sonoma Mountain Zen Center, run by Jakusho Kwong –Roshi who he had known from his time at Sokoji. He became a student of Kwong –Roshi and remained with him for fifteen years, during which time he was ordained as a Zen priest. He left Sonoma Mountain in 2000 and began studying at Stone Creek Zen Center with Jisho Warner – Roshi. He received Dharma transmission (permission to teach) from her and became Associate teacher at Stone Creek. He emphasizes the practice of “just sitting” (Shikantaza) and the need to reconnect our body and mind in the practice of being present to life as it arises moment by moment. He also owned Auerhahn Press which published much of the Beat poetry of the San Francisco Renaissance. The press’s goal was “to re – marry good printing and writing,” and to this end the Auerhahn published 28 letterpress – printed titles between 1958 and 1964. Most were chapbooks handset by Haselwood, later with Andrew Hoyem, in a creative and subtle variety of fonts. Its first title was The Hotel Wentley Poems by John Wieners. Its catalogue, uniformly out of print, includes works by Jack Spicer; Diane DiPrima; Philip Lamantia; Michael McClure; Philip Whalen; David Meltzer; William Everson (Brother Antoninus); Charles Olson; and the first edition of Exterminator, an early collaboration in cut – ups by William S. Burroughs and Brion Gysin. These among others were the “insurgent American writers” that the press detected in its search for the “bold, free and courageous in modern writing.” Thanks to the printer’s touch as much as to the collaborative energies of artists like Bruce Conner, Ray Johnson, Robert LaVigne, Robert Ronnie Branaman, and Wallace Berman, the Auerhahn’s books — and its ephemera — floated in the shadows of high art. In 1964, Haselwood turned production and last rites of the Auerhahn Press over to his partner Andrew Hoyem and started Dave Haselwood Books.