I Had a Good Teacher

Practicing Suzuki Roshi’s Way of Zen

Les Kaye
Foreword by Norman Fischer

Paperback
978-1-958972-80-9
US $19.95 Bookshop Amazon Barnes & Noble
eBook available
June 2025

Longtime Zen abbot shares the wisdom of his teacher, who brought Zen to the West and wrote the classic Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind

Les Kaye studied Zen with Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in the 1960s and is now abbot emeritus of Kannon Do Zendo in Mountain View, California (where Norman Fischer is acting abbot). Born and raised in Manhattan, Kaye moved to what is now Silicon Valley in his twenties to work for IBM. While working full-time in the corporate world, he practiced Zen sitting and mindfulness, became an ordained disciple of Suzuki Roshi and the head of practice at what became Kannon Do.

I Had a Good Teacher interweaves dharma talks with personal stories to reveal the subtleties of integrating Zen practice into a life of work and family. It includes fascinating memories of Suzuki Roshi and short writings about events at the zendo, including the time Steve Jobs visited Les for guidance integrating work and spiritual practice.

Compiled and edited by Les’s disciple Giuseppe Prisco, an Italian tech entrepreneur and Zen priest, I Had a Good Teacher is an introduction to Zen in daily life, a warm portrait of a great Zen teacher, and a reminder to meditators to return to basics, to keep their meditation real, and to practice awareness all day long.

Les Kaye has been integrally involved in developing Zen practice in the West for over fifty years. He began work for IBM in San Jose in 1958, and held positions in engineering, sales, and management. He started Zen practice in 1966 and in 1971 was ordained a priest by Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Two years later he took a leave of absence from IBM to serve as shuso (head monk) at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center, and in 1974, he received Dharma Transmission from Hoitsu Suzuki Roshi, Shunryu Suzuki’s son and successor. In 1985, he was appointed abbot at Kannon Do Zen Center in Mountain View, California. Les’s first book, Zen at Work (Crown/Three Rivers), sold 14,000 copies. He is also author of Joyously Through the Days (Wisdom Publications), and coauthor of A Sense of Something Greater: Zen and the Search for Balance in Silicon Valley (Parallax Press).

“Les Kaye is unfailingly modest, flexible in his point of view, always practical, and in his understated way, very wise. He is generous and unflappable. This doesn’t sound much like the enigmatic Zen Master of popular imagination. Les is perhaps the opposite: straightforwardly who he is, with no interest in being otherwise. Over many years of faithful, trusting practice, Les has become that good teacher.In this book Les is talking about how he feels about Zen practice, what it means to him, and how he views it. Maybe you can’t explain Zen practice, but you can, if you have the knack, compare it to things readers already know, to give them a powerful image of what the practice is like. Zen practice, Les says, is like the ocean. If you want to know what it really is, there’s no other way than to plunge in.” —From the Foreword by Norman Fischer

“A wise and lucid book that explores awareness, patience, and generosity, three essential qualities of goodness so needed in our world today. This treasured book, written by a dedicated teacher of Buddhism, is a source of inspiration and guidance that the reader returns to again and again.” —Joan Halifax, author of Standing at the Edge: Finding Freedom Wherever You Are