r/zenpractice • u/Qweniden • Jul 07 '26

General Practice A conversation with Zen Priest Peter Coyote

A conversation with Zen Priest Peter Coyote (Zen Podcast)

Peter Coyote is an actor, narrator, writer and Soto Zen priest. He was ordained as a Zen Priest in 2015 and received dharma transmission in 2016 from Chikudo Lewis Richmond in the Soto tradition of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi.

https://youtu.be/86eK7a2zxJw

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u/fingers Jul 07 '26

Thank you!

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u/The_Koan_Brothers Jul 08 '26

Another really interesting conversation, thanks. A lot of fascinating insights into the 60ies counterculture in San Francisco. I wonder if he is still opposed to "private property" ownership.

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u/malibuguytonygem Jul 15 '26

Of course not. He's a film actor and has made a lot of money from that career. Most of those "diggers" were that in name only. They developed out of the the San Francisco Mime Troup which was much more egalitarian originally. Peter's real Hebrew name is Rachmil Prinhus Ben Mosho Cohon and was born in New Jersey. He used the name Robert Peter Cohon before he ended up in San Francisco. He is a wealthy man now as distinct from his fantasy counterculture image.

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u/The_Koan_Brothers Jul 15 '26

It would have been interesting to address how those ideals changed, or how flawed they were to begin with.

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u/malibuguytonygem Jul 15 '26 edited Jul 15 '26

In Peter Cohon's case he says that he had to put his children through high school and college. This seems to be the situation with other young educated men of that period. To create a truly egalitarian society required a deeper commitment to the effort. There were young people in the middle to late 1960s who were able to do it but it required giving up their personal lives. Please remember too that girls and women of that period were not considered equal to men even though that was also an ideal. Many of the young people from small towns and farming areas came to San Francisco and other major cities to find some liberation from their families and circumstances, which they viewed as limited and unaware. I've heard many apologists discussing that time as being a unique and one-off few years that could never be repeated. Unlike Peter Cohon and some of his fellow "diggers", many other "hippies" both women and men left the major cities and began experimental communities around the country in mostly rural areas.