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Street Zen: The Life and Work of Issan Dorsey
Drag queen, junkie, alcoholic, commune leader--and, finally, Buddhist teacher: these words describe the unlikely persona of Issan Dorsey, one of the most beloved teachers to emerge from American Zen. Street Zen follows Dorsey from his days as a female impersonator to the LSD experiences that set him on the spiritual path. In 1989, after 20 years of Zen practice, he became abbot of San Francisco's Hartford Street Zen Center, where he founded a hospice for AIDS patients. Street Zen draws on interviews David Schneider conducted with Dorsey before his death in 1990 and parallels their nearly 20-year friendship.
256 pages, Paperback
First published November 9, 1993
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Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews
April 6, 2011
This beautifully written and researched story of the life of Issan Tommy Dorsey...former female impersonator and drug addict and later abbott of Hartford Street Zen Center as well as founder of the first Buddhist AIDS hospice in North America...has been one of my favorites since it was published in the mid-90s. Issan received dharma transmission from Zentatsu Richard Baker in 1989 and, sadly, died of AIDS in 1990.
Schneider's book does not gloss over Issan's early years and experiences, but uses them to develop a greater understanding and appreciation for the tremendous legacy Issan left behind.
Schneider's book does not gloss over Issan's early years and experiences, but uses them to develop a greater understanding and appreciation for the tremendous legacy Issan left behind.
April 13, 2007
Who would have thought a junkie drag queen would end up a buddhist monk? A great biography that also details the beginnings of "engaged buddhism" in the U.S. (Has a wonderful phot inset as well).
August 7, 2022
Issan Dorsey's life is so fascinating, both before and after his commitment to Zen, I can highly recommend this book to anyone interested in a good read about Gay life in the second half of the twentieth century. Or just life in the second half of the 20th century, for that matter.
I don't have an affinity for Zen, but this book is so good, that didn't matter. I did once try sitting at the Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco (Issan Dorsey was its first Abbott, and I sat there probably not all that long after his death), but it was not for me. Fortunately, the book is not about me, so you should read it.
I don't have an affinity for Zen, but this book is so good, that didn't matter. I did once try sitting at the Hartford Street Zen Center in San Francisco (Issan Dorsey was its first Abbott, and I sat there probably not all that long after his death), but it was not for me. Fortunately, the book is not about me, so you should read it.
January 14, 2021
Gave me a totally different perspective on finding yourself by just looking in the mirror.
October 18, 2024
I resisted reading this book for a long time. Back in the early nineties, when my wife was in divinity school and we began meditating, she worked one summer at an AIDS hospice in Boston and continued to work with the gay men who had organized it throughout her years at divinity school. I knew those men and heard a number of heart-wrenching stories of men dying with AIDS. The whole AIDS era was rife with such stories, and I supposed that at some point I wanted to move away from them, and from the whole subject. As AIDS became an illness that people were able to survive, I didn’t want to go back to that time.
But I was wrong to resist this book, which tells a remarkable story. Issan Dorsey does finally die a rather horrible death from AIDS (and I have to say, as I read that, that I wondered if all the treatment was worth it. A lot of the suffering came from attempts to treat the disease and prolong his life). But his story is remarkable not just from the way his life turned around completely, from being a drug addict, drag queen, and prostitute to being an incredibly compassionate and loving Zen priest, but the way those two parts of his life merged almost seamlessly. I thought in fact that it was because he had gone so low in his early life that he was able to have such compassion later. He could run an AIDS hospice and welcome any kind of person into it because he knew where they came from, and understood what drove them there. He became a person who rejected no one. And he did that because of the life he had lived.
Tommy—the name his friends called him from an early age—did not become a drag performer out of some desperate wish to make a living. He was a performer first and a drag queen second, but he took great pride in his performances and—if the photos are any indication—was convincing as a female. At first he had a few songs that he sang, later he just pantomimed recordings, but he still made a decent living and traveled around the country with other drag performers.
Dorsey didn’t seem to feel a lot of guilt about being gay or about who he was in general; he sometimes turned tricks as a prostitute because he could pick up spare cash that way, and he seemed to get into heavy drinking and drugs because of the travails of performing, staying up late, pushing himself. His life only gradually became sordid and depraved, to the point where author David Schneider suggests that readers might want to skip to the next chapter to avoid the worst. I personally was fascinated and kept on reading.
Of all the human vices, I understand intoxication the least. When I encountered the life of Chogyam Trungpa, for instance, I completely understood his wanting to sleep with his students, but couldn’t understand why a man who had attained such clarity wanted to sit around drinking malt liquor (or saki) all the time. I felt the same way about Dorsey. I understood all the sexual hijinks, but why he wanted to take barbituates all day long, and mix them with marijuana, cocaine, heroin, that I couldn’t understand. I like to drink beer, and like the buzz it gives me, but I stop way before the buzz goes to total oblivion. I haven’t enjoyed the occasions when I went past the buzz.
Dorsey’s move from a life of what looked like total depravity to a religious life didn’t involve some major conversion. He was living in San Francisco, batting around different places. He started living with an old friend named Grant Dailey, who did take drugs, but also had a spiritual bent, having studied teachers like Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti. Dorsey and his friends began taking psychedelics and finding a different kind of experience with those drugs. They began as a household to do a kind of basic meditation along with the drug taking. And then something led them to the San Francisco Zen Center, where a Japanese priest named Shunryu Suzuki sat zazen every morning at 5:30 and allowed anyone to show up who wanted to learn. At first Dorsey and his cohorts stayed up all night to go to the sessions. But gradually they changed the way they lived.
It’s amazing how easily and gracefully Dorsey adapted to this new way of life. He had always been a person who was more in his body and less in his head than others; he’d been a poor student at school and didn’t like to study. But he loved cleaning and keeping things neat, and was happy to move into a new situation where that was part of the life (Suzuki Roshi was big on cleaning). There is plenty to study in Zen if you want that, but the basic practice is the physical act of sitting. And he’d always lived in groups of like-minded people. He adapted to the Zen Center, to Tassajara Mountain Center, and to Green Gulch Farm. People loved him at all three places.
Dorsey had a special bond with Suzuki Roshi, who loved him as everyone else did, but after Suzuki died, Dorsey became close to his successor, Richard Baker, who was a completely different kind of person—a Harvard trained intellectual, for one thing—but who also appreciated the qualities that Dorsey brought to practice and valued him as a student. When a scandal erupted over Baker’s sexual indiscretions, Dorsey never wavered in seeing the man as his teacher, and for a time he followed him to Santa Fe after Baker had left San Francisco in disgrace.
I’ve heard and read a lot about Richard Baker, including a whole book about the scandal at SFZC (Shoes Outside the Door by Michael Downing), and this is the first time that he came across as a sympathetic character. Schneider’s account of the whole scandal gave me pause. It is true that he had sex with one of his students, a woman who was the wife of his best friend (?). This student, of course, was a mature human being who was making her own choices. Baker had come up in the Sixties, when a fair amount of sexual experimentation went on; he’d apparently been involved with students before, but he’d told his wife beforehand and also told her about this situation.
He and this woman, according to Baker, were madly in love. It’s true that he hadn’t informed the woman’s husband, who claimed to be on the verge of suicide when he heard. And there were other charges against Baker, including the fact that he’d been neglecting his duties as a teacher and hobnobbing with California notables like Jerry Brown and Stewart Brand, ostensibly to raise money but also just to hobnob (Dorsey largely ran the center in his absence). The Zen Center was occupied with a variety of commercial enterprises, and some students were so over-committed to work that they weren’t practicing. All this was a far cry from the days when Suzuki Roshi greeted everybody personally as they left the zendo.
But I also had the feeling that the real problem was that these two people had fallen in love and had sex, which—I hate to say it—is something that happens in life. You can argue that Baker should have acted differently and that his life had gotten out of balance, but I don’t know that he should have been ridden out of town on a rail. The things that board members said about him were rather harsh (“Richard Baker is a venomous snake” ??). The man saw the error of his ways and wanted to repent and continue at the Zen Center, but they wouldn’t let him.
Dorsey, to say the least, had an open mind about sexual behavior and was exemplary throughout the whole situation. When asked about it, he just said that Baker was his teacher and left it at that, a fact which he was committed to. He himself was on the board, and he and another man voted against what the other people said; there were a lot of 10-2 votes that year. Dorsey briefly moved to Santa Fe with Baker. (Poet Philip Whalen, another man with a broad view of things, also moved, and stayed much longer than Dorsey.) Eventually Dorsey returned to San Francisco, took up his old life at the Center, and moved on to organize the Hartford Street Zen Center, which had become a place for gay men to practice. He eventually established it as a Zen hospice (again, to the objection of many around him) and did that work in an exemplary way, until his own sad death. But he truly acted as a Bodhisattva in his final years, and we began to see that he’d been living that way all his life. He had flaws like everyone else, and he certainly led a wild life, but he loved people and accepted them unconditionally. Christians would have called him a saint.
Schneider tells this story beautifully, relying on interviews with many of Dorsey’s friends and also on his personal friendship with a man he thought of as his best friend. I actually most enjoyed the passages toward the end when Schneider quoted from his own journal and gave us an inside glimpse of the man that the interviews didn’t reveal. Dorsey had an odd path to becoming a priest, but his life is all of a piece. It makes for fascinating reading.
www.davidguy.org
But I was wrong to resist this book, which tells a remarkable story. Issan Dorsey does finally die a rather horrible death from AIDS (and I have to say, as I read that, that I wondered if all the treatment was worth it. A lot of the suffering came from attempts to treat the disease and prolong his life). But his story is remarkable not just from the way his life turned around completely, from being a drug addict, drag queen, and prostitute to being an incredibly compassionate and loving Zen priest, but the way those two parts of his life merged almost seamlessly. I thought in fact that it was because he had gone so low in his early life that he was able to have such compassion later. He could run an AIDS hospice and welcome any kind of person into it because he knew where they came from, and understood what drove them there. He became a person who rejected no one. And he did that because of the life he had lived.
Tommy—the name his friends called him from an early age—did not become a drag performer out of some desperate wish to make a living. He was a performer first and a drag queen second, but he took great pride in his performances and—if the photos are any indication—was convincing as a female. At first he had a few songs that he sang, later he just pantomimed recordings, but he still made a decent living and traveled around the country with other drag performers.
Dorsey didn’t seem to feel a lot of guilt about being gay or about who he was in general; he sometimes turned tricks as a prostitute because he could pick up spare cash that way, and he seemed to get into heavy drinking and drugs because of the travails of performing, staying up late, pushing himself. His life only gradually became sordid and depraved, to the point where author David Schneider suggests that readers might want to skip to the next chapter to avoid the worst. I personally was fascinated and kept on reading.
Of all the human vices, I understand intoxication the least. When I encountered the life of Chogyam Trungpa, for instance, I completely understood his wanting to sleep with his students, but couldn’t understand why a man who had attained such clarity wanted to sit around drinking malt liquor (or saki) all the time. I felt the same way about Dorsey. I understood all the sexual hijinks, but why he wanted to take barbituates all day long, and mix them with marijuana, cocaine, heroin, that I couldn’t understand. I like to drink beer, and like the buzz it gives me, but I stop way before the buzz goes to total oblivion. I haven’t enjoyed the occasions when I went past the buzz.
Dorsey’s move from a life of what looked like total depravity to a religious life didn’t involve some major conversion. He was living in San Francisco, batting around different places. He started living with an old friend named Grant Dailey, who did take drugs, but also had a spiritual bent, having studied teachers like Gurdjieff and Krishnamurti. Dorsey and his friends began taking psychedelics and finding a different kind of experience with those drugs. They began as a household to do a kind of basic meditation along with the drug taking. And then something led them to the San Francisco Zen Center, where a Japanese priest named Shunryu Suzuki sat zazen every morning at 5:30 and allowed anyone to show up who wanted to learn. At first Dorsey and his cohorts stayed up all night to go to the sessions. But gradually they changed the way they lived.
It’s amazing how easily and gracefully Dorsey adapted to this new way of life. He had always been a person who was more in his body and less in his head than others; he’d been a poor student at school and didn’t like to study. But he loved cleaning and keeping things neat, and was happy to move into a new situation where that was part of the life (Suzuki Roshi was big on cleaning). There is plenty to study in Zen if you want that, but the basic practice is the physical act of sitting. And he’d always lived in groups of like-minded people. He adapted to the Zen Center, to Tassajara Mountain Center, and to Green Gulch Farm. People loved him at all three places.
Dorsey had a special bond with Suzuki Roshi, who loved him as everyone else did, but after Suzuki died, Dorsey became close to his successor, Richard Baker, who was a completely different kind of person—a Harvard trained intellectual, for one thing—but who also appreciated the qualities that Dorsey brought to practice and valued him as a student. When a scandal erupted over Baker’s sexual indiscretions, Dorsey never wavered in seeing the man as his teacher, and for a time he followed him to Santa Fe after Baker had left San Francisco in disgrace.
I’ve heard and read a lot about Richard Baker, including a whole book about the scandal at SFZC (Shoes Outside the Door by Michael Downing), and this is the first time that he came across as a sympathetic character. Schneider’s account of the whole scandal gave me pause. It is true that he had sex with one of his students, a woman who was the wife of his best friend (?). This student, of course, was a mature human being who was making her own choices. Baker had come up in the Sixties, when a fair amount of sexual experimentation went on; he’d apparently been involved with students before, but he’d told his wife beforehand and also told her about this situation.
He and this woman, according to Baker, were madly in love. It’s true that he hadn’t informed the woman’s husband, who claimed to be on the verge of suicide when he heard. And there were other charges against Baker, including the fact that he’d been neglecting his duties as a teacher and hobnobbing with California notables like Jerry Brown and Stewart Brand, ostensibly to raise money but also just to hobnob (Dorsey largely ran the center in his absence). The Zen Center was occupied with a variety of commercial enterprises, and some students were so over-committed to work that they weren’t practicing. All this was a far cry from the days when Suzuki Roshi greeted everybody personally as they left the zendo.
But I also had the feeling that the real problem was that these two people had fallen in love and had sex, which—I hate to say it—is something that happens in life. You can argue that Baker should have acted differently and that his life had gotten out of balance, but I don’t know that he should have been ridden out of town on a rail. The things that board members said about him were rather harsh (“Richard Baker is a venomous snake” ??). The man saw the error of his ways and wanted to repent and continue at the Zen Center, but they wouldn’t let him.
Dorsey, to say the least, had an open mind about sexual behavior and was exemplary throughout the whole situation. When asked about it, he just said that Baker was his teacher and left it at that, a fact which he was committed to. He himself was on the board, and he and another man voted against what the other people said; there were a lot of 10-2 votes that year. Dorsey briefly moved to Santa Fe with Baker. (Poet Philip Whalen, another man with a broad view of things, also moved, and stayed much longer than Dorsey.) Eventually Dorsey returned to San Francisco, took up his old life at the Center, and moved on to organize the Hartford Street Zen Center, which had become a place for gay men to practice. He eventually established it as a Zen hospice (again, to the objection of many around him) and did that work in an exemplary way, until his own sad death. But he truly acted as a Bodhisattva in his final years, and we began to see that he’d been living that way all his life. He had flaws like everyone else, and he certainly led a wild life, but he loved people and accepted them unconditionally. Christians would have called him a saint.
Schneider tells this story beautifully, relying on interviews with many of Dorsey’s friends and also on his personal friendship with a man he thought of as his best friend. I actually most enjoyed the passages toward the end when Schneider quoted from his own journal and gave us an inside glimpse of the man that the interviews didn’t reveal. Dorsey had an odd path to becoming a priest, but his life is all of a piece. It makes for fascinating reading.
www.davidguy.org
September 28, 2014
At some point, every student of Zen Buddhism just gets tired of reading books about Zen Buddhism.
When that happened to me, I started reading biographies of contemporary Buddhists, and this was one of the first.
It was a glimpse into a world I couldn't even imagine, and kind of cemented in my head that there was a lot more I needed to know and see and do.
When that happened to me, I started reading biographies of contemporary Buddhists, and this was one of the first.
It was a glimpse into a world I couldn't even imagine, and kind of cemented in my head that there was a lot more I needed to know and see and do.
July 14, 2021
An accessible, nuanced biography of an absolutely fascinating figure, a man whose life ranged from drag performance to severe addiction to becoming a Zen teacher and founding a Buddhist hospice for people with AIDS. Important reading in U.S. Buddhist history, queer history, as well as the early history of AIDS in San Francisco.
July 16, 2008
This is the true life tale of gay prostitute turned Zen Buddhist teacher. Interesting.
June 6, 2010
I loved this book!
September 3, 2023
Can i not give half stars? 4 1/2 all the way
Anyway this was an incredible and moving read. I read through a significant chunk on a busted ebook copy, and the fact I kept going should tell you how good it is. Issan-Roshi was really ahead of his time and shows us how we can bring our whole selves into practice, along with prioritizing active expressions of compassion to all suffering beings.
There was some Richard Baker-Roshi apologia in here was a bit strange, and labor and economic issues during his reign at SF Zen Center didn't go much further than bare acknowledgement. There were also instances where the book collapsed into interspersed journal entries (though the last couple chapters are just journal entries, which turned out to be a really powerful decision) which was a bit confusing. But beyond that it was a strongly written tale of an incredible being that all people should know about and keep close to their heart. So good
Anyway this was an incredible and moving read. I read through a significant chunk on a busted ebook copy, and the fact I kept going should tell you how good it is. Issan-Roshi was really ahead of his time and shows us how we can bring our whole selves into practice, along with prioritizing active expressions of compassion to all suffering beings.
There was some Richard Baker-Roshi apologia in here was a bit strange, and labor and economic issues during his reign at SF Zen Center didn't go much further than bare acknowledgement. There were also instances where the book collapsed into interspersed journal entries (though the last couple chapters are just journal entries, which turned out to be a really powerful decision) which was a bit confusing. But beyond that it was a strongly written tale of an incredible being that all people should know about and keep close to their heart. So good
November 14, 2025
The first half of this book is riveting. Tommy Dorsey’s life and what it reveals about pre-stonewall gay America is really important.
Where, to me, this book fails is in the end. Instead of focusing on the details on how Issan (Tommy’s Buddhist name) cared for the dying people in The Castro, it instead focuses on Issan’s dying process. Which was very, very typically messy and erratic. If the book wanted to communicate what practicing Zen really meant for the dying process, it failed miserably. I lived in the Castro during AIDS. Issan’s dying process was pretty typical. I read the book to see what Zen brought to a person’s final experience and definitely did not get that from this book.
But again, reading about Issan’s early years is really interesting and educational. This book pairs nicely with “Fairyland” btw.
Where, to me, this book fails is in the end. Instead of focusing on the details on how Issan (Tommy’s Buddhist name) cared for the dying people in The Castro, it instead focuses on Issan’s dying process. Which was very, very typically messy and erratic. If the book wanted to communicate what practicing Zen really meant for the dying process, it failed miserably. I lived in the Castro during AIDS. Issan’s dying process was pretty typical. I read the book to see what Zen brought to a person’s final experience and definitely did not get that from this book.
But again, reading about Issan’s early years is really interesting and educational. This book pairs nicely with “Fairyland” btw.
January 16, 2021
This man was my uncle, I spent some time with him at our family get togethers, most everyone else in our large family avoided him. That was fine with me, he liked to talk, asked many questions. His sense of humor contagious. Reading the book was surprising to me, He never talked about his more colorful activities. But as a teenager/ young adult, I was a recipient of his knowledge. Of a person who lived life to perhaps it's fullest.
January 11, 2023
Rating 4 stars for the life of Issan Dorsey alone. The story deserved a better author. I do not regret reading it, because his life was absolutely fascinating. However I wish that it was written more coherently rather than just a string of random quotes, journal entries and never quite knowing who the voice is.
July 23, 2024
This book is interesting because Issan was interesting, not particularly for the writing. This book focused on a lot of peripheral things such as Baker, which I understand does create context but overpowers at some points. I would have liked more focus & depth on Issan. However that being said this is the most comprehensive book that is currently available on Issan.
December 1, 2020
I appreciated learning about Issan Dorsey’s life and journey to Zen priest and hospice founder, though the second half of the book reads like the author’s personal journal or diary.
October 2, 2024
Nicely written book about a very interesting man. I like that there are many direct quotes from the interviewees that give you a good idea about his friendly and compliant character.
Read
April 12, 2025Such a beautiful life, the oddest of journey.
August 6, 2025
Three and a half stars: found this patchy and often engaging but sometimes askew. Glad to have read it anyway.
June 25, 2011
There are many likeable things about this book -- it's cast and themes are interesting and dear to me, and Issan is presented warmly but not uncritically. I recognize that verbalization of Zen understandings is at best difficult and at worst counterproductive, but nevertheless, I was frustrated at the lack on insight into Issan's crucial decisions. For example, if Issan had not found Zen, what direction did he think his life would have taken? How would he have done things differently finding it earlier? Why on Earth did a man who was so meticulous and detail-oriented fail to use protection? While an enjoyable read, I felt that the treatment of Issan's big decisions often felt a bit superficial, and while Issan comes across as compassionate (if a bit bitchy), he also comes across as unwise.
July 24, 2013
So badly written! This book was little more than a collection of quotes, literally strung together in a haphazard fashion. At the end it degenerates into the author's personal journal entries as he visits issan on his death bed, describing the massages he administered in exacting detail. But the life of Issan Dorsey - drag queen, heroin addict, zen priest, AIDS hospice worker -is just too compelling to be diminished by poor storytelling. Worth a read to get more insight into this fascinating and important character.
April 21, 2025
This book felt like crisp, mountain air. It was taking refuge under the shade of pine trees on a hot, summer day. Grief. Heart wiped clean for a moment; reset.
“We have created an environment that allows anxiety to be present…We will not escape the anxiety. We will not escape the fears that we have. Our function is to allow all that to be present and settle with it, to allow ourselves to enter into that part of ourselves we are trying to avoid.”
“We have created an environment that allows anxiety to be present…We will not escape the anxiety. We will not escape the fears that we have. Our function is to allow all that to be present and settle with it, to allow ourselves to enter into that part of ourselves we are trying to avoid.”
did-not-finish
October 5, 2014very poorly written. somebody needs to tell the author that even if you're quoting somebody, you don't have to write what they say verbatim. You're allowed to paraphrase and clean up their spoken language.
April 26, 2014
The first 4/5s of this book is fascinating, but why on earth did the author make a copy paste job of the last two chapters? And why did the publishers allow it?
Issan comes through as an inspiring person, though. I wish I had known him.
Issan comes through as an inspiring person, though. I wish I had known him.
Read
November 18, 2009A gift from an amazing woman in Long Beach who started a shower program for homeless...can't wait to start this one.
Read
January 5, 2009Issan's life left a legacy of a path well traveled. His story was first shared at a Zen mediation hosted by Ed Brown at Green Gulch Farm. Loves it!
November 14, 2014
transvestite buddhist tell-all
Displaying 1 - 26 of 26 reviews