Richard M. Jaffe is professor of religious studies at Duke University. He is the general editor of the Selected Works of D. T. Suzuki and the author of Seeking Sakyamuni: South Asia in the Formation of Modern Japanese Buddhism and Neither Monk nor Layman: Clerical Marriage in Modern Japanese Buddhism.

Shigematsu Soiku is abbot of the Rinzai Zen temple Shogenji in Shizuoka, Japan. He is the editor-translator of A Zen Forest: Sayings of the Zen Masters and the cotranslator of D. T. Suzuki's Columbia University Seminar Lectures into Japanese.

Tokiwa Gishin is emeritus professor at Hanazono University. He is the translator of Zen and the Fine Arts and the cotranslator of D. T. Suzuki's Columbia University Seminar Lectures into Japanese.

Elizabeth Mary Thomas (1907-1986) was an accomplished Egyptologist who regularly attended Suzuki's seminars. The manuscript that she compiled based on her remarkably detailed class notes forms the basis of this book.