Born in Brooklyn in 1947, Dairyu Michael Wenger is a Soto Zen priest in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi and a Dharma heir of Sojun Mel Weitsman. A practitioner of Zen Buddhism since 1972, Michael currently is the guiding teacher at Dragons Leap Meditation Center in California and is the author of the book 49 Fingers: A Collection of Modern American Koans. He was the editor of San Francisco Zen Center's book Wind Bell: Teachings from the San Francisco Zen Center – 1968-2001 and was a contributor to the book Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness: Zen Talks on the Sandokai, a book of lectures by Shunryu Suzuki. He has previously served as President and Dean of Buddhist Studies at San Francisco Zen Center.