Rick Spencer first became interested in Zen in the 1960's. But it wasn't until almost 20 years later that he discovered that zen practice was very much alive. For several years he practiced with a teacher in the Japanese Rinzai tradition as part of a group of Canadian zen students. Later on he met Zoketsu Norman Fischer, then abbot of the San Francisco Zen Center and came to be one of Norman's students. Norman gave him the Dharma name “Burai Anka” which means “Dancing Thunderbolt, Peaceful Transformation” in a Zeikei Tokudo or lay ordination ceremony in the year 2000. Then in 2004 he was ordained as a zen priest by Norman in a Shukke Tokudo ceremony. Rick first came to Mexico in 2000 for a weeklong zen retreat with Norman at Mar de Jade, a retreat center in Chacala, Nayarit a short distance north of Puerto Vallarta. He was impressed with the wholeheartedness of the Mexican zen practitioners that he met there, some of whom had been practicing for decades and others who just showed up for their first zen retreat with no idea of what that might be. Over the next few years, Rick spent more and more time in Mexico, and with each visit felt more and more at home. He took early retirement from his job with Environment Canada in 2004 and lived in Puerto Vallarta until 2019 supporting a meditation group there as resident priest. He lived in Mexico City and guided many retreats and practices with meditation groups in other parts of Mexico. Rick was interested in de-mystifying zen practice. He liked to share his conviction that wisdom and compassion are not attributes that only exist in some distant and idealized past or in some equally distant and magical future. He felt that Zen teachings are not so much to be understood as they are to be lived, and that this can only happen in the present moment. Rick received Dharma transmission from Norman in July 2011.