I'm June. I used to run Keep It Simple through which Cheri's books are sold. Here is a brief history of this business.

In 1983 Cheri handed me a sheaf of papers, tape transcriptions of several workshops she had conducted. ''Turn these into a book," she requested. "I can't," I said. "Yes, you can," she replied.

This shook, but did not destroy, my belief that I indeed could not produce a book from those transcriptions. Predictably, I fiddled with the papers, did this and tried that, and for months got exactly nowhere.

One day Cheri took the sheaf, reread it, cut the sections into further sections, organized the whole mess, taped it all together, rolled it up into a scroll, and handed it back to me. ''There,'' she said. "That should help."

I was totally overwhelmed by that scroll. I carried it around for a few more months, my self-doubt, fear, and inadequacy intact—threatened, but intact. And then one day Cheri handed me a few pages that she had typed the night before. The writing was clear, concise, powerful, and universal. I was encouraged and delighted. Maybe this was going to work after all.

In the weeks that followed, the pages kept coming. The information was simply pouring through Cheri. She kept putting it down on paper as it came to her and handing it to me in almost final form.

This became our first book, The Key: and the Name of the Key Is Willingness, published in 1984. Because the Zen Center had no money for typesetting and production, I hand lettered and illustrated the manuscript, taking my inspiration from a wonderful little book, Beginning to See, by Sujata.

For four years we gave away The Key. Sometimes donations were made, often not. After publishing How You Do Anything Is How You Do Everything in 1988, we had a growing sense that we couldn't afford to publish books and give them away. We contracted with Bookpeople in Oakland, a large national-and-beyond small press wholesaler (now defunct), to handle distribution of these and future books. Our present distributor is Independent Publishers Group in Chicago.

As the books grew in popularity, the Zen Center received numerous requests for them. Cheri did not want to sell books through the Zen Center, and as a result, in 1990, Keep It Simple was formed to handle those requests.

Since then we have published 12 additional books. The process has become far less mysterious and continues to clarify itself for us. As I hand lettered and illustrated our sixth book, a pain in my right thumb pushed me to find a company that could put my lettering on a personal font. Subsequent books were produced at the computer. Ah, the wonders of modern technology.

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Today Keep It Simple is a nonprofit business staffed by monks at the Zen Monastery Peace Center in Murphys, California. We are supported solely by donations and the sale of books and other products.

Cheri Huber, a student and teacher of Zen for over 30 years, founded the Zen Monastery Peace Center and leads workshops and retreats there along with senior monks. We also offer workshops and retreats nationally and internationally. Your purchases through Keep It Simple support this work.