Shunryu Suzuki - Zen Is Right Here: Teaching Stories and Anecdotes of Shunryu Suzuki, Author of Zen Mind, Beginners Mind

S hunryu Suzuki Roshi, a Soto Zen priest from Japan, arrived in San Francisco in 1959 at the age of fifty-five. He came to minister to a congregation of Japanese Americans at a temple on Bush Street in Japantown called Sokoji, Soto Zen Mission. His mission, however, was more than what his hosts had in mind for him. He brought his dream of introducing to the West the practice of the wisdom and enlightenment of the Buddha, as he had learned it from his teachers. To those who were attracted to the philosophy of Zen, he brought something to dozazen (Zen meditation), and Zen practice (the extension of zazen into daily life). A community of students soon formed around him; many of them moved into apartments in the neighborhood so that they could walk to Sokoji for zazen in the early mornings and evenings.

In 1964 a small group of students began to meet for daily zazen in Los Altos, south of San Francisco. Other groups formed in Mill Valley and Berkeley. Suzuki Roshi, as he was called, would join each one once a week, when he could. He lived exclusively at Sokoji until 1967, when Zen Mountain Center was established at Tassajara Springs, deep in the wilderness of Monterey County. This mountain retreat was not only the first Buddhist monastery for Westerners, it also broke from tradition in allowing men and women, married and single, to practice together. It is the setting of many of the accounts in this book. In November of 1969 Suzuki Roshi left Sokoji to found the City Center on Page Street in San Francisco as a residential Zen practice center. He died there in 1971.

To Suzuki Roshi, the heart of a Zen temple is the zendo, or zazen hall. There he would join his students in zazen (often just called sitting), formal meals, and services in which sutras, Buddhist scripture, were chanted. There he would also give lectures, sometimes called dharma talks. Dharma is a Sanskrit word for Buddhist teaching. Usually one or two forty-minute periods of zazen were held early in the morning and in the evening. Sometimes there would be sesshin, when zazen would continue from early morning till night for up to seven days, broken only by brief walking periods, services, meals, lectures, and short breaks. During sesshin Suzuki would conduct formal private interviews with his students, called, dokusan.

Suzukis main teaching was silentthe way he picked up a tea cup or met someone walking on a path or in a hallway, or how he joined with his students in work, meals, and meditation. But when the occasion arose to speak, he made an impression. This book is a record of such impressions, each brief exchange stored away in the mind of an individual who carried it along for thirty years or more. Their glimpses of Suzuki Roshi show that his way was not systematic or formulaic. He emphasized that the ungraspable spirit of Buddhism is what continues, while the expression of that spirit always changes. The teachings of Buddha, he said, were for particular moments, people, and situations and were relative and imperfect.

Shunryu Suzuki touched thousands of people, Buddhist and non-Buddhist, many directly and many more through a now well-known collection of his lectures called Zen Mind, Beginners Mind. Today there are small Buddhist groups all over the West, of his lineage and of other lineages, that exist in no small part because of the efforts of this man.

In 1999 I published a biography of Suzuki titled Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki. I continue to collect the oral history of those times, to interview and correspond with people about their experiences with Suzuki Roshi and Zen practice, and to reflect on what I learned in the five years I studied with him. Zen Is Right Here is drawn from these records, from Zen Center archives, and from a few other sources. The title derives from one of the exchanges in this book. Zen is everywhere, Suzuki Roshi said, agreeing with a student. But for you, Zen is right here.

I hope you enjoy the wisdom of Suzuki Roshi; he had great confidence in yours.

Zen Is Right Here

O ne morning when we were all sitting zazen, Suzuki Roshi gave a brief impromptu talk in which he said, Each of you is perfect the way you areand you can use a little improvement.

O nce I asked Suzuki Roshi, What is Nirvana?

He replied: Seeing one thing through to the end.

O ne day at Tassajara, Suzuki Roshi and a group of students took some tools and walked up a hot, dusty trail to work on a project. When they got to the top, they discovered that they had forgotten a shovel, and the students began a discussion about who should return to get it. After the discussion had ended, they realized that Roshi wasnt there. He was already halfway down the mountain trail, on his way to pick up the shovel.

O ne day I complained to Suzuki Roshi about the people I was working with.

He listened intently. Finally, he said, If you want to see virtue, you have to have a calm mind.

A student asked in dokusan, If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?

Suzuki Roshi answered, It doesnt matter.

I t was my first sesshin and, before the first day was over, I was convinced I couldnt make it. My husbands turn for dokusan came that afternoon. He asked Suzuki Roshi to see me instead.

This is all a mistake, I told Roshi. I cant do this; I just came to be with my husband.

There is no mistake, he insisted. You may leave, of course, but theres no place to go.

O ne day a student was in the hall at Sokoji when Suzuki Roshi approached him.

Just to be alive is enough, Suzuki said, and with that, he turned around and walked away.