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Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

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In stereotypical Zen fashion, I don't wish to say too much about this book. I'd hate to spoil any portion of it for anyone. But please read this book.

If you have already read the author's previous book, Thank You and OK, you already know what an excellent writer David Chadwick can be when he is poking fun at himself. (If you haven't read Thank You and OK, then please go get that book, too.) I was frankly surprised at what an excellent historian Mr. Chadwick was, when it came time to write entirely seriously, about someone else. Especially Suzuki, Roshi. I was a little nervous that this book might contain the type of gushing praise that has tended to be heaped upon deceased Buddhist teachers in America. But Crooked Cucumber offers a very balanced view of Suzuki Roshi, including not only stories that inspire one's admiration for the man, but also anecdotes that cause one to scratch one's head and wonder why he could be so infuriatingly fallible at times. As a result, I felt I could trust Chadwick's scholarship, and I wound up with a much more mature appreciation for this Zen "legend."

I have already said way too much. But I predict that Crooked Cucumber will wind up being regarded as one of the best Buddhist books ever written.

Early Buddhists in India were inspired by the biographies of great teachers such as Shariputra and Ananda. For over a thousand years the Chinese have had the stories of their patriarchs, most notably Bodhidharma and the Sixth Patriarch. All Tibetans know by heart the details of the lives of Padmasambhava and Milarepa. For the Japanese, Kobo Daishi, Dogen and Hakuin have taught many millions through the examples found in their biographies. In every age and in every Buddhist country, the great teachers have repeatedly encouraged their followers to study the lives of various lineage holders. Now, at last, Westerners can benefit from the story of a man who successfully transplanted his lineage to American soil. Chadwick's book, the first of its kind in English, is a great contribution to Buddhist literature. Future biographers of other great teachers who have taught in America, such as Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche and the Dalai Lama, will now have Crooked Cucumber to help them continue to record how the teachings of Buddhism are passed from one real country to another, from human teachers to human disciples. Most importantly, Chadwick has somehow enabled us to actually meet Suzuki Roshi, face-to-face. Finally, through this book, Suzuki Roshi subtly introduces us to one of his most perceptive, devoted and beloved students, David Chadwick, Suzuki's almost invisible biographer.

Shunryu Suzuki was once asked to summarize Buddhism in a sentence. The audience laughed at the impossibility of that challenge. But the Zen master had a ready answer. "Easy," he said. "Everything changes."

Easy was the way he was. Or seemed to be. He didn't tell neophytes they needed to learn much before setting out on the Zen path. "In the beginner's mind, there are many possibilities," he explained. "In the expert's mind, there are few." And, later, he was equally committed to the importance of whatever you were feeling, in the moment you were feeling it. There were no hard and fast truths. For him, the secret of Zen was: "Not always so." Which is just another way to say "Everything changes."

You could almost say he didn't care about Zen. Sitting in the lotus position and watching your thoughts --- nice, but not crucial. Ditto walking meditation. "The most important thing is to be able to enjoy your life without being fooled by things," he said.

Spoken like a very American Zen master. In fact, Suzuki lived in Japan most of his life. He came to San Francisco in 1959 and died there in 1971. Twelve years in America, that's all. But in those few years, he basically established Zen practice in this country.

But forget the practice. Consider the life. There are very, very few biographies of Zen masters, mostly because that's the way they like it --- their practice is specific, geared to the student, as impermanent as smoke. Their lives erase themselves.

David Chadwick, a longtime student of Suzuki's, thought of writing this biography. He went to ask the widow's permission. Her advice: "Tell many funny stories." Chadwick followed instructions. "Crooked Cucumber" is funny often, and where it is not, the writing is playful and light. Even if you don't care much about Zen, this book is a pleasure to read.

And it's a great story. Suzuki began Zen training when he was 11. For all his gifts, his first master saw an inauspicious future for him. He nicknamed him "Crooked Cucumber" because a bent cucumber was useless --- Suzuki would become a teacher with no good disciples. But by 24, he had his own temple. He learned to run it like a small business at the same time as he taught the dharma. "If you have a flexible attitude, you can help people quite easily," he concluded.

He needed a flexible attitude in San Francisco. When he arrived, Beatniks were hopped up about what they thought was Zen. A few years later, hippies were dropping LSD and hallucinating the Buddha. Through it all, Suzuki played the role of a simple monk with a sincere commitment. He barely taught. He didn't have to --- he embodied the teaching.

When he had to, he became a giant. A beloved student died. He delivered a measured eulogy for her --- and then, Chadwick writes, he "let out a mighty roar of grief that echoed through the cavernous auditorium." Chadwick's account of Suzuki's final illness is equally powerful. "I have cancer," Suzuki told his students. "This cancer is my friend, and my practice will be to take care of this sickness."

The scene in which, near death, Suzuki inaugurates his successor is a tour de force. As is his death. These are heavy moments. But necessary ones. "The point is to attain complete composure," he once said. Well, he knew exactly what he was talking about.

The lovely thing about this book is that it's dotted with wry epigrams which, after your initial laughter, you might underline and consider. "In reflecting on our problems, we should include ourselves." "Once you say 'sex,' everything is sex." To a carpenter who seemed to have achieved self-realization: "Yes, you could call that enlightenment --- and how's your work coming?" To a vegan: "You have to kill vegetables too."

We find ourselves surrounded by fire-and-brimstone preachers. There's a reason they exist. But it's a great help to know that holy men can also be funny and wry and human. Shunryu Suzuki was just a man and, as he liked to say, not a very good one at that. Maybe so. But you can, after reading this book, easily see him as a Buddha.

Shunryu Suzuki in not a saint in this book, or at least he does not become one until late in his life after a lot of effort. He was, by his own admission, a so-so father and husband. He had a terrible temper and it is astonishing that someone could combine such mindfulness with such absentmindedness. The latter trait caused Suzuki's wife such a "dark night of the soul" that it brought her to enlightenment. (And no, he wasn't planning it that way--he just forgot a funeral.)

This book is a labor of love by David Chadwick, but love never gets in the way of truth.

One will also learn much of Suzuki's zen from Suzuki's own comments on things as they happen around him. Anyone interested in zen, Japanese culture, or fine biography should appreciate this book.

I liked this book very much for a lot of reasons. Perhaps the things I liked about it the best are (in no particular order):

The writing style is warm and accessible, you get a strong sense of presence not just with Suzuki but with all the key figures who are presented. Chadwick, though he was involved in so much of what went on in the latter history described in this book, maintains an admirable degree of transparency as an author. He has the voice of a gifted writer who doesn't take himself particularly seriously - something that is distressingly rare in gifted (and non-gifted) writers.

I also appreciated the fact that Suzuki was not presented as a some sort of god. Instead, Chadwick presents him to us as a real human being with occasional tendencies towards making mistakes or simply behaving like an actual human. It seems to me that in doing so the real greatness of Suzuki comes across much, much better. Indeed he seems all the more remarkable to me for it. Here is, in many respects, a normal man who forgets stuff, gets angry, etc. who nevertheless achieves remarkable things. I find this a lot more useful (and yes, inspiring) than reading about yet another "Mr./Ms. Perfect Spiritual Person" who bears no relation to me or my own flawed life.

Also, Chadwick does a marvelous job of conveying a sense of historical and situational context in his writing. This may be his greatest strength as a writer - the ability to get across the feel of a place, time, and situation. Check out Thank You and OK! for a really masterful example of this.

Finally, this book is damn funny in places. Humor, it seems to me, is central to American buddhism. Buddhism, like anything that people take very seriously (and we should) is always in danger of taking itself TOO seriously. Suzuki, and in turn Chadwick, keep Buddhism on its toes by poking fun at it every now and then. The story of Suzuki in the hamburger joint with one of his vegetarian disciples is a delightful example of this.

I read an awful lot of books about buddhism. Many of them are dry, dull, and fail to convey much of anything beyond the fact that a billion years of often esoteric philosophical thinking has gone into it. Some of them are excellent. However, Chadwick's two books are unique and uniquely excellent. They convey the rich depth and beauty of buddhism while at the same time celebrating its human side. They don't take themselves too seriously - they don't presume to have it all figured out - they just make buddhism human, and I can relate to them in a way that I can't relate to practically any other form of buddhist writing.

I'm not a Zen practitioner; I read this book because I'm interested in Japanese culture and in contemplative forms of spirituality. Having already read the author's account of his own adventures in Japanese Zen temples, "Thank You and OK!", I was prepared for a bit of a romp.

But this account of the life of S. Suzuki, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and spiritual father to two generations of American meditators, is more than a series of amusing incidents as Japanese culture confronted America in the 1960s. It contains a very convincing portrayal of Japanese culture during the first 60 years of this century as well as an exhaustively researched, nuanced portrait of the father of American Zen. The book manages to keep a light tone without seeming silly, and it doesn't shy away from the pain and the stumbling blocks in Suzuki's life.

The most pleasant surprise was the depiction of 1960s San Francisco as alternative culture made the transition from the Beats to the hippies.

This is one of the most engaging books I've read in a long time. I found myself itching to get back to it, and I was sorry to see it end.

I think that a lot of what can be learned from a great teacher is found not in what they say, but from just beign around them--observing everything from their relationships with other people to the way they treat everyday objects. This book gives a strong impression of what it would have been like to be around Suzuki-roshi and to observe his ordinary, enlightened behavior. And it's all told with skill and simplicity. Much gratitude to the author and his subject.

At times, authors would have the highest regards of their subjects that by the time the books are completed, the biographies of the subjects would differ completly from the real thing. Despite that David Chatwick was a student of Shunryu Suzuki, and despite that the reverence is there, David interviewed hundreds of people, researched through piles of materials in order to convey to us the person that Shunryu Suzuki was. Here, he was portrayed as a human being with his own flaws. As we traced Shunryu's life from his childhood in Japan and subsequently, to America, we would learn of his deep sufferings that moulded him to become the person that he would become later on. In Japan, he never gotten the recognition that he deserved & right from day one, he was called Crooked Cucumber by his own teacher for his absent-mindedness. Yet, we are talking about the same Crooked Cucumber that brought Zen into the mainstream, setting up Zen centres in the West, initiated the exchange program between America & Japan, and along the way, captivating people's hearts & souls. Shunryu always believed in the middle-road & in all people. He left people to their own discretion to find meanings in their lives & he's only there to guide them when his assistance was needed. The later part of the book was very heart-moving to read as he was struggling with his own terminal illness & yet, he projected a quiet dignity & strength that a teacher possessed & guided his students till the change-over phase. In his dead bed, he was still thinking about his students instead about himself. One can't help but feeling emotional about this book. A times, it's funny, it's sad, it's scary (especially when he had his short temper burst), it's wonderful but isn't that what life is all about? By reading this book, perhaps, we get a bit of insight about this great teacher but along the way, we get to learn more about ourselves. A captivating read and highly recommended

This is an excellent book for anyone wanting insight into the life, times and teachings of a most extraordinary ordinary Zen master. Mixed in with the narrative of Suzuki's life are short passages (taken from interviews and tapes of Suzuki's talks) on his life and the teachings of Buddhism. The book includes several pages of wonderful black&white pictures, too. Chadwick's writing style is informal, very tell-it-like-it-is, without being too preachy, judgmental. Some paragraphs end rather abruptly seemingly without coming to a complete close, but I think many Zen lectures are like that. Chadwick paints a picture of a Zen master who was reverent, irreverent, paradoxical, compassionate, unbelieveably wise, very human, and very ordinary.

David Chadwick's biography of Shunryu Suzuki is a warm, generous, and down-to-earth portrait of one of America's Zen patriarchs. David was a long-time student of Suzuki-roshi's and knew him well from firsthand experience. In addition, he went through the archives at San Francisco Zen Center and interviewed many people in Japan and America who knew Suzuki well. The result is a warm close-up of Suzuki's life and teaching. David gives us a picture of a human being, faults included, who never fails to appeal to us on the broadest level of a human being who was as fulfilled in his calling as one can hope to be. He appeals to us as much through his flaws and his basic humanity as he does through his teaching and wisdom. "Crooked Cucumber" gives us an immediate and direct view of a life‹ and death‹ well-lived. I was fortunate to be a student of Suzuki-roshi's in the mid 1960s and early '70-s. After reading David's biography I felt that I had had a refreshing walk with my old friend and teacher. He was an important teacher in American Zen Buddhism, one who had a significant influence not only on his students and disciples, but on thousands of people who never knew him. "Crooked Cucumber" gives us a fresh glimpse not only into Suzuki-roshi's life, but into his zen mind and his everyday mind, which are timeless and cannot be separated. I am very grateful for this book