Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

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,

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.

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.

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.

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.