Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki
by David Chadwick

Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki
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Book Summary Information

Author: David Chadwick
Edition: Paperback
Audio: English (Original Language); English (Unknown); English (Published)
Published: 2000-02-08
ISBN: 0767901053
Number of pages: 464
Publisher: Broadway

Book Reviews of Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

Book Review: A Fine Biography of an Extraordinary Zen Teacher
Summary: 5 Stars

Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

My husband, Jack Elias, a student of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in the early days of San Francisco Zen Center, recommended Crooked Cucumber to me shortly after we met. At a loss for words to describe his Zen teacher, he handed me the book and said, "David has said it all amazingly well." I didn't know much about Zen, and all I knew about this great Zen master was that he had authored the classic, Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I didn't know who David Chadwick was, either. After reading the book, though, it soon became apparent that the birth of American Zen Buddhism, the life of Suzuki Roshi, and a deep admiration for David, the author of this beautifully written and exactingly reported biography, had all entered my mind's world ineffably and permanently. I remember this book and its stories the way one recalls favored scenes from one's own personal history. This phenomenon itself has proven interesting food for contemplation. Sometimes out of the blue, details of Suzuki Roshi's life arise vividly and with great immediacy. In those moments I think about how this teacher lived, and how he made his difficult way to enlightenment. Quite simply, this book continues to nourish me, though I'm not a Zen student. Crooked Cucumber changed my mind in ways I can't pinpoint, but for which I'm nonetheless deeply grateful. A thousand thanks to David Chadwick for delivering Suzuki Roshi to us with such love, humor, and rigorous specificity.

Summary of Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

Shunryu Suzuki is known to countless readers as the author of the modern spiritual classic Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.??This most influential teacher comes vividly to life in Crooked Cucumber, the first full biography of any Zen master to be published in the West.??To make up his intimate and engrossing narrative, David Chadwick draws on Suzuki's own words and the memories of his students, friends, and family.??Interspersed with previously unpublished passages from Suzuki's talks, Crooked Cucumber evokes a down-to-earth life of the spirit.??Along with Suzuki we can find a way to "practice with mountains, trees, and stones and to find ourselves in this big world."
"He's big Suzuki, I'm little Suzuki."

In the literary world, Shunryu Suzuki has always played second fiddle to D.T. Suzuki. With David Chadwick's biography of this extraordinary man, Shunryu Suzuki will take his rightful place as one of the progenitors of American Buddhism. Chadwick, a long-time student of Suzuki's, takes us back to Suzuki's childhood, his entry into monastic life at age 13, subsequent trials with his ornery master and in the notoriously strict Eiheiji Monastery, as well as life as a houseboy with a British tutor to the Chinese emperor, marital tragedies, and the political minefield of World War II while he served as abbot of his own temple. The overarching theme of Suzuki's teaching is practice--in a community setting--and when he takes over a temple of aging Japanese Americans in San Francisco, his practice begins to attract younger Americans. The second half of Crooked Cucumber relates the phenomenal growth of the San Francisco Zen Center and becomes a biography of the growing community and its members, inasmuch as the center was Suzuki's life. A monk who was thought to be as useless as a crooked cucumber, under the pen of Chadwick turns out to be a brilliant, witty, tireless patriarch of American Zen. --Brian Bruya

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