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Shunryu Suzuki
Shunryu Suzuki Memorial at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center
Shunryu Suzuki Memorial at Green Gulch Farm Zen Center
Information
Dharma name(s): Shogaku
Born: May 18, 1904(1904-05-18)
Place of birth: Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan
Died: December 4, 1971 (aged 67)
Place of death: San Francisco, California
Nationality: Japanese
Religion: Zen Buddhism
School(s): Sōtō
Title(s): Roshi
Workplace: San Francisco Zen Center
Education: Komazawa University
Predecessor(s): Gyokujun So'on Suzuki
Successor(s): Zentatsu Richard Baker
Hoitsu Suzuki
Spouse(s): Mitsu Suzuki
Partner(s): Yasuko Oishi
Otohiro Suzuki
Hoitsu Suzuki
Website

Portal:Buddhism

Shogaku Shunryu Suzuki (May 18, 1904—December 4, 1971) was an influential Japanese promoter of Sōtō Zen Buddhism in the United States, the founder of the largest Sōtō institution in the West known today as the San Francisco Zen Center. His bestselling book of compiled informal Dharma talks known as Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind has "become a guiding light for many American practitioners of Zen. It explains how to do zazen, and it also talks you through what it means to have a 'Zen mind.'"[1] Incorporated in 1962 at Sokoji Sōtō Zen Mission, the San Francisco Zen Center went on to acquire their current headquarters at 300 Page Street followed by Tassajara Zen Mountain Center (the first residential Zen training center in the United States) and Green Gulch Farm Zen Center. Suzuki was a man of small stature and became known for his open and hospitable nature, a teacher who never taught through authoritarianism.[2]

When they are searching for the right word to describe Suzuki-roshi, his students often settle on the word seamless. The difference between Suzuki-roshi in the zendo and Suzuki-roshi in a hot tub at Tassajara was no difference. Seamless. It applies to his teaching, his practice, and his presence.

—Downing, Michael (2001). Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center, 164. 

Shunryu Suzuki was a teacher that preferred his students refer to him as sensei rather than roshi early on—roshi being a term which indicates both seniority and enlightenment. However, by 1966 Alan Watts had encouraged San Francisco Zen Center students to address him as roshi and Suzuki finally accepted the title willingly.[3]

Contents

[edit] Life

[edit] Japan

[edit] Early years

Shunryu Suzuki was born in Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan on May 18, 1904 at Shogan-ji, a small rural Sōtō temple where his father Sogaku served as priest. Suzuki was referred to as Toshi in his youth, which is short for Toshitaka (an old way of pronouncing the Japanese characters of Shunryu). Coming from a very poor family, he often felt like an outsider in his early school years due to the humble appearance of his attire.[4] His family, having no living quarters at his father's temple, lived communally in the Butsuden (or, Buddha hall) within the temple itself. In 1916, having completed elementary school, Suzuki began studying with the adopted son of his father—So'on Suzuki—at Zounin in Mori, Japan. He was later ordained as an unsui by So'on in 1917 and given the Dharma name Shogaku.[5] So'on, who's full name was Gyokujun So'on Suzuki, had become abbot of Zounin the same year that Shunryu arrived there to study with him. Suzukis' parents hoped that Shunryu might one day inherit Zounin from So'on, which would provide the couple with a place to spend their remaining years in retirement.[6] Though So'on was often brusque when addressing Shunryu, he was also tolerant and patient with the twelve year old Suzuki.[7]

From 1924 to 1926 Suzuki studied at a Sōtō secondary school that was an affiliate of Komazawa University in Tokyo. In 1925 Suzuki began training at Kenko-in in Shizuoka City, Japan, where he studied under Dojun Kato-roshi.[5] There he completed an ango (or, 100 day sesshin) and underwent a head monk ceremony, where he was engaged in Dharma combat and reportedly held his ground competently.[8] That following year, in 1926, Suzuki received Dharma transmission from So'on during a shiho ceremony.[5] Also in 1926 (following his completion of secondary school) Suzuki entered Komazawa University in Tokyo, Japan, majoring in Zen philosophy and Buddhist studies with a minor in English.[5][9] His English teacher, Nona Ransom, was not only of great influence on the young Suzuki, she also became a practitioner of Zen Buddhism because of his example; Suzuki had become her translator in 1927 and lived in her home while attending university. In 1929 Suzuki became the twenty-eighth abbot of Zounin, though Suzuki's father Sogaku ran the temple in his absence while in school. Later that year (in May) he finished his job of serving as translator for Mrs. Ransom, moving into the dorms on Komazawa's campus.[9] Suzuki graduated from Komazawa University in April of 1930.[10][9]

Soon after returning to his abbotship of Zounin, Suzuki married his first wife. The marriage, however, was short-lived, as his new wife contracted tuberculosis soon after and the two agreed to an annulment.[11]

Suzuki was a vocal critic of Japanese militarism before and during World War II, declining to use his position as a Zen priest to encourage it as other Japanese Zen priests were doing. Instead, Suzuki chose to lead various discussion groups in his local area to discourage militarism in general; during the war years he continued to speak out against such nationalism, and it was his stance that ultimately allowed him to retain his teaching license at war's end and teach English to high schoolers.[12]

[edit] Postwar WWII

In 1958 Suzuki married Mitsu Matsuno in Japan.[13]

[edit] America

[edit] Sokoji

Bill Kwong came to Sokoji in 1960
Bill Kwong came to Sokoji in 1960

Shunryu Suzuki arrived in San Francisco, California on May 23, 1959, sent there by the Sōtō school of Japan to serve as the sixth priest of Sokoji Sōtō Zen Mission at 1881 Bush Street in San Francisco's Japantown.[14] At Sokoji, which had been established in 1934, Suzuki served an almost exclusively Japanese-American congregation in a building which had formerly housed a Jewish synagogue.[15] There Suzuki lived in a small windowless office upstairs with a bed and desk, taking his baths in a tub located in the basement. Within his first week at Sokoji Suzuki received his first American student, a man by the name of Bill McNeil who was interested in traveling to Japan to study Zen Buddhism. Suzuki had told Bill's wife—who had come to Suzuki worried about the impact of such a move—that he sat zazen each morning at 5:45 a.m., and so Bill began coming to sit with him early in the morning.[16]

Suzuki came to the United States in the late 1950s on a three-year, temporary appointment at Sokoji, the Soto Zen temple in San Francisco, where his primary responsibility was to provide pastoral care for the Japanese American community. But from the outset, he also maintained his passion for zazen (sitting meditation), an element of the Soto tradition that held little appeal for most of his parishioners. By the early 1960s, Suzuki was leading between twelve and thirty people, most of them non-Japanese, in zazen each morning. In 1962, this fledgling group of American Buddhists incorporated as the San Francisco Zen Center.

—Seager, Richard Hughes (1999). Buddhism In America, 98. 

Richard Baker came to Sokoji in 1961
Richard Baker came to Sokoji in 1961

Most of Suzuki's first students were beatniks and other members of San Francisco's counterculture, typically students of either the American Academy of Asian Studies or the San Francisco Art Institute. Besides Bill McNeil and now his wife, there was also the poet Joanne Kyger who attended Suzuki's 5:45 a.m. sittings at Sokoji from the early outset, and word about his early morning gatherings was spreading quickly among the San Francisco underground. As the days turned into weeks, more students arrived during the early morning zazen; occasionally he would also give a brief Dharma talk at the conclusion of their sitting period.[17] Suzuki began ending morning zazen by chanting the Heart Sutra within the first month, followed shortly after by the American congregation doing the chanting themselves. Suzuki himself began walking amongst the meditators with the kyosaku (or, Zen stick), striking those who requested with a gassho across the back to bring back alertness or alleviate muscle tension.[18] In 1960 Bill Kwong (today Jakusho Kwong) and his wife Laura began sitting at Sokoji with Suzuki, followed by the twenty-five year old Richard Baker in 1961. Within just a few short years, the number of American students coming to Suzuki for instruction had grown greatly.[19] Shunryu Suzuki was a teacher that preferred his students refer to him as sensei rather than roshi early on—roshi being a term which indicates both seniority and enlightenment. However, by 1966 Alan Watts had encouraged San Francisco Zen Center students to address him as roshi and Suzuki finally accepted the title willingly.[20]

[edit] Zen Center

Tension began to surmount between the Japanese-American congregation at Sokoji and Suzuki's American students, who were considered to be a separate congregation. Located in Big Sur, California,

[edit] Tassajara

Founded in 1966 by Suzuki and the San Francisco Zen Center, Tassajara Zen Mountain Center was the first Zen monastic community in the United States.

[edit] Final years

In March of 1971, while in Portland, Oregon, Suzuki began complaining to his student Reb Anderson about pains in his abdomen. Days later, after returning to San Francisco, he was taken to Mount Zion Hospital where he came to have his gallbladder removed; he spent several weeks recuperating in the hospital, where it was learned through a biopsy that he had actually had gallbladder cancer. Suzuki and his family decided to keep the cancer a secret from the San Francisco Zen Center community. To add insult to injury, Suzuki found out while still in the hospital that Dainin Katagiri was planning to leave the San Francisco Zen Center.[21] In October of 1971 Suzuki gathered many of his students around his bed and made the announcement they all had feared, stating that it his cancer had spread to his liver and he didn't have much time left to live.

Shunryu Suzuki died on December 4, 1971 at San Francisco Zen Center, surrounded by his wife Mitsu, his son Otohiro, and Dharma heir Zentatsu Richard Baker. At Suzuki's memorial service hundreds came to pay their respects.[22]

[edit] Teachings

[edit] Criticism

As the San Francisco Zen Center expanded, Suzuki became noticeably less available to those students of his who were not in senior positions—many of whom actually helped perpetuate that barrier.[23]

[edit] See also

[edit] Notes

  1. ^ Carr Feldman, Gail; Lenard, Lisa; McCLain, Gary R.; Adamson, Eve; Rejaunier, Jeanne (2001). The Complete Idiot's Guide to Zen Living, 34. 
  2. ^ Isserman, Maurice; Kazin, Michael (2000). America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s, 257. 
  3. ^ Downing, Michael (2001). Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center, 137. 
  4. ^ Chadwick, David (1999). Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, 3-4. 
  5. ^ a b c d Ford, James Ishmael (2006). Zen Master Who?: A Guide to the People and Stories of Zen, 124. 
  6. ^ Chadwick, David (1999). Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, 14-15. 
  7. ^ Chadwick, David (1999). Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, 19. 
  8. ^ Chadwick, David (1999). Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, 41-42. 
  9. ^ a b c Chadwick, David (1999). Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, 49-61. 
  10. ^ Lopez, Donald S. (2002). A Modern Buddhist Bible: Essential Readings from East and West, 127-128. 
  11. ^ Chadwick, David (1999). Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, 81. 
  12. ^ Fields, Rick (1986). How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America, 228. 
  13. ^ Prebish, Charles S. (2002). American Buddhism, 87. 
  14. ^ Fields, Rick (1986). How the Swans Came to the Lake: A Narrative History of Buddhism in America, 226. 
  15. ^ Prebish, Charles S. (1999). Luminous Passage: The Practice and Study of Buddhism in America, 14. 
  16. ^ Chadwick, David (1999). Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, 168-172. 
  17. ^ Chadwick, David (1999). Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, 172-176. 
  18. ^ Chadwick, David (1999). Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, 178-180. 
  19. ^ Chadwick, David (1999). Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, 187-209. 
  20. ^ Downing, Michael (2001). Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center, 137. 
  21. ^ Chadwick, David (1999). Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki, 364-368. 
  22. ^ Suzuki, Shunryu; Brown, Edward Espe (2002). Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen, vii. 
  23. ^ Downing, Michael (2001). Shoes Outside the Door: Desire, Devotion, and Excess at San Francisco Zen Center, 169-170. 

[edit] References

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