Walter Nowick
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Walter Nowick, son of Russian immigrants, is one of the most important teachers of Rinzai Zen in the United States. No longer a Roshi teacher, he plays piano and started an international amateur opera company in Surry, Maine.
After fighting in the invasion of Okinawa and finishing music school at Juilliard, Nowick studied Zen in Kyoto Japan with Goto Zuigan Roshi. Upon returning to the US, students sought Nowick out on his farm near Bar Harbor, Maine. A year-round community of practicers studied with Walter and operated a small cedar mill until Walter's retirement in 1982 when Nowick-roshi founded the Surry Opera Company.
Allowing the above information to remain as is the following should also be considered:
This is to add information about Walter Nowick of Moonspring Hermitage, Surry, Maine.
Strict facts about his life are hard to establish. Of Russian or Polish immigrant parents? - his mother was Polish speaking - he grew up on Long Island on a potato farm. Showed precocious talent for music. Studied piano at Juilliard, but it's not clear whether he actually received a diploma. Served in Second World war in the Pacific so must have been of military age - eighteen to twenty - at America's entry into World War II in 1941. This would make his age around 85 as of 2008. First connection to Zen through his piano teacher who was a member of the First Zen institute of New York. Connection with Maine also through that piano teacher who used to visit the Surry, Maine area for the summer holidays.
Walter Nowick had undergone Rinzai Zen training under Zuigon Goto of Daitoku-Ji. (http://www.answers.com/topic/soko-morinaga-roshi) Was there at the same time as Gary Snyder, Janwillem van de Wetering and other Western students in Japan in the fifties and sixties. In the book THE EMPTY MIRROR, 1971, Janvillem van de Wetering describes his experiences at that monastery during the fifties, mentioning "Peter", a reference to Walter. Nowick stayed in Japan some sixteen years until the death of Zuigan Goto in 1965. He was never ordained a priest but remained a lay disciple.
After the death of Zuigan Goto in 1965 Nowick returned to the US and soon after started a zen community - the Moonspring Hermitage - on a farm in Surry, Maine, in those days rural, remote and poor. Rumor had it that funds to buy the farm came from one of Nowick's brothers. The Hermitage was incorporated as a non-profit religious organizations, with a board of officers elected from among the students, although effective control always remained with Walter Nowick.
Students began to drift in and settled nearby, building houses sometimes on land provided by Walter. There were both single and married people with children. A Rinzai Zen style practice was established although Nowick did away with many of the externals of Japanese Zen - there was no chanting, no robes, no buddhist names, lectures, precepts, etc. Instead there was just work on his farm, koan study and his personal say-so as the ultimate teaching. At its height, in the mid-seventies, the group may have had an overall membership of maybe 50 people with the ones actually permanently settled in Surry and taking part in the training about 25. Walter Nowick did not promote the group's existence to the outside or seek to make it known. Janwillem van de Wetering's book A GLIMPSE OF NOTHINGNESS, 1975, gives a flavor of how it was in those early days.
In his prime Walter was stocky, physically powerful, with a charismatic and domineering personality. Simple in personal habits. Hard working. A talented musician. Enveloped in the aura and mythology of a "zen master" he projected power, infallibility and entered totally into the lives of the students. He directed their personal lives, jobs, money, and careers through techniques of reward and punishment, love and humiliation, acceptance and rejection. These were surefire methods to control the often bruised, confused and idealistic young people of the idealistic and turbulent sixties.
The pattern of relationships was like spokes of a wheel with Walter at the center. Loyalty to him was the only loyalty that mattered. Everyone tried to protect their relationship to Nowick at all costs since on this depended their access to koan study, and often their very presence in Surry. There was fear and the fear destroyed possibility of friendship or solidarity among students. There was stress and loneliness. This was particularly painful for those just coming in since in the prevailing hush-hush atmosphere it was impossible to get one's bearings. Those who did not buy into the "zen master" theatrics were guaranteed instant hard times.
The hermitage prosperd for a while but in the mid '70s serious problems started when Nowick forced a sexual relationship on one of the students. The student had a wife and kids. One day they were in a car together and Walter just put his hand on his cock. "I just froze. I couldn't think. It was like molesting a child", he remembered years later. And it was, given the feelings many had toward him. It turned out that Walter Nowick was gay. In rural Maine of 35 years ago this was a closely guarded secret. The student eventually broke off this relationship but the incident caused a major trauma to Moonspring Hermitage and major personal trauma to many who had invested a great deal to be there.
Some students left and the ones that stayed were divided. Factions formed and the atmosphere became Byzantine. Things limped along through the end of the seventies. Some of the older students asked Nowick to give formal teachings on Buddhist precepts attempting to clarify his role. He refused. They got in touch with Morinaga Roshi, Zuigan Goto's successor in Japan, and explained the situation. Eventually things deteriorated even further and about 1982 Walter Nowick resigned from teaching. After that he devoted himself to music - playing the piano and starting a local amateur opera company. Still more students left, but there remained a small core loyal to Walter Nowick in spite of all. Many of the participants in the events from both sides of the controversy are still living in the area as of 2007.
At the breakup of Moonspring Hermitage and Nowick's resignation there was the question of the legal aspect of the community property, buildings erected on it by students, etc. Since the hermitage was formally a nonprofit religious organization with an elected board of directors the students who at the time were the acting officers refused to have the property revert to Walter Nowick. A lengthy legal wrangle ensued and after some years an agreement had been reached where both sides had the right of use part of the time. The old name had been dropped and a new one "Morgan Bay Zendo" adopted. The new center had no resident master, and instead relied on visiting teachers of various orientations to come to give lectures and conduct training sessions.
Janwillem van de Van de Wetering in his book AFTERZEN: EXPERIENCES OF A ZEN STUDENT OUT ON HIS EAR, 1999, describes, among other stories, the end of his own relationship to Walter Nowick. In the book Nowick figures as "Sensei". His account, however, is very spotty, and for someone not part of the events, so incomplete that it would be impossible to form a full picture of how things were. Enough hints are dropped, however, to piece together the conclusion that things were way out of order.
Stuart Lachs, another student of long residence at the Hermitage, with intimate knowledge of all that took place, has published a couple of papers on the internet which address issues of authenticity of transmission within Zen, infatuation with teachers, myths about Zen and the resulting abuses. Unfortunately the situation with Walter Nowick and Moonspring Hermitage gets only veiled treatment - ( http://www.darkzen.com/Articles/Richard_Baker_and_the_Myth_of_the_Zen_Roshi.htm and http://www.darkzen.com/Articles/uszen3.htm ). In fact, to this day, so man years after the events, there is a reluctance to making the facts known to the "outside".
This is a brief outline. To give a full history of the Moonspring Hermitage and Walter Nowick's role would take a review of personal accounts of the people who were there and how it impacted their lives. All of them. Or as many as possible. Hopefully those voices will be heard.
[edit] See also
- Buddhism in the United States
- List of Rinzai Buddhists
- Timeline of Zen Buddhism in the United States
[edit] External links
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