Word: shunryu
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...proceed is liberating, and crucial. I like paradoxes, which is why, even though I'm not particularly religious, Zen Buddhism has always appealed to me. Take the paradoxical state that Buddhists seek to achieve, what they call sho-shin, or "beginner's mind." The 20th century Japanese Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, who spent the last dozen years of his life in America, famously wrote that "in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." Which sounds to me very much like the core of Boorstin's amateur spirit. "The greatest obstacle...
...Downing begins in 1961, when Shunryu Suzuki, a quirky but brilliant monk in Japan's Soto Zen lineage, hung out a shingle in one of San Francisco's bohemian neighborhoods offering instruction in zazen. Unlike Rinzai Zen, which uses intellectual methods like koans to free the mind from itself, Soto Zen has few features that are susceptible to coffeehouse dilettantism. Zazen, the Soto school's central practice, is a unique method of wordless, thoughtless "just sitting," in which the mind seeks to become as empty as a puddle reflecting a cloudless sky. It is demanding, frustrating...
...that satisfying. Is he a complex and tormented visionary, a sage victimized by his own abilities or just another jerk in ceremonial robes? Ultimately, Downing leaves the decision to the reader. There are really no completely clean, morally unambiguous figures in Downing's story?and that includes even Shunryu Suzuki himself, who, wise and lovable as he might have been, certainly suffered from his own distinctive set of follies and foibles. Evangelizing America, it turns out, was only part of the master's plan. He also nurtured the somewhat grandiose dream of using his new American followers to help...
Shapiro, a Zen Buddhist, recalls that "Zen Master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi once said that one should not leave any traces of one's passage." Very much the adherent, Shapiro will no litter on the road on which he runs, but he certainly will muse at length about the remants of the drivers who preceded...
Founded 18 months ago on the site of a former hot-springs resort, the stone-and-redwood monastery compound at Tassajara was purchased for $300,000 by a group of wealthy Zen enthusiasts. There is a Japanese roshi, or Zen master, Shunryu Suzuki, 65, who gives guidance in meditation. The American director of the monastery, Richard Baker, 32, is a Berkeley graduate who specialized in Oriental studies. His 60 fulltime novices include college students-for some reason, most come from Minnesota and Texas-professors, a psychiatrist, an importer, a bookshop owner and a former naval commander. There is also...
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