Crooked Cucumber The Life and Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki.

New York, NY Random House: Broadway Books, 2000. Paperback First Ed thus; First Printing indicated. First Ed thus; First Printing indicated. Very Near Fine in Wraps: shows only the most minute indications of use: no apparent wear, but the binding shos barely discernible lean, while remaining perfectly secure; text clean, but the pages show just a hint of tan, due to aging. Very close to 'As New'. NOT a Remainder, Book-Club, or Ex-Library. 8vo. 431pp. Trade Paperback. 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, and my practice will be to take care of this sickness." The scene in which, near death, Suzuki inaugurates his successor is a tour de force. As is his death. These are heavy moments. But necessary ones. "The point is to attain complete composure," he once said. Well, he knew exactly what he was talking about. The lovely thing about this book is that it's dotted with wry epigrams which, after your initial laughter, you might underline and consider. "In reflecting on our problems, we should include ourselves." "Once you say 'sex,' everything is sex." To a carpenter who seemed to have achieved self-realization: "Yes, you could call that enlightenment --- and how's your work coming?" To a vegan: "You have to kill vegetables too." We find ourselves surrounded by fire-and-brimstone preachers. There's a reason they exist. But it's a great help to know that holy men can also be funny and wry and human. Shunryu Suzuki was just a man and, as he liked to say, not a very good one at that. Maybe so. But you can, after reading this book, easily see him as a Buddha.