[.ca] Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki (ISBN 0767901053)

From Amazon.com:
"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

honest account of Suzuki-roshi life told by his students:
David Chadwick was able to interview a lot of the original students of Suzuki, letting each of them speak in their own voice. The book is not a sweet and reverential tale of the life of prominent Zen teacher, but the honest exposition of successes and failures of the man Suzuki-roshi was. Particularly interesting to me were accounts of Suzuki's complex position on the issues of Japanese militarism during the WWII; and account of his first year in America, and how the Zen center just naturally happened. Chadwick's style is clear, concise and compact; occasional quotations from Suzuki are well positioned and illustrated by real-life examples. Well Done!!!

Worts and All--The Biography of a Man of Zen:
Shunryu Suzuki in not a saint in this book, or at least he does not become one until late in his life after a lot of effort. He was, by his own admission, a so-so father and husband. He had a terrible temper and it is astonishing that someone could combine such mindfulness with such absentmindedness. The latter trait caused Suzuki's wife such a "dark night of the soul" that it brought her to enlightenment. (And no, he wasn't planning it that way--he just forgot a funeral.) This book is a labor of love by David Chadwick, but love never gets in the way of truth. One will also learn much of Suzuki's zen from Suzuki's own comments on things as they happen around him. Anyone interested in zen, Japanese culture, or fine biography should appreciate this book.

Funny, absorbing biography of a visionary:
I'm not a Zen practitioner; I read this book because I'm interested in Japanese culture and in contemplative forms of spirituality. Having already read the author's account of his own adventures in Japanese Zen temples, "Thank You and OK!", I was prepared for a bit of a romp. But this account of the life of S. Suzuki, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center and spiritual father to two generations of American meditators, is more than a series of amusing incidents as Japanese culture confronted America in the 1960s. It contains a very convincing portrayal of Japanese culture during the first 60 years of this century as well as an exhaustively researched, nuanced portrait of the father of American Zen. The book manages to keep a light tone without seeming silly, and it doesn't shy away from the pain and the stumbling blocks in Suzuki's life. The most pleasant surprise was the depiction of 1960s San Francisco as alternative culture made the transition from the Beats to the hippies. This is one of the most engaging books I've read in a long time. I found myself itching to get back to it, and I was sorry to see it end.

Crooked Reviewers:
It seems that most of the other reviewers knew what they thought about Suzuki before they read this book, and found their self-confirmations therein. So I will confine myself to the book itself, rather than the subject. The standard of research is as careful (and caring) as you will ever find among biographers. However, Chadwick's writing style is very light and breezy, without being flippant. Suzuki's life is portrayed in a way that skillfully demonstates both what has been RIGHT and what has been WRONG with Zen in America, althought the author never stoops to lecture the reader on these points.

5 STARS FOR SUZUKI'S HUMANITY:
This book does not, as one or two have complained, over-glorify Shunryu Suzuki. In fact, it's for exactly the oppostite reason that this book is so inspiring: because Suzuki is shown to be an ordinary man with ordinary human flaws, but who aspires always to be a better person. We can relate to him so much more than many other spiritual teachers because he is so much more like us, not some lofty being residing atop a mountain, or a Dalai Lama isolated by a retinue of followers from the every-day hum-drum, mundane world the rest of us have to live in--punching clocks and explaining to our boss why we're ten minutes late from our lunch-break. Suzuki's life was on the whole pretty normal. Yes, he grew up in a temple, something most of us don't do, but he had his share of flaws and moments of self-doubt, and he was eventually faced with all the ordinary concerns and hardships of making money and providing for a family that most of us have. Yet amidst it all he holds his spirituality as the central focus of his life, and tries his best to bring all these other worldly things into accordance with his spiritual ideals, just as we do. If you want to be inspired to be a better person, a happier person, in THIS life--as opposed to shutting yourself away in a monastery somewhere--then read this book.