Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind - Shunryu Suzuki [3]
Suzuki- roshi never talks about his past, but this much I have pieced together. He was the disciple of Gyokujun So-on- daiosho, one of the leading Soto Zen masters of the time. Of course he had other teachers too, one of whom emphasized a deep and careful understanding of the sutras. Suzuki- roshi's father was also a Zen master, and, while still a boy, Suzuki began his apprenticeship under Gyokujun, a disciple of his father's. Suzuki was acknowledged a Zen master when he was rather young, I think at about the age of thirty. His responsibility in Japan included many temples and a monastery, and he was responsible for rebuilding several temples. During the Second World War he was the leader of a pacifist group in Japan. He had been interested in coming to America when he was young, but had long given up the idea when he was asked by a friend to go to San Francisco for one or two years to lead the Japanese Soto Buddhist congregation there.
In 1958, when he was fifty-three, he came to America. After postponing his return several times, he decided to stay in America. He stayed because he found that Americans have a beginner's mind, that they have few preconceptions about Zen, are quite open to it, and confidently believe that it can help their lives. He found they question Zen in a way that gives Zen life. Shortly after his arrival several people stopped by and asked if they could study Zen with him. He said he did zazen early every morning and they could join him if they liked. Since then a rather large Zen group has grown up around him - now in six locations in California. At present he spends most of his time at Zen Center, 300 Page Street, San Francisco, where about sixty students live and many more do zazen regularly, and at Zen Mountain Center at Tassajara Springs above Carmel Valley. This latter is the first Zen monastery in America, and there another sixty or so students live and practice for three-month or longer periods.
Trudy felt that understanding how Zen students feel about their teacher might, more than anything else, help the reader to understand these talks. What the teacher really offers the student is literally living proof that all this talk and the seemingly impossible goals can be realized in this lifetime. The deeper you go in your practice, the deeper you find your teacher's mind is, until you finally see that your mind and his mind are Buddha's mind. And you find that zazen meditation is the most perfect expression of your actual nature.
The following tribute from Trudy to her teacher describes very well the relationship between Zen teacher and Zen student:
"A roshi is a person who has actualized that perfect freedom which is the potentiality for all human beings. He exists freely in the fullness of his whole being. The flow of his consciousness is not the fixed repetitive patterns of our usual self-centered consciousness, but rather arises spontaneously and naturally from the actual circumstances of the present. The results of this in terms of the quality of his life are extraordinary-buoyancy, vigor, straightforwardness, simplicity, humility, serenity, joyousness, uncanny perspicacity and unfathomable compassion. His whole being testifies to what it means to live in the reality of the present. Without anything said or done, just the impact of meeting a personality so developed can be enough to change another's whole way of life. But in the end it is not the extraordinariness of the teacher which perplexes, intrigues, and deepens the student, it is the teacher's utter ordinariness. Because he is just himself, he is a mirror for his students. When we are with him we feel our own strengths and shortcomings without any sense of praise or criticism from him. In his presence we see our original face, and the extraordinariness we see is only our own true nature. When we learn