Suzuki was being terribly quiet, which just made Watts talk more. Watts, usually so confident, able to improvise lucid spiels on live radio when he couldn’t even walk straight to the mike, had lost his cool and was chattering nervously. Suzuki sat with him and Jano that night on the back porch of a century-old stone room overlooking the creek. He had ended a long dry period that summer on the drive down to Tassajara. He had interpreted Zen to millions and helped to open the minds of a generation, yet Suzuki’s simple presence could make him feel off balance. Though he loved rituals, Watts had scorned discipline, zazen, and the institutions that “reminded him of the stuffiness of British boarding schools. Several of Zen Centers major donors at the time of the purchase of Tassajara had come through Watts and his East Coast connections. He had been a great help to Suzuki from the first, sending him students and introducing him to colleagues in the San Francisco Asian studies scene. “ALAN WATTS came to Tassajara for the first time that summer with his wife, Jano. You can easily find the audio version of this biography and Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind on Youtube. Shunryu is the author of “Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” a Soto Zen monastic and priest in Japan before moving to America to establish a Zen Center and monastic community in San Francisco. I should also mention Shunryu Suzuki (commonly called Suzuki Roshi) is a different person than DT Suzuki.
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