Bonhomie

A life in Zen Growing up in countercultural California, ‘enlightenment’ had real glamour. But decades of practice have changed my mind by Anshi Zachary Smith  6,400 words On 18 May 1904, in a village near Japan’s Sagami Bay, looking out to the white peak of  Mt Fuji,  the son of a Buddhist priest was born. Shunryu Suzuki grew up amid the quiet rituals of Sōtō Zen, a tradition that prized stillness, repetition and near-imperceptible spiritual refinement. When he wasn’t sweeping temple courtyards, he was studying, preparing to follow in his father’s footsteps. But then, at age 55, after a life steeped in the disciplines of Japanese Zen, Suzuki travelled to San Francisco. Shunryu Suzuki in his  dokusan  and study room in San Francisco,  c 1970. Photo by  Katherine Thanas He arrived in California in 1959, as the United States’ literary counterculture was turning toward ‘The East’ in search of new ideas. Alan Watts had already begun to popularise ...