Huston Smith, the well-known Professor of Philosophy at the Massachesetts Institute of Technology, wrote in the Preface to 'Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind':

"Two Suzukis. A half-century ago, in a transplant that has been likened in its historical importance to the Latin translations of Aristotle in the thirteenth century and Plato in the fifteenth, Daisetz Suzuki brought Zen to the West single-handed. Fifty years later, Shunryu Suzuki did something almost as important. In this his only book, here issued for the first time in paperback, he sounded exactly the follow-up note Americans interested in Zen needed to hear.

"Whereas Daisetz Suzuki's Zen was dramatic, Shunryu Suzuki's is ordinary. Satori was focal for Daisetz, and it was in large part the fascination of the extraordinary state that made his writings so compelling. In Shunryu Suzuki's book the words satori and kensho, its near-equivalent, never appear.

"When, four months before his death, I had the opportunity to ask him why satori didn't figure in his book... he said simply, 'It's not that satori is unimportant, but its not the part of Zen that needs to be stressed.'

Although not directly relative to dressage in particular, these stories of a Zen master provide an inspiring anthology that are relevant to life, and therefore to every aspect of life. It doesn't take incredible creativity to see the analogies between the lessons learned about ourselves through the discipline of dressage and the overall lessons we have to learn in life. They are often one and the same. So, for those that enjoy this perspective on dressage, I offer these passages from 'Crooked Cucumber.'

David Chadwick writes about Suzuki-roshi, (page xii):

"He came with no plan, but with the confidence that some Westerners would embrace the essential practice of Buddhism as he had learned it from his teachers. He had a way with things - plants, rocks, robes, furniture, walking, sitting - that gave a hint of how to be comfortable in the world. He had a way with people that drew them to him, a way with words that made people listen, a genius that seemed to work especially in America and especially in English."

(page xiii):

"He had a fresh approach to living and talking about life, enormous energy, formidable presence, an infectious sense of humor, and a dash of mischief."

(page xiii):

"From the time he was a new monk at age thirteen, Suzuki's master, Gyokujun So-on Suzuki, called him Crooked Cucumber. Crooked Cucumbers were useless: farmers would compost them; children would use them for batting practice. So-on told Suzuki he felt sorry for him, because he would never have any good disciples. For a long time it looked as though So-on was right. Then Crooken Cucumber fulfilled a lifelong dream. He came to America, where he had ,amu students and died in the full bloom of what he had come to do. His twelve and a half years here profoundly changed his life and the lives of many others."

(page xiiii):

"On a mild Tuesday afternoon in August of 1993 I had an appointment with Shunryu Suzukis's widow of almost twenty-two years, Mitsu Suzuki."

...

"I was a little nervous. I needed to talk to her, and although there wouldn't be much time, I didn't want to rush. What I sought was her blessing."

...

"After some polite chitchat about family members, and about a book I'd written, I brought up the purpose of my visit."

" 'Some publisher may be interested in... it has been suggested to me that I... might.... um... write some on Suzuki-roshi. Collect the oral history - stories about Suzuki-roshi, people's memories.'

" 'Oh, thank you for writing about Hojo-san,' she said, with the pitch ascending on the thank. Hojo-san is what she always called her husband. Hojo is the abbot of a temple; san is a polite form of address.

" 'So you really think it's okay for me to do a book on Suzuki-roshi? '

" 'Oh,yes, yes,' she said emphatically. 'Tell many funny stories.'

" 'Umm... funny stories, yest... but not just funny. Serious and sad ones, too, everything, right? '

" 'Yes, but people like the funny stories. Mainly you should tell funny stories. That will be good. Hojo-san liked funny storeies. Everyone will be very happy to read them.'

" 'There may be some people who don't hink I should do the book.'

"She sat back down across the table from me and looked directly at me. 'When I speak now, it is Suzuki-roshi's voice coming through my mouth and he says, 'Please write a book about me and thank you very much for writing a book about me.' Those are his words, I speak for him.'

" It was time to go. She offered me a green metallic frog that fit in the palm of my hand. 'Here, take this,' she said. 'It belonged to Hojo-san. He would be very happy for you to have it. He loved frogs very much,' she said, drawing out the first syllable of very. 'I'm giving everything away. When I go back to Japan I go like the cicada. It leaves its shell behind. I will do that too.'

...

" 'Remember,' she said, 'tell many funny stories.' Then, 'Why would anyone not want you to do a book about Hojo-san?'

" 'Various reasons. You know that he didn't want anything like that. It would be impossible not to misrepresent him. And you know what Noiri-roshi said over twenty years ago?' Noiri was a colleague of Suzuki's, a strict and traditional priest, now old and revered.

" 'No, what did Noiri-san say?'

" 'That Suzuki-roshi was one of the greatest Japanese of this century and that no one should write about him who doesn't know all of his samadhis [deep states of meditation].'

" 'Good!' she said clapping, with delight in her voice. 'There is your first funny story!' "

"... on May 18, 1904, Yone Suzuki gave birth to a baby boy. Her husband, Sogaku, priest of the temple (Shoganji, a small four-hundred year old temple on a hill above the village of Tsuchisawa, on the edge of the city of Hiratsuka in Kanagawa Prefecture), gave his first-born son the name Shunryu, using the written characters for Excellent and Emerging, a rather formal Buddhist name full of high expectations."

"As a child, Shunryu Suzuki was called Toshitaka - Toshi for short. Toshitaka is the old Japanese way of pronouncing the characters that make up Shunryu, with a softer and more casual feeling."

...

"Toshi began his six years of compulsory education in April 1910, when he was almost six. It was at school that he became aware that his family was uncommonly poor. Most people wore zori, straw sandals with a dividing cord between the first two toes. When the cord broke on one, children would throw away both. Toshi would take the good ones home and make new pairs. Unwilling to spend money on a set of hair clippers, his father would shave Toshi's head like his own. All the boys at school had short-clipped hair, but not shaved heads."

"Sogaku made candles for the temple from an iron mold. He would pour extras, and when he had a good load he would walk five miles to Ohisa City to sell them. On the way back he would pick up discarded vegetables from the roadside, storing them in a bag he carried. It wasn't just because he was poor that Sogaku did this. It was his way. His son would talk about it half a century later.

"There was a creek in front of my father's temple, and many rotten old vegetables would float down from higher up the mountain. Farmers and other people would throw them away. They were vegetable-like things, not exactly vegetables! [laughing] They might have been good for compost, not for eating. But as soon as he'd find them he'd cook them up and say, 'Everything has buddha nature. You should not throw anything away!' Wherever he went, he talked about how valuable food is and how you shouldn't throw it away."

"Toshi especially liked to help his father move stones into place around the temple and in the rock garden. He was friend to stones, rivulets, plants, beetles, worms, and butterflies. He'd sit beyond the oak trees on the low stone fence around the ohaka (graveyard, place where remains, usually ashes, of the dead are interred) at dusk waiting for foxes, tanuki (Japanese raccoons), deer, and rodents. Massaging his mother's back in the evening, he told her and his siblings of his plans to build a zoo next to the temple; he wanted a train from the town below to run up to it, so that many people could come to visit the animals.

"In Spring when the rice fields were flooded and the frogs' ubiquitous croaking filled the air, children would dally and play on their way home from school. Some of the boys liked to catch frogs, insert straws into their anuses, and blow them up till they popped. When he first saw this Toshi (Shunryu Suzuki's name as a child) flew into a rage, but that didn't help - the other boys were all bigger than he. So he devised a scheme. As soon as school was out Toshi would be off and running ahead with a long stick, knocking at the banks of the rice paddies, yelling and trying to scare his amphibious friends into hiding."

"Every little treat the children got, every piece of clothing they had to wear, they cherished. They appreciated it when, after a heavy winter snow, their father went down to school to walk them home. They loved it on a hot summer afternoon when he filled the outdoor iron bathtub with cold water for them to play in. And sometimes he would have a special gift for Toshi.

"The shirtlike garment of the samurai is called a hakama. Boys wore hakama for special ceremonies at school. Toshi's mother hadn't found time to make him one, so he felt left out on ceremonial days. In December of 1912 there was to be a very important ceremony at Toshi's school to welcome in the new emperor and his era, Taisho, Great Righteousness.

"The day before the ceremony Sogaku came home with a new hakama for his son. Excited, Toshi put it on, just as he'd seen his friends do. Sogaku insisted he'd done it incorrectly and retied the sash in a formal and old-fashioned way. None of the boys did it that way. Next morning, as soon as he passed through the temple gate, Toshi stopped and rearranged his hakama. Then he heard something behind him. Turning he saw his father furiously running toward his waving a stick. Toshi ran away as fast as he could."

"Snuggled up in the evening with his brother and sisters, Toshi often asked his mother to repeat a story about a famous mythical Japanese warrior, a story he would pass on to his students, his dharma children, sixty years later.

"People may say that the Japanese are very tough, but that is just one side of the Japanese personality. The other side is softness. Because of their Buddhist background they have been trained that way for a long time. The Japanese people are very kind. My mother used to sing a song that describes a hero called Momo Taro, the Peach Boy. An old couple lived near the riverside. One day the old woman picked up a peach from the stream, and out of the peach came Momo Taro. He was very strong but kind and gentle - the ideal Japanese folk hero. Without a soft mind you cannot be really strong."

"At elementary school Toshi had a teacher he greatly admired, who encouraged him to be strong and rise above sentimentalism. Toshi had doubts about being ordained by his father, who had no monks in training anymore. His father, though very dear to him, seemed a little weak. He often complained about losing his temple, saying he should never have left. And he was too attached to his son. Toshi just couldn't see him as a teacher.

"My father took care of me too well, so here in my heart I always felt some family feeling, too much emotion, too much love. My teacher at grammar school warned me about this kind of thing. He always said, 'You should be tough.'

"Shunryu was always at the top of his class. His teacher told him that he should grow up to be a great man and that the way to be a great man was not to avoid difficulties but to use them to develop one's greatness.

"He said there were no great people in that area because the local people wouldn't go to Tokyo to study hard, and didn't have the courage to leave. He said if we wanted to be successful, we had to get out of Kanagawa prefecture. So I determined to get out.

"Toshi had made the first two critical decisions of his life by age eleven: to become a monk and to leave Kanagawa. ;My ambition at that time was directed toward a narrow idea of attainment, but I made up my mind to leave my home and to practice under a strict teacher.' He had been impressed by a popular Buddhist belief that by being ordained one saves one's ancestors for nine generations back. But where should he go? With whom should he study? It was March 1916 and he had just graduated from elementary school.

"This was the time when a boy's career was often decided, when he became an apprentice in a trade, began military school or some other training, or started working with his father in the fields. Very few went on to higher education, especially in that region. While it was normal for Toshi to follow in his father's profession, it was unusual that he decided to go far away before his parents were ready to let him go, not even choosing to start with his father and move on later.

"While Toshi was considering these matters, Shoganji had a visitor, a priest who came several times a year to pay his respects to his master, Sogaku. Gyokujun So-on Suzuki, Sogaku's adopted son, had just become the abbot of Zoun-in, Sogaku's former temple. He was like an imposing uncle to Toshi - tall, tough, exuding confidence. Toshi was enamored with him.

"I knew him pretty well and liked him so much. When I asked him to take me to his temple, he was amazed byt said it would be fine with him. I asked my father if I could go to Shizuoka Prefecture with him. He agreed, so I went to my master's temple when I was thirteen.

"Toshi was actually eleven, almost twelve, at the time. He calculated thirteen by the prewar counting method, wherein a person was one at birth and two on the following New Year's Day.

"Although Toshi felt he was making these decisions on his own, discussions had been going on behind the scenes for quite some time. His intentions and those of his parents were in accord except for the timing. They thought he was too young to go and suggested he wait till the next year. But Toshi wanted to go right away. He pointed out that his father, Sogaku himself, had chosen to begin apprenticeship with his master at a young age. Toshi wanted to do the same.

"It all happened so quickly that, to his sisters and half brother, it seemed like he was being whisked away from the family. Sogaku and Yone did not want to spend the rest of their lives at Shoganji. It was right that So-on, as the first disciple, would inherit Zoun-in from Sogaku. If Toshi did well with him, he could inherit Zoun-in from So-on, and then Sogaku and Yone could retire there. If Toshi's father ordained him and became his principle master before he left, then So-on would become his second teacher and Toshi wouldn't be in line to get Zoun-in. Sogaku was too old ot train Toshi anyway, and many believed that a father could not properly train his son. As the proverb went, 'If you love your child, send him on a journey.' So Toshi went off with his first master, Gyokujun So-on, at the age of eleven."