"Suzuki's favorite story about his novice days with So-on was a cautionary tale, not of selfishness but of discrimination, and of pickles gone bad. At Zoun-in pickles were made to eat year-round but especially in the winter, when there were few fresh vegetables. There were pickles made from cucumbers, carrots, eggplants, cabbage, and daikon, the giant white radishes. A batch of takuan daikon pickles, had been undersalted and had gone bad. So-on was told about it. He was just like Sogaku when it came to food. He wouldn't throw it out. 'Serve it anyway!' he ordered. So for meal after meal decomposing daikon were served, and the pickles were getting worse with the passage of time. One night when they could take it no more, after they were sure So-on was asleep, Shunryu and a couple of cohorts took the pickles out to the garden and buried them.

"The boys were pleased with themselves, thinking they had gotten away with their prank. But a few days later when they sat down for breakfast at the low wooden table, So-on brought in a special dish - the rotten pickles back from the dead! So-on ate the pickles with them. Shunryu gathered his courage and took the first bite, then the next. He found that he could do it if he didn't think about it. He said it was his first experience of nondiscriminating consciousness.

"The pickles saga wasn't quite over, though. The boys decided to boil them to see if that helped. It did; they were much easier to eat. So-on said, 'What is this? You boys must have cooked something extraordinary!' And then they all ate the cooked rotten pickles together. He never asked his students to do anything he couldn't do himself."

"When Shunryu arrived at Zoun-in there were eight boys studying with So-on. After the first year there were only four, and midway through the second year they too had gone. So-on was not just hard on Shunryu; one by one the boys had been driven away by his imperious manner and the privations they had to endure with him. Now it was just Shunryu and So-on. He had a lot of responsibility for a fourteen-year-old. There was schoolwork, cooking, cleaning, memorial services in homes, assisting with ceremonies at the temple, and serving So-on and his guests. Shunryu was lonely without his friends, but he was getting lots of personal attentiont. That often didn't work out the way he wanted it to. For instance, he had some resistance to making full bows, down on the knees with forehead descending to touch the bowing cloth and hands extended palms up. So-on noticed Shunryu's resistance and told him that from that day, instead of bowing three times to Buddha a tthe end of the services, they would bow nine times."

"'Don't commit adultery, Crooked Cucumber!' Shunryu had beed admiring an old tea bowl, and that is how So-on told him to be so attached to fine things."

"So-on (Shunryu's master) arranged for his students to study with another teacher for a while, a Rinzai Zen teacher. Before they left, So-on had some words of advice: Don't forget beginner's mind; don't stick to tany particular style of practice. When you go to a Soto temple, practice the Soto way; when you go to a Rinzai temple, practice the Rinzai way. Always be a new student."

"In 1919, when Shunryu was fifteen, Sogaku and Yone killed the deal with So-on and took their son back to Shoganji from Rinso-in. Yone had been complaining about her son's mistreatment for some time. Sogaku hadn't been so vocal, but as far as he was concerned, So-on had been treating Shunryu as though he were a nuisance. Three years was enough.

"Shunryu had passed the entrance examinations for middle school at Kaisei Chugaku, a first-rate institution."

...

"When not in class at Kaisei, Shunryu helped his father with temple duties, performed services in people's homes, and gave his father the envelopes of money he received. He got special treatment at home and accepted it. He had gotten used to that as a monk and as a male. His mother would make him special meals, different from what his sisters got."

"Even into his late teens Shunryu's faults remained. Despite his kind nature, he had a short temper, thgouth fortunately his bursts of anger would rise and fall quickly. He was a fairly quiet person until he got into an argument, and then he could be explosive.

"Shunryu had a compulsive weakness for sugar, an expensive item that laypeople often gave to the temple as an offering. Shunryu regularly raided the big pot where it was kept, and when he got to the bottom he'd add water and drink the rinse. After his mother put a stop to that, he hid a can of sugar by his desk so he could make hot sugar-water.

"But Shunryu's most notorious weakness was absentmindedness. He'd lose everything but his books and his mind. Everybody loses umbrellas, but Shunryu lost them in record numbers, mainly on trains. Once his mother stayed up all night making him a coat. She watched him walk off, with his gaitered legs and new coat, down the hill toward Hiratsuka, wehre he got the train for Kaisei. He came home that evening without the coat.

"My habit is absentmindedness. I am naturally very forgetful. I worked on it pretty hard but could not do anything about it. I started to work on it when I went to my master at twelve. Even then I was very forgetful. But by working on it steadily, I found I could get rid of my selfish way of doing things. If the purpose of practice and training is just to correct your weak points, I think it is almost impossible to change your habits. Even so, it is necessary to work on them, because as you do so, your character will be trained and your ego will be reduced."

"When the six-week summer vacation arrived, to his parents' surprise Shunryu was off on a train to Yaizu to be back with So-on. He would continue to go there whenever he could to help out at Rinso-in and Zoun-in, sometimes missing school. Shunryu had no intention of quitting his study with So-on, but he was getting a new perspective by living away from intense temple practice; the absense helped him realize how wonderful it was. So-on used to emphasize Dogen's teaching of beginner's mind, and this is when Shunryu first experienced it, because he was losing it. During this period he experienced a sort of temptation, a clinging to purity and an attachment to Zen. He was becoming aware of Buddhism in a new, self conscious way.

"When we were little boys, we were all innocent buddhas, even when we were sixteen or seventeen years old. But Zen can be dangerous to innocent minds. Such minds may easily see Zen as something good or special by which they can gain something. This attitude can lead to trouble. An innocent young person can become careless of his buddha nature and instead attach to an idea of innocence, creating problems for himself. We need beginner's mind, not innovent mind. As long as we have beginner's mind, we have Buddhism. If we know our unchanging original nature, we can believe in the innocence of beginner's mind. At the same time, we should beware of slipping into hell through attachment to this or any idea.

"So-on had his own ways of dealing with Shunryu and his fellow monks thinking they were special. Every now and then he'd tell them, 'You stinky boys, wash your underwear!' "

"Even a mistaken approach is not a waste of time."

"At school Shunryu's favorite subject was English. He excelled at it. He'd always been interested in foreign things... He did so well in English that a doctor named Yoshikawa in Mori asked him to tutor his sons in English.... Dr. Yoshikawa became Shunryu's sponsor, giving him spending money and friendly advice. When Shunryu got pleurisy the doctor kept him in his home till he was well. Dr. Yoshikawa didn't want Shunryu staying with So-on at Rinso-in when Shunryu was sick, because he'd end up obediently serving So-on and neglecting himself. Shunryu would come home feverish and coughing and report that he'd been up late the night before tending So-on's smoky hibachi... "

"In April 1924 Shunryu Suzuki was almost twenty. Having skipped his last year at Kaisei, he was now a junior at the Soto preparatory school in Tokyo, living in the dorm, and studying hard. In terms of age, he was still way behind because of all the time he'd spent serving So-on and helping with the two temples. But that was not considered a handicap. This school was attached to the Soto college, where Soto Zen monks from all over Japan came to get the degrees now required by the government."

"Shoganji wasn't far away. One Sunday on the way back to school after visiting home, Shunryu got off the train in Yokohama to see a section of the bustling port city that was said to have a few fine shops selling antique ceramics. Dressed in his quasimilary-style school uniform, he ambled about, following his fancy and eating an occasional sweet. One shop led to anohter and one street to the next; by and by he found himself among storefronts exhibiting all kinds of imports: clothes, shoes, jewelry, records, and books. He looked long at a magazine that had photographs of San Francisco and carefully made out the captions below. He wandered on past sidewalk tables full of Japanese items bound for export: cups, paintings, umbrellas, toya, and tables, and all of it junk - tasteless, gaudy junk. He felt a profound embarrassment that this was what Japan was offering to the world. It wasn't really Japanese; it was superficial, pseudo-Japanese.

"Shunryu thought about what he considered really Japanese: handmade crafts, furniture, scrolls, and ceramics that embodied the culture and traditions and would add to the harmony of the house they went to. Then he had a little epiphany: if only he could go abroad and bring to foreign people not the worst of Japan but the best - something truly Japanese that could be applied to another culture. The best way to do this would be to completely understand Zen first and then bring Zen to otheres. Maybe, he thought, maybe I could do that."