for more on the card to the left
go here to the bottom of the Elsie Mitchell letters page
Nyorai
(thus come, tathagata) from the cover of Zen Mind, Beginner's
Mind - original calligraphy now hanging on a wall at Richard
Baker's Johanneshof.
Read
about the origin of this unique brushwork below.
click on thumbnail to enlarge
Two more Suzuki yucca leaf brush late entries sent by Bob Watkins
Bob says Suzuki said this one is Pure Wind
and that Suzuki said this one means Everything is Perfect.
Will seek 2nd opinion
click on thumbnails to enlarge
Week
Diary - the date book Suzuki brought with him from Japan
when he first came and made some entries, but he really wasn't a
datebook type guy and there's not much there.
Certificate
given participants in the first sesshin.
.jpg)
Zen Bones
benefit lecture by
Alan Watts poster with Suzuki calligraphy
for bone.
click on thumbnail to enlarge
Buddha calligraphy by Shunryu Suzuki
for Tim Buckley
click on thumbnail to enlarge
Be Careful with Fire calligraphy
for Grahame Petchey
click on thumbnail to enlarge
Read about the origin of this below
Read about the
origin of this piece below
Suzuki's wind bell for the Wind Bell.
Brilliantly marked up by yours truly long before
I thought they might be scanned for posting on the Internet.
Three Wind Bell poems in Suzuki's hand maybe in preparation for the one used for the early Wind Bells.
From a January 1964 Suzuki lecture on Blue Cliff Records model subject #46
- as presented in the February 1964 Wind Bell.
All Wind Bells
Back side of DC lay rakusu with kanji written by Shunryu Suzuki
Received at the lay
ordination at SFZC, August 25, 1970 for a number of people - like 20 or
more. Can see mine by clicking on thumbnail. Almost same as the one below. Reading from the right is the robe chant, then the date,
dainin tokudo (great faith ordination ?), then his name Zenshinji Shunryu
so (old man), and mine Kisan Zenyu koji (lay person). The next year received priest ordination.
Here's how we chanted it at the end of morning zazen with our rakusu or
okesa on our heads (once we had them) but this was chanted from before that.
Robe and other chants on this page of short verses from the Austin ZC.Great robe of liberation
Field far beyond form and emptiness
Wearing the Tathagata's teaching
Saving all Beings
Another Rakusu forget whose
And here's the Kechimyaku that went with it.
Calligraphy from Suzuki on the cover of the
Brochure for Life, Times, and Teachings of Shunryu Suzuki
Ōzammai - king samadhi
Shunryu Suzuki Curriculum Vitae
Below is just some piece of writing from Suzuki. Too much for me to translate without spending all day. Don't think it matters much but maybe someday I'll record someone translating quickly this and other writings in Japanese. There's more like this - dc
Writing in Japanese by Shunryu Suzuki and
others
Bob Watkins on Suzuki's Nyorai sumie used for the cover of Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind.
We went for a walk one day on my day off and we went up in the mountains
and we found a yucca plant and you remember that Ruthie used to pick
yucca flowers and we used to eat them in our salads? They were all dried
out but some of the leaves had fallen off and the base of the leaf was
kind of frayed. He said, this would make a great sumie brush and so I
grabbed a handful of them and he made up some sumi ink and he did two
pieces of calligraphy and gave them to me and one of them is hanging in
the other room and one of them is put away. One of them says “Everything
is absolutely perfect” and
he signed it and put Tassajara Zenshinji 1967 and years later I got
these things mounted and the other one was two characters that said, Pure
Wind. Do you remember how
he used to use the word pure a lot? If you get up from zazen and leave
the zendo in that frame of mind, that's what he called pure action -
without thinking - you just do it - the Nike slogan - if you just do it
it's shikantaza. It's the same attitude that you had in the zendo and he
used to refer to that as pure practice. I notice Bill Kwong, Jakujo
Roshi, using that teaching.
He giggled. He practiced on newspaper. He did a few things on the
newspaper and started giggling and got real happy and got out some good
white paper and did those two pieces of calligraphy and then he laughed
and gave those to me and said, “Now don't tell anybody" In other words,
what I used for a brush. And then years later I'm here in New Mexico and
I get his book after he'd passed away and here's this calligraphy on the
book and it had to be made with those yucca leaves.
DC: It says so in the book – in Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind. So you're
responsible for that?
from Bob Watkins interview on cuke.com
click on thumbnail to enlarge
Story behind Suzuki's Do not say too late calligraphy above
My wife and I were agonizing
about whether to continue to practice at Tassajara or to leave and raise a
family. We decided to talk to Suzuki Roshi about it. He listened to us for a
while and then abruptly picked up a brush and ink and wrote five words rapidly
on a sheet of paper. I was shocked by his vehemence, and when he handed me the
paper, the message struck me like a blow from his stick. Without further
discussion we decided to remain at Tassajara.
From Zen Is Right Here, p.126. Dan Welch, Tassajara, 1969.
Story behind I hope you are enjoying the wisdom of the Buddha
Written by Shunryu Suzuki with a brush on rice paper used to wrap a present he gave
to his much loved and mentally disturbed student, E.L. Hazelwood. Richard Baker
retrieved the crinkled remains from a waste basket and now has it mounted on a
wall at Crestone Zen Mountain Center in southwest Colorado.
From Zen Is Right Here,
p.68, 69. Richard Baker, Tassajara 1968.
