Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘When I went that morning and was sitting facing the wall I thought, this can’t be it… This is too rigid and patriarchal and Japanese and I’m not going to sit facing the wall like this. It felt very masculine, not very soft. He hadn’t arrived yet, and I was thinking, I don’t think so but I’d like to meet this fellow. So I remember he came in the door with his robes on and walking behind me and I don’t know why that impressed me so but things just changed when he walked in and I thought, hmmm, and then when it was over and the bell was rung and we turned around on our cushions and faced him, I remember turning around and looking at him and being about six feet from him and I thought, oh I think so. Just looking in his eyes and having him look directly at me I thought this person knows more about what it is that I want to know about than anyone I’ve ever met. He totally understands what it is I want to understand. I knew there were millions of people in the world who knew more about other things than I did, but I didn’t know anybody who knew more about what I wanted to know which was how to live completely alive.’ (from Cuke.com)

A week or so ago I sat down and read a number of interviews that David Chadwick had done with various people who were around Suzuki Roshi in the early days, as part of his work to write Crooked Cucumber. I will post a few excerpts from different people, some of whose names resonated down over the years.