Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

Pauline Petchey

‘Phillip [Wilson] asked Suzuki Roshi why do Japanese make their tea cups so thin and delicate so they break. Suzuki said it’s not that they’re too delicate but that we do not handle them well. Again, you adjust yourself to the environment and not vice versa – not to change the surroundings but the self. It was the gentle way.’ (from Cuke.com)

Having met Phillip Wilson at Zen Center a number of years ago, he was not the most delicate of men (I was working in the kitchen and the tenzo had him washing dishes). In his Tassajara days with Suzuki Roshi, he was one of the people who was often moving rocks. This comment, by the wife of one of Suzuki Roshi’s earliest priests, reminded me of a talk Suzuki Roshi gave after Zen Center moved into the Page Street building in 1969.

One of the rarer colour photographs of Suzuki Roshi, here with Phillip Wilson at Tassajara as they put together the Abbot’s garden. If you know the place well, you might spot that they are next to Suzuki Roshi’s cabin, which was later moved down the hill (as cabin 20) so that the Kaisando could be built adjacent to Cabarga Creek – to the left of the photo – and tucked next to the steep hillside in the background.

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