Shunryu Suzuki

Japanese Sōtō Zen master, 1904–1971. The son of a country priest, he came to San Francisco in 1959 at age fifty-five to serve a small Japanese-American congregation and ended up — unintentionally — becoming the most influential Zen teacher in the West. American students started showing up; he sat with them. He did not lecture. He sat. They sat with him. He founded the San Francisco Zen Center and, in 1967, Tassajara — the first Zen training monastery outside Asia. He died of cancer in 1971, four years after his American disciples assembled his talks into a small book. Core teaching: in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few. Return again and again to not-knowing. Posture is everything. Sit upright. Breathe. Do not seek anything special. Key works: *Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind* (1970), *Not Always So*, *Branching Streams Flow in the Darkness* (his lectures on the *Sandokai*).