(Excerpted from How the Swans Came to the Lake: A narrative history of Buddhism in the United States, by Rick Fields. Boulder Colorado: Shambala. 1981)
[These excerpts give some concrete idea of Suzuki’s actual practice, illustrating especially his emphasis on disciplined practice and a disciplined way of life.]
Spiritual practice in the West had long been associated with great accomplishments and mysterious powers. But as Suzuki-roshi explained, "In the beginner's mind there is no thought, 'I have attained something.' When we have no thought of achievement, no thought of self, we are true beginners." It was an inspired move of cross-cultural jujitsu. By identifying beginner's mind with Zen practice, Shunryu Suzuki reversed in one stroke the inferiority Americans so often felt towards the overwhelmingly "mysterious" and complex traditions of the Orient. What might have seemed a problem became instead possibility. "In the beginner's mind," as he said, "there are many possibilities; in the expert's mind there are few."
But being open to the creative possibilities of American Buddhism did not mean making things easier. Suzuki-roshi lectured in English on traditional, difficult texts, The Blue Cliff Record (a classic collection of koans) and the Lotus Sutra...
Slowly, he began to add elements of what he called "the rigid formal way of practicing Zen." Long-established rules governed every move in the zendo [meditation room], and the observation of these rules cut right across the grain of American individualism – the notion that freedom meant, as Suzuki-roshi said, "physical freedom, the freedom of activity." But it was just this notion, according to the logic of Zen training, that caused suffering. "It is not a matter of good or bad, convenient or inconvenient," as roshi explained. "You just do it without question. That way your mind is free."
He even went so far as to suggest -- much to everyone's amazement – that American Zen ought to have more rules than Japanese Zen. "You think two-hundred and fifty precepts for men and five hundred for women [traditional in Asian monasteries] is awful and that it should be made simpler," he said. "But l think you will have more difficulty in practicing zazen in America than we do in Japan. This kind of difficulty should be continued forever or we will not have peace in the world." He declined to say what additional precepts he might have had in mind ("I don't want to disturb your zazen'' he told the student who asked) but he did increase the number of bows after zazen from three to nine. When it was suggested that this might discourage some people, he answered, "It is true, very true. I know people will be discouraged. I know we are causing a lot of discouragement for American people when we bow nine times, when they bow only three times in Japan. I know that very well. So I bow nine times here in America."
So there were rules, Etiquette, decorum. These did not change for anyone. If you wanted to sit in the morning, you were there, on your zafu [meditation cushion], by five-thirty. There was freedom, but within form...
There was no traffic to speak of at five twenty-five in the morning when the students crossed Bush Street to sit at Sokoli, but they waited at the corner before the deserted street until the light clicked into green, and then, and only then, did they walk across within the white crosswalks. It was something their contemporaries only a few blocks away in the Haight-Ashbury would never have thought of doing...(226-231)
[Suzuki and some of his American students founded a kind of "Zen monastery" in the coastal mountains in the Big Sur area of Southern California. They called it "Tassajara."]
Suzuki-roshi called Tassajara a "baby monastery,'' but it was not really a monastery in the Western sense of the word. It was a place for intensive Zen training, not a lifetime retreat from the world. In this respect, it was identical to Japanese Zen monasteries or training temples – with one important difference. There were men and women at Tassajara. This was a fundamental departure from the traditions of Asian Buddhism. Married couples had their own quarters, while single men and women lived in dormitories. The arrangement seemed to work very well, and the Tassajarans wondered why it had never been tried before.
The three-month practice period that began in July was a custom that went back to the time of the Buddha. In those days the monks had wandered most of the year until the rainy season, at which point they settled down together to practice meditation in retreat. The custom had continued in most Buddhist countries, and formed the basis for the three-month intensive-training periods in Chinese and Japanese monasteries. It was, as Suzuki-roshi said, "one of the foundations of Zen Buddhism... and indispensable for the existence of Zenshinji" (Zen Mind/Heart Temple, the Japanese name given Tassajara. )
It was traditional in Japan for new students to do tangaryo, to sit seven days by themselves, with breaks only for meals. 'This seemed somewhat harsh, since few students had extensive sitting experience, and it was decided to begin with a tangaryo of three days, and then five days at a later date. Even so, most students found it one of the most difficult things they had ever done. Suzuki-roshi said only, "Be prepared to sit" by way of instruction. From four o'clock in the morning to ten o'clock at night, with nothing but the sound of Tassajara Creek outside of the stone walls they faced, the students were left to themselves. It was required only that they stay on the cushion – just how was left to the individual. Of the seventy who said they would start, fifty-five finished.
Tassajara followed the traditional way, but Suzuki-roshi also liked to give his students space. ("The way to control a cow,' he had said, "is to give it a big meadow.") There was a lot of discussion in the beginning about whether to wear robes, what language to chant in, how strict the schedule ought to be and what kinds of practices to include...
Manual labor – sama – was an essential part of Zen training. Suzuki-roshi himself was a skilled mason with a fondness for working with stone. At Tassajara he worked on the stone wall that supported the bridge, and began a rock garden. Although small, he was able to outlast students twice his size. Someone observed that he was always at rest, except when directly pushing or guiding a stone to its proper place. He himself said only that he was probably too attached to hard work..
The high-pitched wake-up bell rang at four in the morning. Then came the clack of a wooden mallet against the han, a rectangular rough wooden plank, a sound that continued in a tattoo of ever-increasing intensity for three rounds, giving students fifteen minutes to stumble along the kerosene-lantern-lit path to the zendo. Two periods of zazen followed, the morning chants (in Japanese and English) and then breakfast, a three-hour work period, another period of zazen, lunch, rest, study, more work, the baths, a service, supper, lecture by the roshi, and finally, another two periods of zazen. Each period of the day was signaled by one of the percussion instruments traditional to Zen monasteries – a bronze bell (densho), handbell, the han and the thunderous roll of the buddha drum. All these, so important to the atmosphere of Tassajara, had been sent as a gift from Soto Zen Headquarters in Japan.(256-63)