David Chadwick’s latest book on the expansion of Buddhism in America —Tassajara Stories: A Sort of Memoir/Oral History of the First Zen Buddhist Monastery in the West—The First Year, 1967 (Monkfish, Sept.)—takes readers back to the early days of the monastery founded by Buddhis master Shunryu Suzuki in a mountainous California forest.
Chadwick begins with his own years as a self-titled “semi-hippie” from Texas who wandered west, hopping from job to job in the drug-infused haze of 1960s San Francisco until he encountered the Zen Center there that transformed his life. The city center was founded by Suzuki, who had come from Japan with a dream to establish Buddhism in the West, and it was the precursor to the establishment of the Tassajara monastery. Today, Chadwick is 80. His recreational substances of choice are tea and chocolate, and he lives with his wife in Bali, working on his books and curating a website of Suzuki's writings and teachings.
In the book, he introduces people who hammered the Tassajara facility together, baked the bread, meditated, mediated, and created “a community and a commune” where they could study and practice. Jon M. Sweeney, religion editor and associate publisher at Monkfish, described the book as “peopled like a Sixties film of Buddhist invasion, with hippies, dreamers, lovers, a wave of serious practitioners.”
You include several mini-profiles and anecdotes about people who came to Tassajara to work and practice. There are grand ideas shared and minor skirmishes, too. Each taught a lesson. What did you learn from the battle over the breakfast condiments to be served with the oatmeal?
There were a lot of fights over food. Ed Brown, the cook, was very emotional. He’d go to Suzuki and say, “People are telling me I am poisoning them.” And Suzuki told him, “You're the cook. You do it just as you do. Stir when you're stirring and chop when you're chopping. It's your decision.” So, the morning when I made the breakfast, I thought, ‘I am the cook’ and I served the oatmeal only with sesame salt.
Your book recounts a question-and-answer session at Tassajara where a woman asks, “What happens if something happens to you, and you can’t be our teacher anymore?” He replies, “That cannot happen. I am always with you forever.” You asked him, “What now?” He answered, “Don't ask me. Now is now. You have now. I have my own now.” What is “now” for you?
I’m in my studio right now making an audiobook for the sequel to Tassajara Stories, which only covered the startup and first year of Tassajara. Book two covers from 1968 to 1971, ending with the day of Suzuki's cremation. Then there will be book three covering the next four years.
Doesn’t writing these books presume an interest in the past and in the future? Suzuki also taught “Don’t live in the future and don’t live in the past.” You’re writing history for future readers. Isn't that a paradox?
He revered the past and he was concerned about the future. These things co-exist. One of my favorite quotes of his is: “If it’s not paradoxical, it's not true.”
What is your goal for this book?
I don't really have goals. I want to get this down, to make it available. I like to connect with people. I think of the image of a monk who writes a poem on a leaf and puts it in a stream—I don't know who I'm telling this to, but the telling is important.
