Crooked Cucumber Quotes

“The only way you can endure your pain is to let it be painful.”
― David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

“[Zuzuki-roshi] I don’t know anything about consciousness. I just try to teach my students how to hear the birds sing.”
― David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

“I don’t trust anything but my feet and my black cushion. My feet are always my friends. When I am really standing on my feet I am not lost.”
― David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

“It wasn’t just oneness and duality, but “the duality of oneness and the oneness of duality.”
― David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

“The world of thinking is that of our ordinary dualistic mind. The world of pure consciousness or awareness is that of buddha-mind. Phenomena in the world of thinking are constantly being named or labeled by our minds. The world of awareness does not label or name, it only reflects. The world of pure consciousness thus includes the opposites in the world of thinking.”
― David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki

“I just didn’t want my friends to be involved in the kind of nationalism which I thought might destroy Japan completely. It’s more dangerous than war.”
― David Chadwick, Crooked Cucumber: The Life and Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki