Talk:Shunryū Suzuki

Quotes

Quotes belong on WikiQuote, not here. Can someone please tackle moving these over? --1000Faces (talk) 01:44, 25 June 2009 (UTC)

To be included at Wikiquote, citations would be needed. ~ Ningauble (talk) 14:43, 4 May 2011 (UTC)

Use of Roshi

I need to check rest of the entry, but in the intro the term "roshi" was used a title and rank for Suzuki. This has become normative for many Zen schools in the west, and some in Japan, but it is expressly NOT so for the Soto SFZC, who largely discourage its use for teachers in their organization. While Suzuki was called "roshi", it was not done so as a title, but as an honorific by his students (encouraged initially by Alan Watts, who got the idea from his contact with Rinzai teachers.) Before his death, Suzuki encouraged students to start to refer to his Dharma heir Richard Baker as "roshi", but after his abuses of power and dismissal as abbot, this practice was completely abandoned, and to my knowledge no other teacher (besides Baker and his peer Jakusho Kwong, who was in the process of Dharma transmission when Suzuki died) in this lineage uses that title (while some students use it as a sign of respect for elder teachers - its traditional use in Soto Zen.)Tao2911 (talk) 18:02, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Thanks for your thoughtful post on this. I'm not persuaded that the term "roshi" isn't used appropriately in the article. While there are differences in the use of the term in Rinzi and Soto schools, I believe it is more commonly used in Soto Zen, as this article in Buddhadharma suggests. The term is commonly used for an abbot of a temple or a senior priest. Also, the San Francisco Zen Center uses the term to refer to "Suzuki Roshi." Sunray (talk) 19:20, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I understand your points - I will work in an inclusion that I feel is sensitive the issues I raise here. I think these points are made in the "roshi" entry, so no explanation will be necessary in this one, which would be impossible in any case. Thanks. But to clarify your points - "roshi" in a Soto context is mainly used by the White Plum Asanga, Maezumi's lineage. He was authorized as a teacher in Rinzai and Sanbo Kyodan, who both use 'roshi' as a title - but he was ordained, and ordained others, into the Soto lineage (which really makes it confusing from the outside). That's partly where this use for them comes from. This may be true for the other main Soto school in the US now, the Shasta Abbey lineage folks, though I don't think this is standard for them. I can say that it expressly is NOT for SFZC - abbots and teachers are NOT called roshi in any standardized way (in fact there is something of a stigma against its use). I have practiced in a number of schools, and am ordained now in this one, so I speak from my own learning curve on this issue.Tao2911 (talk) 20:26, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

I just read that article; it reiterates my points exactly. Your point about it being used for abbots and whatnot is talking about in Japan, and that it is an honorific for older priests, not a title (as commonly used in the US for teachers of any age who have full transmission, in some schools, to designate their "rank").Tao2911 (talk) 20:39, 18 April 2012 (UTC)

Hi there. I don't think anybody who can read this can conclude "don't use roshi" based on their own experience. For one, Dainin Katagiri is called roshi, in David Chadwick and in conversation, and "Katagiri Roshi" is a Wikipedia redirect. -SusanLesch (talk) 20:41, 23 December 2012 (UTC)

External links modified

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Omission of details on his wife Mitsu

(noted only as spouse in the sidebar summary)

Born Mitsu Matsuno on April 23, 1914, in Shizuoka, Japan. Died there on Jan 9, 2016, aged 101.

After marrying Shunryu Suzuki in 1958, Mitsu joined him in California in 1961 and remained for 32 years, returning to the village of Yaizu, Japan, in 1994, 23 years after Shunryu’s death.

Mitsu Suzuki Sensei was a tea teacher in the Omotesenke school, and also a published haiku poet. To her husband's students, she was affectionately known as “Okusan”, which was what Suzuki Roshi called her (it means “Honorable Wife” in Japanese).

Sources: http://www.cuke.com/Crooked%20Cucumber/cc%20excerpts/mitsu.html

https://blogs.sfzc.org/blog/2016/01/09/mitsu-suzuki-passes-away-aged-101/

(Note 1st para date typo in the latter source.)

Cliffewiki (talk) 20:30, 4 April 2021 (UTC)