Crooked Cucumber by David Chadwick
The Life and Zen Teaching of Shunryu Suzuki This is the brilliant, long-awaited biography of the most influential and well-loved Zen master in the West, Shunryu Suzuki Roshi. Suzuki is the author of the bestselling Zen book of all time, ZEN MIND BEGINNER'S MIND which is still the key core stock item for any Zen/Buddhism section even now more than 25 years after its initial publication. This excellent biography, researched for many years by one of his closest students with the cooperation of Suzuki's wife, is a lively, lucid account of an extraordinary life--a poor temple boy in Japan who learned English, moved to California and founded the first monastery in the West and in turn influenced the practice of Zen in his home country.