(2 of 2)
Either-Or. Columbia's 87-year-old Dr. Suzuki, whose weekly lectures attract a well-packed but mixed bag of serious students and cult shoppers, is one of the most respected religious leaders in America. His classes are drawing a wider variety as well as a larger number of students since the war. Painters and psychiatrists seem especially interested in Zen, he finds. Psychoanalysts, says Dr. Suzuki, his tiny eyes twinkling under winglike eyebrows, have a lot to learn from Zen: "They go round and round on the surface of the mind without stopping. But Zen goes deep." The main difficulty Westerners have with Zen, says Suzuki, is their habit of thinking dialectically—either-or. sub ject-object, positive-negative. Zen sees only one instead of two. "Westerners analyze things," says Dr. Suzuki, "but in the East we see a thing all at once and with our whole bodies, instead of just our minds."
Dr. Suzuki's lectures are lectures only; Zen is a way and must be taught from heart to heart, from master to disciple, if it is to be practiced. The real future of Zen in the U.S. depends on English-speaking Roshis—masters who have attained enlightenment. One of the most likely candidates is blond, ruddy Walter Nowick, 30, a World War II veteran, raised on a Long Island potato farm, who is now studying at Kyoto's Sokokuji Temple. Nowick rises each morning at four to meditate on a koan such as:
"A man hangs over a precipice by his teeth, which are clenched in the branch of a tree. His hands are full, and his feet cannot reach the face of the precipice. A friend leans over and asks him. 'What is Zen?' What answer should the man make?"
*Not to be confused with Shin Buddhism, a liberal, elastic sect which comprises most of the 60,000 Buddhists in the U.S., a majority of them West Coast Nisei.