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About the Book
About Suzuki Roshi |
About the Author, David Chadwick "Years of expensive Zen training gone to waste" - Zentatsu Richard Baker Roshi dchad writings which includes dchad books dchad websites: |
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10-10-10- This page was created back in 98 or 99 when this site was new as
was the book,
Crooked Cucumber.
David Chadwick began practicing with Shunryu Suzuki in 1966 at the age of twenty-one and was ordained by him in 1971. He is the author of Thank You And OK!: an American Zen Failure in Japan (1994), which chronicles his years in Japan. He lives with his wife and son in Sonoma County, California. More Biographical Info on David Chadwick I grew up in Fort Worth, Texas.
As a teena Now Kelly is 38, an avid amateur and mycologist and in the wine biz in Spokane WA and Clay is 21 and gardening in Sebastopol, CA. I've been with partner Katrinka McKay for over eight years now, lived in Zen teacher John Tarrant's barn in Santa Rosa, CA, for nine years and now we're in San Rafael, CA. .--DC, 11-01-12 Author bio from Thank You and OK! (which Kirkus Reviews called, "vivid, light-hearted, and unselfconsciously profound"--now in it's 6th printing) - that was 1999. Now it's a Shambhala book. - dc 11-01-12 David Chadwick, a Texas raised wanderer, college dropout, bumbling social activist and hobbyhorse musician, began his formal Zen study under Shunryu Suzuki-roshi in 1966 at the age of twenty-one. Many years later, Suzuki's successor, Zentatsu Richard Baker-roshi, shaking his head, said of Chadwick: "Years of expensive Zen training gone to waste." In 1988 friends and supporters underwrote Chadwick's journey to Japan so he could begin an open-ended period of voluntary exile and remedial education. In Japan he practiced more Zen, got married, studied Japanese language and culture, taught English and messed around. With his wife Elin, toddler Clay, and visiting older son, Kelly. Chadwick now lives in Northern California where he reads, writes, walks, and continues to dabble in Buddhism and related matters. .Elin and I got a divorce in August 2001. Now she lives about twelve minutes away and Clay gets plenty of both of us. She's teaching kindergarten in Santa Rosa and lives right next door to the school. Clay's just finishing up the fifth grade and is doing well in school and great with music which he has a real talent for. He's been playing clarinet and saxophone in the excellent school band and practices the guitar at his homes. Kelly is 28 now and is flying high as a wine salesman and continues his involvement with mushrooms as a mycologist and selling edible ones on the side to restaurants and, though he's resigned as president of the Spokane Mycology Society (or whatever it's called) he still goes to meetings, organizes forays, and teaches an occasional class. - DC, 5/02
photo by Robert Schilling |
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I was always busy with tennis, bridge, music, drama, poetry, reading
and being wild with my friends. I went to college for half a year,
briefly did some civil rights work in Mississippi and worked with
SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) in Ann Arbor and Chicago,
hitchhiked around the country, hung out in New York, Washington DC,
and New Orleans, and then went to Mexico and Latin America for a
year and a half where I attended some more college and studied
anthropology. Back in the States, I joined the westward hippie
migration to San Francisco in 1966. In October of that year I
started practicing Zen at the San Francisco Zen Center with Shunryu
Suzuki Roshi who ordained me as a priest in 1971 just before he
died. I continued my studies with Zentatsu Baker Roshi, helped the
Zen Center develop its centers and businesses, from Tassajara
Springs in the mountains near Carmel Valley, its guest season,
kitchen and dining room, to the city center on Page Street, Green
Gulch Farm, the Green Gulch Green Grocer, the world famous Greens
Restaurant, The Neighborhood Foundation and its recycling center in
the city. During this time I got married to Dianne Goldschlag and we
had a son named Kelly. Later, I lived with Elizabeth Tuomi, a
teacher, musician, and editor, in Bolinas (where she had a tiny open
zendo) for nine years while maintaining a residence near Dianne (now
Daya) and Kelly and the City Center or Green Gulch farm. I've
continued my Buddhist (and other) studies, written and produced many
songs, worked for environmental and peace groups including the 1980
Nuclear Freeze movement and Gov. Jerry Brown's California
Conservation Corps. In 1988 I went to Japan, Elin Schweickart came
over, we married, had a great time
and a son, Clay, some of which I tell about in my first book, Thank
You and OK!. Elin and I stayed together till 2001. For the last
twenty years or so I’ve mainly worked on writing and preserving the
legacy of Shunryu Suzuki whose biography, Crooked Cucumber, I wrote.
My three Zen websites are the main repository of this work but I am
aiming at several other books. Cuke.com is an extensive oral
history, shunryusuzuki.com presents the archive of Suzuki’s
lectures, audio, transcripts, film, and photos. I am currently
working with over a dozen volunteers online to develop and improve
this archive. 
If you have questions you would like to ask David Chadwick
about his book, Crooked Cucumber,
please e-mail