Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen by Shunryu Suzuki

Not Always So: Practicing the True Spirit of Zen by Shunryu Suzuki

Practising the true spirit of Zen.

Not Always So is based on Shunryu Suzuki's lectures and is framed in his own inimitable, allusive, paradoxical style, rich with unexpected and off-centre insights. Suzuki knew he was dying at the time of the lectures, which gives his thoughts an urgency and focus even sharper than in the earlier book.

In Not Always So Suzuki once again voices Zen in everyday language with the vigour, sensitivity, and buoyancy of a true friend. Here is support and nourishment. Here is a mother and father lending a hand, but letting you find your own way. Here is guidance which empowers your freedom (or way-seeking mind), rather than pinning you down to directions and techniques. Here is teaching which encourages you to touch and know your true heart and to express yourself fully, teaching which is not teaching from outside, but a voice arising in your own being.

In 1965, Edward Espe Brown started cooking and practicing Zen. From 1967 until 1970, he was the first resident cook at Tassajara Zen Mountain Center. He eventually worked as a busboy, waiter, floor manager, wine buyer, cashier, host, and manager at San Francisco's renowned Greens Restaurant. Shunryu Suzuki Roshi ordained him as a priest, and he has taught meditation retreats and vegetarian culinary classes around North America and Europe. He is the author of several cookbooks and the editor of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi's Not Always So, a collection of talks. How to Cook Your Life, a critically acclaimed 2007 film, is about him.