Summary: Shosan Victoria Austin, "Suzuki Sensei's Zen Spirit"

Garrett Daun

Perpetual Transmission

Sometime while reading Shosan Victoria Austin's article, a transmission occurred. A hot pre-summer sun made a glare of the space between her words that matched the near-pure whiteness of the cat sitting beside me. A bench made from a fallen tree by a former neighbor and friend sat underneath the both of us as Austin passed on Suzuki Sensei's Zen spirit. The cat wished to share in that spirit, and with muddied paws put his stamp of approval on the back of the pages already read. Embarrassment arose within my half-full stomach while shifting my focus between finishing breakfast, talking with the kitty, small-talking the neighbors, and reading Austin's article. Suzuki Sensei scolded me from afar, "Everything you Americans do is backwards!" (Austin, 210)

So I let go, as instructed, and focused on the transmission of the spirit of Zen still in progress. As Austin described fine details of learning sewing, tea, and ultimately "the appreciation of a moment as it happens and before its already gone, and the ability to let go," (Austin, 216) from the movements of Suzuki Sensei, I noticed a glaring error in Austin's title. A corrected title might read, "Suzuki Sensei and the Spirit of Zen" or some other way of removing the apostrophe, and thereby the ownership, of something that simply flows.

An ownerless transmission passed from the skies above Mt. Heiei to Dogen down through countless monks to Suzuki Roshi to Suzuki Sensei to Victoria Austin to the Unno clan and then to Mark Unno's class and now through me. When focusing and holding my breath for a moment, a picture of a stream comes to mind, and then spills out onto this representation of a page. Soon, these electrons will flow through fiber optics and telephone wires back to the Unno clan and then onto Mark's webpage and again out into the world.

For 18 years Austin and Suzuki Sensei shared in the ebb and flow of Zen's ephemeral substance. It made itself known in everything Suzuki touched, "even if it's as seemingly insignificant as a pin, her hands and the object seem to know each other." Yet any attempt to capture or describe the Zen transmission must come in the form of a Eulogy for a moment gone by. When grasped, it dies. Yet it arises within every insignificant motion, "Even the plain boiled water she served after tea carried the subtle flavor of the teaching." (Austin, 213)

Time now for letting go…