Buddhism

I became interested in Zen Buddhism in the springtimeof my last year in high school when I looked up the

entry in the Britannica in my father's library.Immediately I knew this was what I had been searching

for hitherto.From then on I devoured most of the twenty books inEnglish on the subject by Dr. Daisetz Teitaro Suzuki, the

gentle, wonderful Professor in Buddhist Philosophywho almost single handedly brought Zen to the WesternWorld early in the Twentieth Century. Dying at 95, just

the summer of my newly stimulated interest (1966), heremains my Mentor of mentors -a fully enlightened mandescribed by Alan Watts as ' at once the simplest and

most Sophisticated man I ever met.'In university, and beyond, I read everything I could find

in the books stores on Zen - at this time the stores werefull of books on Zen, not all of them reliable. But I soonprogressed to The Middle Way - the journal of the

Buddhist Society, London, GB; The Eastern Buddhist,the journal Suzuki started with his wife, who died while

he was relatively young; and Zen Notes , the wonderfulrecord of the life and writings of Sokei-an, the splendidZen Master who was the first Master to settle in

America.About this time my illness, which was to last until mymiddle fifties in various stages of recovery and relapse,

began to exert its influence on my soon to bedesperately sick brain. As I have recorded in other