May 28, 2025
Abbot Jiryu on the Publication of Becoming Yourself

Photo by Robert Erdmann

 

Dear Sangha,

In 2018, I had the good fortune to begin work with Sojun Mel Weitsman Roshi on a new book of talks by Suzuki Roshi. The book was drawn from jewels of his teachings that Mel had been squirelling aside over the decades to someday publish. In the years that followed, we spent countless hours at his desk at Berkeley Zen Center, over tea at Green Gulch, and, through the pandemic, over Zoom, puzzling over Suzuki Roshi’s words, laughing, appreciating—always moved by the depth, joy, and subtlety of his teaching. After Sojun’s death in 2021, I continued as best I could to complete the project in the spirit that Mel had so kindly shown me.

Now, finally, the fruit of our efforts is ready to share: Becoming Yourself: Teachings on the Zen Way of Life, by Shunryu Suzuki will be published by Tarcher/Penguin Random House on July 15, 2025. The first new collection of Suzuki Roshi’s talks in over two decades, this truly is a big moment for our sangha and lineage.

In addition to the wonderful and surprising chapters on zazen and practice in everyday life, I believe that the second half of the book—a compilation of Suzuki Roshi’s teachings on the Bodhisattva precepts—will be especially relevant and precious for those practicing in the SFZC lineage. Nothing in our practice is more important than precepts, but to try to observe them with a dualistic, moralizing, or dogmatic mind is, in Suzuki Roshi’s teaching, to already violate them.

The precepts, he shows us, are our basic nature, and the way to observe them is to ground ourselves deeply in zazen and to extend that practice of warm-hearted intimacy to every moment. My own understanding of the ethical precepts has deepened immeasurably through my study of these chapters, and my hope and expectation is that others will find the same.

In deep gratitude to all those who have kept Suzuki Roshi’s words and practice alive over the decades,

Abbot Jiryu