10 October 2001

               Shunryu Suzuki's quiet, low keyed style makes it easy to overlook the fact that he was one of the most important twentieth century teachers in introducing Soto Zen Buddhism to America. It is a great good fortune for posterity therefore that he has in David Chadwick an indefatigable chronicler, a veritable Boswell when it had appeared that that breed had vanished. Chadwick's archive of Suzuki's oral teachings as his students remember them and often inscribed them in their diaries will be invaluable to future historians as they record the coming of Buddhism to the West. His project merits strong support.

[signed - Huston Smith]

Thomas J. Watson Professor of Religion and Distinguished Adjunct Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Syracuse University,

Visiting Professor of Religious Studies, University of California, Berkeley,