Notes on Notes on Crooked Cucumber

2-25-18 - Been adding a little bit here and there to the notes since 2012 but this year added a lot and am satisfied with it for now. The reason for this is that late last year I read over the whole book carefully for a Japanese translation that's getting finalized. Initially was just looking for what needed to be added for a Japanese translation. Added more names of people, temples, places. But made comments and corrections where I found that was needed. I always wanted to do it thoroughly; It was a lot of work with Peter Ford getting the pages right. Actually there aren't so many. A lot of errors were just fixed if no note was necessary. They can all be found at Errata for CC and there's lots there. Found a some errors going over the book and then more just going over the notes.

1-15-12 - Here's a list of Japanese and Buddhist terms from Crooked Cucumber (almost 500) just sent to Wei Qun in Beijing. She's going to take out the ones she doesn't need help with. Then the list goes to Tozen Akiyama (Hopeless Tozen) for kanji, Japanese characters, then back to Wei Qun who can then consult with someone for help with Chinese Buddhist characters.

1-06-12 - Starting this page and Notes - earlier attempts go back to 1998. Actually, the whole web site cuke.com as well as shunryusuzuki.com are notes on CC but it's not very well organizized to say the lost in transcription. I also have tons of stuff - interviews, notes, etc - not entered onto cuke and there's much more work to do on the lecture text and audio, the video and photos on shunryusuzuki.com. Work goes forward on all this in other quarters - at the SFZC and others Zen Centers and in people's homes.

Why I'm doing this now is because there's a Chinese translation of CC being done in Beijing now and I've committed to doing a special introduction for them and they need the Japanese kanji for all the proper nouns which then have to be made right for Chinese. That will be the first step in making a long overdue and often requested INDEX for CC. I've also got to look at errata. At the same time, my agent and man of mystery, MK, and I have been discussing a possible book whose working title is now Notes on Crooked Cucumber so I might as well get going on that here too or on some sort of skeleton for it while searching for the illusive soul and some diversions. Maybe the notes proper could be on the Internet and the book could be random excerpts from that because I'll surely add more much more than a book would hold.

Today just created the page and added the cover to the notes and a bit on the photographer.

1-09-12 - Made a little progress on the Notes on Crooked Cucumber - got up the Front Matter - but not many notes, mainly gotta concentrate on the index and words the Chinese translators need the characters for. Gotta get the list of proper nouns and Buddhist words to send to Tozen Akiyama for the kanji. Talked to Bill Porter (Red Pine) about finding someone to then get the kanji, Japanese characters into Chinese. He said that graduate students in Buddhism at UCB and Stanford now have to study Japanese and Chinese. Wow. So I sent an email off to Robert Sharf at UCB to see if he could find someone to do that. But then there's getting money for it - from a Chinese publisher. Wonder if that's gonna be possible.

There's a lot of old material that's as good as new if you haven't read it. -DC