More on "Thank You and OK!"
I'm almost to the end of this book and I've just relished it. With so many highlights from witch to choose, I'm not sure what to say...

For starters, I thought this book would be a slightly fluffy memoir. Not so. The depth of this book affected me as if I had been reading a "Buddhist text." Chadwick's insights into the Japanese culture and the culture of old-world Zen proliferate. Not just his story, "Thank You and OK!" tells the story of two very different "Zens."

One chapter, though, made me smile. "Oryoki the True Way." For those who aren't familiar with the term, oryoki refers to a very complicated manner in which Zen monks eat out of stacked and cloth-wrapped bowls. About oryoki, he writes:

It's the last thing that my friends back in Texas would have imagined me doing with large chunks of my life. It's nothing I would have volunteered for. But it's part of the Japanese Zen package, a very important part to the Soto Zen teachers I've known. They would feel naked without it in monastic life. The largest Tibetan Buddhist group in the States took up the practice.* I must admit that I look back warmly on many years of oryoki use.

While he looks back, I'm looking forward. I'll be using oryoki at Dathun in July! Of course, I'll only be doing a week-thun, but it will be quite the experience for me...

*Emphasis added -- he's talking about Shambhala. :)