Walter Nowick

Walter Nowick was one of the most important early teachers of Rinzai Zen in the United States. He retired from formal Zen teaching in 1985.

Nowick's parents were immigrants of Russian-Polish origin. He grew up on Long Island on a potato farm. He showed early talent for music and studied piano at Juilliard with Henriette Michaelson. She summered in Surry, and he first came to Maine as a teenager to study with her.

He left his piano study to serve in the Pacific during World War II, and he took part in the final sweep of Okinawa, after the island had surrendered. He eventually returned to his study of the piano with Miss Michaelson, and after seeing a book on Zen on her coffee table, he began to sit at the First Zen Institute of New York, where she was a member. He went to Japan in 1950 to study Zen with Zuigan Goto of Daitoku-Ji. Nowick stayed in Japan some sixteen years until the death of Zuigan Goto in 1965. During his years in Japan he supported himself teaching piano and voice at the Kyoto Womens' University. Nowick became known in the Zen community in this country, which was very small at the time, as the first Westerner to have gone to Japan and completed the traditional Zen practice on their terms. He was never ordained a priest but remained a layman.

After the death of Zuigan Goto in 1965 Nowick returned to the United States and began teaching Japanese musicians at his farm in Surry. After a few years, people began to arrive wanting to study Zen, and many settled nearby, sometimes building houses on land provided by Walter, sometimes living on his farm. There were both single and married people with children. A student organization was incorporated as Moonspring Hermitage, a non-profit religious group, with a board of officers elected from among the students. The students built a zendo and meeting hall on a parcel of his land. The agreement specified that the corporation and buildings belonged to the students and that the land would be turned over to them after ten years.

A Rinzai Zen style practice was established although Nowick did away with many of the externals of Japanese Zen - there was no chanting, no robes, no Buddhist names, lectures, precepts, etc. Instead there was just work on his farm and koan study. At its height, in the mid-seventies, the group may have had an overall membership of maybe 40 people.

In the mid-seventies, there was a sex scandal involving Walter and one of his students. What led to it and what exactly happened is murky. This led some people to leave, although most stayed on and continued their practice. After this there were no further incidents, but opinions on the matter remain strongly held, emotional and contradictory.

In the mid-eighties, concerned with the looming possibility of nuclear holocaust, he founded the Surry Opera Company, an amateur group intended to strengthen ties with the Soviet Union at the personal level. This group went to the USSR a number of times, and in its heyday received national attention.

In 1985, shortly after the founding of the opera company some of his students became concerned that he was spending too much time on this, he concurred, and withdrew as teacher to devote himself to music full time. After some legal wrangling, the property reverted to the corporation as agreed, which had been reconstituted as the Morgan Bay Zendo. The MBZ has used and maintained the property ever since, although Walter pays a visit occasionally.

Walter Nowick continues to live in Surry much of the year, spending some of the winter in Japan and Russia. In the summer, he gives piano concerts and every year Russians come for an extended visit.

Soko Morinaga, who is Walter Nowick's Dharma brother, has written an excellent book ("Novice to Master") which gives some insight into what the traditional practice was at the time Walter first went to Japan. The difficulty of recreating something like this in an entirely different cultural context is definitely one of the factors which has led to much of the confusion which arose both for teachers and students as Zen was introduced in this country. [http://www.answers.com/topic/soko-morinaga-roshi]

Debunking articles from a veteran Zen practitioner which deal with some of this stuff. [http://www.darkzen.com/Articles/Richard_Baker_and_the_Myth_of_the_Zen_Roshi.htm] [http://www.darkzen.com/Articles/uszen3.htm]

The Hakuin lineage. Three students of Zuigan Goto are listed: Oda Sesso, Soko Morinaga and Walter Nowick. [http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVLPages/ZenPages/Hakuin.html ]

ee also

*Buddhism in the United States
*List of Rinzai Buddhists
*Timeline of Zen Buddhism in the United States

References

External links

* [http://www.ellsworthamerican.com/ourtown/surry/ot_surry10_11-14-02.html Article on Walter Nowick featured in ellsworthamerican.com] .
* [http://www.crazyheart.org/graphics/ordination/Koun+NowickRoshi.jpgPhotograph of Walter Nowick, 2004]