Thank You and Ok! An American Zen Failure in Japan

David Chadwick began his Zen study under the legendary Japanese master Shunryu Suzuki Roshi in 1966. Much later, Suzuki Roshi's successor said of Chadwick: 'Years of expensive Zen training gone to waste.' In 1988 Chadwick flew to Japan to begin a four-year period of voluntary exile and remedial education. In THANK YOU AND OKAY! he recounts his experiences both inside and outside the monastery and offers insightful portraits of the characters he encountered - the bickering monks, the patient abbot, the ominous insects, the bewildered bureaucrats, and his idiosyncratic fellow students - as they worked inexorably toward initiating him into the mysterious ways of Japan. No one interested in Zen Buddhism, Japan, or the workings of human nature will soon forget Chadwick's tale.