Walter Nowick
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Walter Nowick (born January 29, 1926) was an American teacher of Rinzai Zen; one of the earliest and most important teachers in the United States. He was a Juilliard-trained pianist and a veteran of World War II. He studied Zen in Japan for sixteen years while teaching university-level piano and voice there, then returned to the United States to teach music and Zen in Surry, ME, where he founded Moonspring Hermitage. He founded the Surry Opera Company in the mid-1980s and retired from formal Zen teaching in 1985.
Nowick's parents were immigrants of Russian-Polish origin. He grew up on Long Island, New York on a potato farm. He showed an 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, taking part in the final sweep of Okinawa after the island had surrendered. He eventually returned to his piano studies with Miss Michaelson. Having seen a book on Zen on her coffee table, began to sit at the First Zen Institute of New York, where Michaelson 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. Janwillem van de Wetering lived a year in Daitoku-Ji and half a year with Nowick and described these in The Empty Mirror. Soko Morinaga, Walter Nowick's Dharma brother, wrote in Novice to Master about traditional practices at the time Walter first went to Japan.
During Nowick's years in Japan he supported himself teaching piano and voice at the Kyoto Women's University. Nowick became known in the United States Zen community, 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. However, contrary to some opinions Nowick was not awarded Dharma Transmission, a point emphasized by Soko Morinaga Roshi during a visit to London.[citation needed] Nowick was also never ordained a priest but instead remained a layman. Three students of Zuigan Goto are listed: Oda Sesso, Soko Morinaga and Walter Nowick.[1]
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, students of Zen began to arrive and many settled nearby. Some built homes 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 Nowick's land, with an agreement specifying 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, though Nowick did not practice many of the externals of Japanese Zen. There were no chants, robes, Buddhist names, lectures, precepts, and such. Instead there was just work on his farm and koan study. At its peak in the mid-1970s, the group may have had an overall membership of 40 people. In 1975, Janwillem van de Wetering documented his experiences in this community in A Glimpse of Nothingness.
During the mid-1970s, there was a sex scandal involving Nowick and one of his students. What led to it and what exactly happened is unclear. This led some students to leave the farm, although most stayed on and continued their practice. No further incidents occurred after this, but opinions on the matter remain strongly held, emotional, and contradictory. Van de Wetering's After Zen describes the gradual decay of the Zen community in Surry.
In the mid-eighties, concerned with the looming possibility of nuclear holocaust,[citation needed] Nowick founded the Surry Opera Company, an amateur group that intended to strengthen ties with the Soviet Union at a personal level. This group went to the USSR a number of times and received national attention in its heyday.[citation needed]
In 1985, shortly after the founding of the opera company, some of his students became concerned that he was spending too much time on the project.[citation needed] He agreed and withdrew his position as teacher to devote himself to music full time.[citation needed] After some legal wrangling, the property reverted as agreed, to the corporation, which had been reconstituted as the Morgan Bay Zendo.[citation needed] The MBZ has used and maintained the property ever since, with Walter visiting occasionally.[citation needed]
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 Russians come for extended visits.[citation needed]
See also
- Buddhism in the United States
- List of Rinzai Buddhists
- Timeline of Zen Buddhism in the United States
