Walter Nowick

Walter Nowick (January 29, 1926—February 6, 2013) was an American former teacher of Rinzai Zen. 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, Maine, 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 America, where Michaelson was a member.

Nowick went to Japan in 1950 to study Zen with Zuigan Gotō of Daitoku-ji. Nowick stayed in Japan some sixteen years until the death of Zuigan Gotō in 1965. Janwillem van de Wetering lived a year and a half in Daitoku-Ji with Nowick, and described this in The Empty Mirror. Sōkō 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. Nowick was not given formal Dharma transmission—a point emphasized by Sōkō Morinaga Roshi during a visit to London. Nowick was also never ordained a priest but instead remained a layman. Three students of Zuigan Gotō are listed: Oda Sessō, Sōkō Morinaga and Walter Nowick.

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