I never met Marian Wisberg (formerly Derby), but we wrote each other letters for almost 30 years until her death in 2013. Our correspondence began shortly after her 1982 book, The Zen Environment by Marian Mountain, was published by William Morrow and Co., the publisher of my husband, Robert M. Pirsig. He had written a short foreword, saying that rather than being about Zen, her words were “Zen itself, talking.” Her mental breakdown while training as a monk at Tassajara reminded him of his own experience, and he admired the independent Zen practice she pursued and wrote about. He had also valued her earlier role in capturing Suzuki Roshi’s lectures for publication in what became Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind.
I don’t think the two of them ever exchanged more than a few letters. But one year in the early 1980s we may have received a Christmas card from Marian, and Bob probably asked me to write her back from the two of us for the holidays as I did with many people in those days. And we continued. She wrote to both of us as though from both herself and her husband, Jack. Occasionally she wrote at other times during the year. Sometimes she reported on the new book she was writing about practicing Zen on her own. Zen without a Master was the working title. It seemed the teaching of Suzuki Roshi had worked deep into her life and continued to play out in her words. I am glad to have saved many of her letters.
Wendy Pirsig
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