Remembering Zen Master Philip Kapleau

Remembering Zen Master Philip Kapleau August 20, 2017

Philip Kapleau

Philip Kapleau was born today, the 20th of August, 1912.

I wrote a biographical sketch of this pioneering Western Zen teacher for my book Zen Master Who? Last year the good folk at Lion’s Roar edited it and printed it as part of an acknowledging of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the Rochester Zen Center. What follows is my rewrite of Lion’s Roar‘s edit of my original essay.

Philip Kapleau is widely acknowledged as an important Zen master, and the source of a significant and widely accepted stream of Western Zen, sometimes called the Rochester Zen lineage. However, Philip Kapleau — founder of Rochester Zen Center and author of several books including the monumentally important Three Pillars of Zenin fact lacked formal dharma transmission from his teacher.

Here we encounter full on the contradiction of a widely accepted Zen teacher who has not received the “formal seal” of his teacher has most clearly focused and challenged Western Zen’s understanding of legitimate authority. I’ve found this conundrum terribly important in my own thinking about what Zen is, and what it can be.

In August 2003 the American Zen Teachers Association conference was hosted by Kapleau’s Rochester Zen Center in Chapin Mill, their country retreat, outside of Rochester. Those of us who were interested were invited to go into Rochester and meet the roshi. He was ninety years old and suffering from advanced Parkinson’s disease. Most of us understood this could be our last, and for some, certainly me, only chance to meet this old Zen pioneer.

I actually hesitated. He had broken from his teacher Yasutani Roshi many years before. He took to calling himself Roshi and was known in subsequent years to make seemingly self-serving disparaging remarks about other teachers. He also, it seemed to me, gratuitously challenged the technical veracity of the transmission of the lineage from which he had broken. Which of course was the lineage in which I had studied and out of which I teach.

At the same time he was also the editor of Three Pillars of Zen. I cannot adequately express how important that single book was in my life. And this has been true for so many others who’ve taken up the Zen way. He was and remains so important. So, in the end I went to see him.

Philip Kapleau was living in a small two-room apartment at the center. His Parkinson’s was so advanced he could do little more than sit in his recliner and hold hands with each of us who’d made the trip. About ten teachers—dharma successors in the Soto, Rinzai, Harada-Yasutani, and Korean Chogye traditions — had made what I can only call the pilgrimage.

Once there,  if we wanted to shake Kapleau’s hand, his condition required us to kneel in front of him and take the initiative, reaching out and taking his shaking hand in ours. It had clearly not been set up to require such a supplicative posture, but that was inevitably what was called for. I watched several of my colleagues, some distinguished teachers, all acknowledged teachers of the Zen way.

I caught my breath. And, to my surprise I found tears welling up from deep within me — not just for his physical condition, but with gratitude. This crusty old man filled with contradictions, was a true founder, and absolutely one of the most important figures in bringing the Zen way West. For all his flaws, he was a great man and one of the most important people in my life. In that moment I happily knelt, took his hands in mine, and thanked him. From the bottom of my heart I thanked him.

Fourteen years have passed, and I remain grateful for that opportunity.

Philip Kapleau was born in New Haven, Connecticut, as I mentioned at the top, in 1912. He served as chief court reporter for the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, and later he was also court reporter at the trials in Tokyo. While in Japan he met a number of prominent Zen teachers, including Soen Nakagawa, Sogaku Harada, and Haku’un Yasutani, the founders of the Harada-Yasutani line of koan-studying Soto Zen. After coming back to America he felt profoundly dissatisfied with his life and decided to return to Japan in 1953.

After spending three years at Hosshinji with Harada Roshi, Kapleau became the first Westerner to begin formal study with Haku’un Yasutani. After some twenty sesshins with Yasutani, the roshi confirmed Kapleau’s awakening. In 1966, after ten years studying with his teacher, he came home to America and, with Yasutani Roshi’s permission, founded the Rochester Zen Center in upstate New York.

There are several accounts of the reasons for his famous, or maybe infamous break with Yasutani Roshi. The most commonly reported version suggests deep disagreement about appropriate forms for the nascent North American center. Another story is that Kapleau objected to the close association of his teacher to Eido Shimano, whom he saw as ethically challenged.

Philip Kapleau was an aggressive personality who rubbed a number of people the wrong way, including several visiting Japanese teachers. More important, there were the growing tensions between Yasutani Roshi and Philip Kapleau. The specifics are debated but these tensions appear in significant part to have to do with Kapleau’s leadership of his center: his increasingly independent style, his departures in liturgical usage, and his relationships with visiting teachers.

The tensions all came to a head when Yasutani Roshi informed Kapleau that he, Kapleau, would no longer be considered Yasutani’s student. At this time Kapleau had completed about half of the Harada-Yasutani koan curriculum, the koans in The Gateless Gate and The Blue Cliff Record. Could he, in good faith, continue to teach considering his permissions were limited to introducing people to the practices of the Sanbo Kyodan—or “Three Treasures,” as the Harada-Yasutani school called itself—to which he no longer belonged? Regardless Kapleau decided to continue as a teacher.

The Three Pillars of Zen was the first book in English to describe authentic Zen training, and it justly became an international bestseller. Kapleau went on to write a number of other books, and his center grew to become one of the most influential Western Zen communities. While seen by many as a difficult personality inclined to unnecessary conflict, he was also a central figure in the establishment of a Western Zen. There should be little doubt the institution he founded will continue well into the future.

But the Rochester lineage, as it is sometimes called, opens all the questions regarding the nature of dharma transmission. What does this mean for us today and in the future? Andrew Rawlinson, who spent years studying Western teachers of Eastern religions, makes a pointed comparison of Philip Kapleau and Robert Aitken, as an aid to reflection on the nature of formal transmission—what it might mean, and what it probably doesn’t mean. Philip Kapleau spent thirteen years in Japan studying with several teachers. Eventually he received permission to teach but not dharma transmission, which is the approval to teach independently. Since his split with Yasutani Roshi, Rawlinson wrote before Kapleau’s death:

Kapleau has continued to teach, as he is entitled to do, but has also given dharma transmission to a number of his own students, which, according to the transmission criteria of the Zen tradition, he is not entitled to do. Or at least, these appointments need not be recognized by any other lineage or teacher.… In effect, then, Kapleau has created his own Zen lineage.

By contrast, Rawlinson holds up Robert Aitken (who would die in 2010):

Aitken received dharma transmission from [Ko’un] Yamada Roshi but he has been far more radical in his attitude to the traditional way of life than Kapleau. He has encouraged Zen (and Buddhist) feminism, for want of a better term, and has actively encouraged gay and lesbian participation in Zen (though he is not gay himself). He is also a committed social activist—he was a co-founder of the Buddhist Peace Fellowship — and sees such commitment as a necessary aspect of Buddhist ethics, which are themselves expressed in the precepts. At the same time he has given Dharma transmission to one of his students who is a Christian priest.

This last action is something for which Aitken has been openly criticized.

As Rawlinson sees it, the difference between these two teachers turns on their understanding of transmission: “In short, for Aitken transmission is a necessary condition (though not a sufficient one) for the tradition to continue; for Kapleau, spiritual qualities hold an equivalent place.”

Roshi Kapleau died on the sixth of May, 2004, in the garden of the Rochester Zen Center, surrounded by old and new students. He had suffered from the ravages of Parkinson’s disease for years and had long since retired from formal teaching. It is hard to assess yet what Roshi Kapleau’s career means for the development of Western Zen. But one thing is certain: despite having teaching authorizations, he ultimately lacked formal dharma transmission, yet he created a lineage that is largely recognized throughout the Western Zen community. (Among the most prominent of Kapleau Roshi’s heirs are the late Toni Packer, current RZC abbot Peter Bodhin Kjolhede, and Sunyana Graef, who guides the Vermont Zen Center near Burlington and Casa Zen in Costa Rica.) Thus his life and the institution he created forces Western Zen practitioners to carefully consider the nature of dharma transmission.

As an heir within a traditional lineage and as someone deeply involved in the transmission of Zen into our Western culture, Kapleau Roshi’s presence and legacy offered me a challenge and a pointer. The challenge was that to my mind he was completely and authentically a Zen teacher, but lacking the tactile authorization. The pointer was to go beyond the over blown rhetoric of the Zen way’s transmission, and to accept that it is in fact the transmission of a way, a style and and approach.

And specifically what we’re invited into is a more humble and I believe more authentic Zen. The transmission as something passed on from teacher to student is useful. And I’d be wary of anyone who lacks it. But, it also has something to do with the community. And I have learned to be wary of teachers who lack that. So, for me there need to be two other things to create an authentic Zen community of practice. One would be students who accept the teacher. And also other teachers who accept the teacher. You have that and you have Zen.

What we see in Kapleau Roshi’s gift of dharma successors are authentic Zen practitioners and teachers, pretty much any of whom I’d be completely comfortable entrusting the spiritual care of any of my students. For these gifts, I honor the memory of our founding Western master, Roshi Philip Kapleau.

 

Here Zen Master Mitra Bishop reflects on Philip Kapleau Roshi’s magisterial Three Pillars of Zen.


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