New Katagiri Archive: One Who Sees the Dharma Sees Me

September 15, 2012 By 1 Comment

There’s a new Katagiri Roshi archive up here: click

Andrea Martin has done a great job gathering together a whole trunk full of Katagiri material – audio, video, photos, calligraphy. I’ve gotten lost in it a few times, strolling down memory lane.

And I learned some things.

For example, somehow I’d missed the detail that Katagiri Roshi’s teacher, Hayashi Roshi, had directed him to go to Hoshinji to study with Harada Daiun and the young Katagiri – in a non-stereotypical Japanese Zen manner – refused and instead followed his own inspiration and went to Eiheiji.

There is some irony here in that my own zig-zag path has led me to work with several teachers from the Harada Daiun line. And, yes, I confess that I get a little self-justification charge in that I’m criticized by “some people” for doing this work and yet our dharma grandfather wanted that for Katagiri.

Also, I sometimes refused to follow Katagiri’s “requests” and some of my peers were surprised by Katagiri Roshi’s magnanimity in the face of my refusals. This detail helps me appreciate him in a new way – and explain how he was with me and others too who didn’t just do what he said.

Now even though this is a great resource, I’m of two minds about pointing it out. The first mind is presented above – wonderful! Katagiri Roshi was a fine teacher and a great guy. I loved him.

The second is this – be careful! I think it was Hakuin who said that we should regard the old teachers as our worst enemies. I hear Hakuin saying, “Don’t get stuck in admiration!”

The archive has some comments that could be seen as such. “Although he died in 1990, his teaching lives on in audio recordings of his talks, and books that have been developed from them.”

“His teaching” does not live on in such a way.

Here’s how I put it in Keep Me In Your Heart A While: The Haunting Zen of Dainin Katagiri:

ONE OF THE THINGS I REMEMBER from sometime in the late 1970s is an observation Roshi made after he returned from his once-a year visit to San Francisco Zen Center. He said that the images of Suzuki Roshi got bigger and bigger each year. “Soon,” Katagiri Roshi joked with his arms open, head tilted back and eyes looking at the heavens, “Suzuki Roshi will be huge like God.”

I also remember hearing Katagiri Roshi give a Dharma talk in the early 1980s about one of the Buddha’s disciples, Vakkali. When Vakkali was deathly ill, the Buddha came to visit him. Vakkali confessed to the Buddha that he had long yearned to see the “Blessed One.” Buddha shut him up. “Enough, Vakkali! One who sees the Dharma sees me; one who sees me, sees the Dharma.”

The Buddha handled misplaced adoration with this rough Dharma. Dharma, of course, is a Sanskrit word that refers, varyingly and all at once, to the big Truth, the teachings about the big Truth, phenomena themselves, and the way to get things done congruently with the first three meanings.

Like any good teacher, the Buddha yearned for his student Vakkali not to mistake the object of teaching (the Buddha’s human form, in this case) with the referent—mistaking the pointing finger for the moon. To really see the Buddha, to really see any teacher, is to see and actualize for oneself what the teacher teaches. Therefore, keeping my teacher in my heart a while is not really about him or me. And yet it depends on us both—and you too.

My task as Katagiri Roshi’s disciple has been to study his Zen and become one with it, and to let him and his teachings haunt me—but not necessarily to agree blindly with him, or to parrot his Dharma back to others. To do so would betray both of us. It is my hope that all of us together might do something small to keep the Buddhadharma alive in our hearts.

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What is the Withered Tree Way?

August 25, 2012 By 17 Comments

This reflection is a follow up to James Ford’s post a little while back, Jiufeng Does Not Approve: A Brief Meditation.

I’ve been chewing on this old case for twenty years or so – an important pointer in my ongoing search for what Dogen calls the wondrous method of practice-enlightenment (aka, shikantaza).

Katagiri Roshi would often say that there are only a few people who really know this wondrous method. I took that to heart and launched a pilgrimage that has been dragging on for thirty-five years.

The koan work that I’ve been doing, fyi, is also in service of this inquiry – what is the heart of shikantaza?

Here’s the koan.

Book of Serenity, Case 96:

Jiufeng Daoqian served Shishuang Qingzhu as his attendant. When the master died, the assembly elected the head monk as the new abbot. Jiufeng was unsure of the new master’s realization. He declared “I will test him, and if he understands what our late master understood, then I will continue as his attendant.”

The two men met. Jiufeng said, “our late teacher said, ‘You should extinguish all delusive thoughts. You should let consciousness expire. You should let your one awareness continue for ten thousand years. You should let your awareness become like winter ashes, or a withered tree. You should let your consciousness become like one strip of pure white silk.’ So, tell me, what matter was he intending to clarify with these words?”

The head monk said “Our late master intended to clarify the matter of absolute emptiness.”

Jiufeng replied, “If that is your understanding, you have failed to achieve the insight of our late master.”

The head monk was taken aback. He said, “Pass me that incense.” When Jiufeng did, the head monk lit it, saying “If I didn’t understand him, I would not be able to die as the incense smoke rises.” And with these words, he assumed the zazen posture and died.

Jiufeng reached over and gently caressed the late head monk’s shoulder, saying, “Even though you can die sitting or standing, you have not dreamt our late master’s teaching.”

Shishuang (807-88) was a successor to Daowu – the guy who wouldn’t say alive or dead, the guy who asked his brother Yunyan about the activity of great compassion, the guy who asked the sweeping Yunyan what he was doing. Daowu was a successor to Yaoshan in the Shitou branch of Zen, the branch that eventually became associated with “silent illumination” and then radicalized by Dogen as “shikantaza” (or earnest, vivid sitting).

Shishuang was a contemporary of Linchi, Yangshan, Dongshan and Xuefeng – living and teaching right in the thick of the dream time for Zen teachings.

There’s a number of significant and hinky context bits in this old story. Succession to the abbacy appears to be by group consensus and so the Shishuang line may not be thriving in an imperially controlled monastery but at the fringes. Perhaps this allowed for the fringe practice of monks dying while sitting or standing. A practice experiment that one might say “died out” (I hear you groaning!).

Thus Shishuang’s zendo was reputed to be a dead-tree hall, so named for the emphasis on long hours of still sitting and fore-shadows the silent illumination school (although these old guys were dead for a hundred years or so before the silent illumination brand arose) as well of this drop-dead trick – a considerable meditation feat and quite beside the point.

James, of course, does a nice job of laying out the issue and making the koan point that the realization of emptiness is alive:

“How do you extinguish all delusive thoughts? Show me. How do you let consciousness expire? What word expresses that? And what about the ten thousand years? Ten thousand moments? Ten thousand breaths? Ten thousand pauses? I can tell you just presenting zazen will not cut it.” [emphasis added]

Nor will dying in body or in spirit while sitting necessarily do it.

And this goes to the heart of shikantaza. Demonstrably not simply a silent illumination death camp (aka”just sitting”) – a passive practice in the chorus of the do-me-dharma school.

“Dropping body and mind,” Dogen’s mantra for shikantaza, echoes the withered tree way but is certainly not merely pure receptivity or panoramic awareness as some contemporary skin bags portray it.

Another framing for this conversation is about the two wings of Buddhist meditation, samadhi and insight, that has been in play at least since the Buddha’s time. We tend to emphasize one over the other, subtly missing the heart of the wondrous method.

Soto Zen at it’s best leans toward samadhi. Koan Zen toward insight.

Case in point, a close student of Suzuki Roshi once told me that he told her, “Zazen is samadhi.”

Yes and no.

I once asked Katagiri Roshi if zazen was about samadhi or insight. He held up his hand and turned it back and forth and said, “Like a leaf showing one side then the other. Go into one side deeply and the other appears.”

And this is Dogen’s great practice. Shikantaza as the “show me,” “tell me” resolution of the samadhi/insight issue where samadhi and insight are two foci and the seeming conflict is dynamically resolved through ongoing intimate interaction.

It is this very churning that ripens the sweet cream of the long river.

(Photo above of withered tree is from recent canoeing trip to BWCA)

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Koan Confessions

July 7, 2012 By 5 Comments

Note: This is the first installment in a series of seven or eight that I call my koan confessions, although I confess that most of the confessions aren’t confessions in the usual sense.

I wrote the whole piece a few months ago upon request, although it doesn’t look like it’ll be used for it’s intended purpose so (desperate for fresh blog food), I’ll post it here, one confession at at time. The beginning has some introductory material that regular readers might already be familiar with, I suppose.

Recently I was talking with a friend, George Bowman, a successor of Dae Soen Sa Nim and a long-time student of Sazaki Roshi, both koan Zen teachers. We were sharing experiences with koans, including some of the persistent issues – what the traditional answers were in the various teaching lines, the weight to give to the traditional answers, and what really mattered after all.

I had studied just-sitting Zen for thirty-odd years and had received dharma transmission from Dainin Katagiri Roshi, one of the pioneer proponents of just-sitting Zen in the West. I’d taught for fifteen years, written a book and traveled some teaching just-sitting Zen.

Then several years ago, the opportunity had opened up to work the koan system with the three lovely Boundless Way Zen teachers, James Ford, Melissa Blacker and David Rynick. I was determined to put myself into koan training by my long-held hunch (based on a few thousand hours of Dogen study and intermittent koan dabbling) that koan and just-sitting Zen, despite sectarian stories to the contrary, were about the same so-called thing.

More importantly, I’d long been aware of a yearning in my heart to dig deeply into the process of koan introspection. The dang thing just called to me! So despite the fact that I was a teacher in the just-sitting school, I jumped at the opportunity.

George knew my story. “When you’re working with koan,” George asked, “do you feel that you are betraying your old teacher, Katagiri Roshi?”

Confession #1: No.

Koan Zen is a powerful process for disclosing the same truths that Katagiri Roshi taught. Although the old guy was incredibly devoted to the just-sitting way, he was really open to me experimenting with various aspects of the buddhadharma and this I’ve continue to do.

However, Katagiri Roshi did take on the sectarian conflict between the Japanese schools of just-sitting and koan Zen, Soto and Rinzai, a feud going back a few hundred years. Roshi wrongly thought that koan Zen was about getting some sweet candy. Despite  taking sides, Roshi would also often lament, “Under the beautiful flag of religion, we fight.”

It is time to stop the in-family fighting between koan and just-sitting Zen, a feud that arose in historical circumstances long past and that we have no reason to replay in the blooming global culture of the buddhadharma. That doesn’t mean that I’m saying the koan Zen and just-sitting Zen are the same. Each method has it’s own processes with virtues and weaknesses and in this series I’ll share some of my opinions about these while I hope to avoid fighting under a beautiful flag.

I’ve found that koan training is an ingenious system of spiritual development aimed at the realization of our true nature, embodying the way and “don’t know mind” with elements that are in line with modern educational methods.

The Tibetan master Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche once observed with his characteristic searing insight that Zen is “the biggest joke that has ever been played in the spiritual realm. But it is a practical joke, very practical.”

Hakuin, regarded as the founder of the modern koan system, had embedded both of these qualities – humor and pragmatics – into the koan process, in addition to emphasizing the importance of personally verifying the buddhadharma, also known as “kensho.” Although there are many possible dharma insights, Hakuin and his line of spiritual geniuses selected the most practical realization as the foundation of koan introspection, and for wholeheartly being who we are.

Some orthodox just-sitting Zen teachers regard koan Zen as misguided in that it focuses on an ugly and evil gaining idea called “kensho” (literally, “seeing true nature”). Rather than kensho, just-sitting advocates focus on practice-enlightenment – i.e., how can we actualize the fundamental point in each particular situation of daily life.

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Soto Zen Form and the Sound of the Single Hand

December 14, 2011 By 4 Comments

 

 

 

 

 

I found the above photo with an image search – a young Katagiri Roshi (right) and an old Suzuki Roshi (left). Click to enlarge the image and you’ll see the Katagiri-fierce-zazen-face that he upheld throughout his life. Maybe he softened toward the end just a little bit.

So I’m back from Rohatsu Sesshin at Boundless Way and one of the (little) striking things about the sesshin was looking around the room during a dharma talk and realizing that very few of the practitioners had studied with a Japanese teacher.

I studied with Katagiri Roshi for thirteen years, ignoring his advise not to stick my nose into Zen Buddhism – it will be trouble, he said, and it isn’t easy to pull out your nose.

Now days I really appreciate the old forms of practice (especially when simplified – sitting, standing, walking, lying down according to the training rules) and so recently became inexplicably happy when Practices at a Zen Monastery: Clothing, Eating, Housing: Being in Harmony with the Dharma by Tsugen Narasaki Roshi arrived in the mail.

Although I struggled a lot with Katagiri’s style of traditional Soto Zen practice, somehow it won the fight years ago.

I think the old ways are important for many reasons – including that they offer the opportunity of setting aside our ideas of practice and just enter the form, express it from the inside, and see the meaning in the doing.

Some folks think that Soto Zen form is an obsessive-complusive-disorder practice. I’ve seen it practiced in an OCD-way but that’s a near enemy of it, not the heart of it.

Others think it is a cargo cult (in this context, if we pretend to be Buddha we’ll magically get the goods). Some do practice in this way, but again, it really isn’t the heart of practice.

The heart of the practice is actualizing the fundamental point, the genjokoan, a close kin (very close, imv) to the sound of the single hand in koan Zen. Bowing, sitting, standing in this way is to allow the treasure store to open of itself and to joyfully put it to use (to paraphrase Dogen).

May these old forms hang around for a while so that they might more fully contribute to the peace and harmony of the future world.

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