A Little About How Daido’s Life Touched Mine

Daido Loori, founder of the Mountains and Rivers Order, died this morning at about 7:30. The above photo is borrowed from Bernie Glassman’s remembrance.

I first met Daido in about 1999 when he accepted an invitation to teach at the Zen Center I was running. Years before I had become acquainted with his taped teachings. In those days I had a consultant-type job with the schools and listened to maybe a hundred of his talks during a several year period as I drove from meeting to meeting.

I felt (and still feel) a deep resonance with his zeal to offer authentic Zen and his passion for Dogen’s subtle dharma, as he called it. And especially I resonated with his fierceness. In a Zen scene where such things had become unpopular, Daido roared (this from memory):

“Kerouc said Zen is ‘I don’t know, I don’t care and it doesn’t matter.’ Bullshit! Knowing is vital. I care intensely. And everything matters!”

So I went to the airport to meet a tough, cigarette smoking, ex-sailor. In those days you could wait at the gate and I vividly remember my first view of his relaxed pace as he lumbered up the gate from the plane, wearing an old Army jacket (or some such thing) and a leather cowboyish hat.

What struck me most, though, when I shook his hand and looked him in the eye was his incredibly delicate and palpable kindness.

He, like Katagiri Roshi, was a man alone in the Universe.

A couple months later I began a series of sesshin with him at Mt. Tremper. In dokusan he’d take the teacher seat completely, of course, kindly rejecting many of my koan presentations, “That doesn’t reach it!” he’d say. And then we’d talk about Dogen or Katagiri or Maezumi or working with students or Zen organizations. After sesshin we’d enjoy a cigar together and he’d complain about his students and I’d complain about mine.

After I completed the work with him that I set out to do, he let me know that he was always available for a good schmooze, although in this moment I regret that I didn’t call him more often.

The last time I saw him was at the Soto Zen Buddhist Association meeting at Mt. Tremper a couple years ago. Daido had fallen in love again and was so very beautifully happy.

Meeting him in dokusan and doing koan training with him was one of the most important experiences of my life. And today I feel quite alone.