WE finished a three-day weekend sesshin at the Nebraska Zen Center on Sunday. The theme for dharma talks was the Zen lineage, especially Daiō, the 13th Century monk who transmitted the Rinzai lineage to Japan. On Saturday, I presented an entanglement of great teachers in our Sōtō and Rinzai lines all commenting on the same phrase (see below), based on The Complete Poison Blossoms in a Thicket of Thorn #110 and Dogen’s Extensive Record #179. In… Read more

Once in awhile, I hear some trash talk about me and my practice and teaching in both just-sitting and koan introspection Zen. Builds character, you know. But some folks say it just shows a lack of understanding about just-sitting. Be that as it may be, on the other hand, my first teacher, Katagiri Roshi, once encouraged us to return to what he called “Zen before the Sixth Ancestor,” meaning, before the split between the Sōtō and Rinzai lineages. Another way to… Read more

              Here at the Nebraska Zen Center, we’re getting ready for the summer sesshin (a week of intensive practice) that starts on Saturday. Soon students will be packing their bags and on their way. In this year of blogging Hakuin, I think of this from Complete Poison Blossoms from a Thicket of Thorn, #332, “Hakuin’s Baggage:” “ON THE AFTERNOON of the seventeenth day of the first month of the first year of Kampō [1741],… Read more

James Myōun Ford Rōshi recently asked, “What would you say are the essential Dōgen texts?” Below you’ll find my response as well as what I’d say (if he’d asked) about essential Hakuin texts. But first, a word from Hakuin about the importance of study: “I have always lamented Zen’s ignorance of the sutras, Monks plodding ahead aimlessly like blind donkeys. Even after kenshō, unless you know Buddha’s words, You’re like a carriage only fitted out with one wheel. And if… Read more

                                              Hakuin Ekaku Zenji (白隠 慧鶴, January 19, 1686 – January 18, 1768), the last national teacher of Japan, and a primary instigator of modern kōan introspection was also a phenomenal artist (see sidebar).  Subjects for his work were extraordinarily wide-ranging, from the sublime to the ridiculous, as he depicted the whole rolling ball of buddhanature in the… Read more

In my last post, I shared a bit of the criticism that Hakuin (1686 – 1768) heaped on the silent illuminationists of his day, generally some practitioners in the Sōtō school. That lead me to reflecting on what Hakuin might have said about today’s practitioners of kōan introspection. First, it’s important to note that phrases like “kōan introspection” and “Sōtō Zen” are general categories and there is more difference within groups than between groups. That said, one of the ways that… Read more