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SOME EARLY HINTS OF THE SANSHIN STYLE

5/22/2020

 
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​Kodo Sawaki wanted to become a monk at the young age of 16, and he went to Eiheiji, one of the head training temples of Sotoshu.  He was told that he could not be ordained since he didn't have a teacher--but he didn't know any teachers and couldn't go forward.  Somehow he became a lay worker at Eiheiji, which gave him the opportunity to observe the practice of the monks, particularly their zazen.  On seeing them sitting day after day he felt something deep and sacred, but couldn't identify the source of that feeling.  He later said that he had encountered the real thing before studying what it was, and on that basis zazen was very special to him.

According to Antaiji's website:     
At one point he had a day off and decided to do zazen in his own room. By chance, an old parishioner who helped out at the temple entered the room and bowed towards him respectfully as if he were the Buddha himself. This old woman usually just ordered him around like an errand boy, so what was it that moved her to bow towards him with such respect? This was the first time that Sawaki Rōshi realized what noble dignity was inherent in the zazen posture, and he resolved to practice zazen for the rest of his life. In his old age, Sawaki Rōshi often said that he was a man who had wasted his entire life with zazen. The point of departure for this way of life lay in this early event.

He was eventually ordained, but his practice was interrupted by his required seven years of army service during the Russo-Japanese War.  On returning to civilian life he practiced at Horyu-ji in Nara, one of the oldest Buddhist temples in Japan and a head temple of the Hosso-shu or Yogacara sect.  He became thoroughly familiar with Yogacara teachings, studied Dogen and practiced zazen there until he moved on to teach at a local Sotoshu training temple.  However, he was dismayed to find that neither teachers nor students practiced zazen seriously; the students were there to learn the ceremonies and rituals necessary to become temple priests.  Again he moved on.

When he established practice in a borrowed temple, Sawaki Roshi's emphasis was on zazen.  He and his students held monthly sesshin, during which they sat 50-minute zazen periods from 2 am to midnight, with three meal breaks.  From midnight to 2 am, no one carried the kyosaku and practitioners could sleep for those two hours sitting there on their cushions.

Like his teacher before him, Kosho Uchiyama's focus was on zazen, knowing those who wanted to learn ceremonies had other places in which to learn them.  While sesshin in other temples included liturgy, formal meals with chanting, lectures from teachers, work periods, teatime and other activities, Uchiyama Roshi continued his teacher's simple style, feeling that practitioners tended to turn these things into distractions from sitting.  He called this approach "sesshin without toys."  ​

He had spent three years sitting sesshin with his teacher in his strict style but after Sawaki Roshi's death Uchiyama Roshi made modifications that are still the norm at Sanshin today.  For instance, he abandoned the use of the kyosaku, observing that when someone was walking behind the monks carrying the kyosaku, the ones sitting and the one walking around entered into a silent dialogue.  This became a hindrance to really just sitting.  

Uchiyama Roshi also decided that human beings need a certain amount of sleep in order to maintain mental health, so his sesshin schedule allowed for 7 hours of rest rather than two hours' dozing on the cushion.  Under this schedule, he said, there was no excuse for sleeping during zazen.  He did not change the 50-minute zazen and 10-minute kinhin periods, and these still make up the pattern of practice at Sanshin.

Sanshin continues the focus on zazen even though it offers a certain amount of dharma study.  According to Okumura Roshi, studying Buddhism only as a scholar, without engaging in practice and living in Buddha's way, is like studying recipes without cooking or eating.  Like Sawaki Roshi, he teaches that we have to wholeheartedly encounter our lives to find the meaning in them.

WHY ZAZEN IS GOOD FOR NOTHING (2)

5/8/2020

 
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Zazen is good.  Period.

What does it really mean when we say that zazen is good for nothing? If there’s no point, why do it at all?

Saying that zazen is good for nothing implies that it has no value. Yet Okumura Roshi saw an important nuance in his translation of Sawaki Roshi’s phrase. He explained, “Zazen is good—but not for something. It is good in itself.”

It’s enough that our practice of zazen is wholesome. We get to let go of our delusions and hindrances, and the attachments that give rise to our suffering. We get to manifest the authentic self that is not pulled around by karma. Sitting is something we can do freely and without obstruction, embodying the active life of the entire universe. Zazen is good. Period. It doesn’t have to be good for anything.

Okumura Roshi often tells of his experience harvesting blueberries in Massachusetts as a summer job. When inattentive harvesters mixed inedible dogberries in with the blueberries, the farmer would shout at them to stop picking “those good-for-nothing dogberries.” Okumura Roshi considered the relative values of dogberries and blueberries. “Dogberries are not edible, but they are pretty. Blueberries are pretty, too, but they are also edible, so they have market value. That means they’re ‘good for something.’ Dogberries have no market value so we consider them ‘good for nothing.’ But when we put aside our human evaluation, then blueberry and dogberry are the same. They are both pretty and just live to continue their lives. So I thought, dogberries are good but for nothing. That’s why I translated Sawaki Roshi’s expression that way: ‘Zazen is good for nothing.’”

We run into trouble when we try to separate this moment from the reward for this moment. We like to time-travel back to better days or forward to events we anticipate--even though we can’t take action in the past or the future. The only thing we have is this moment. The zazen of this moment doesn’t point toward an outcome in some other time, so there can’t be a reward for sitting. There is only the sitting that is happening now, because it’s always now. This moment contains everything there is about zazen and there’s nowhere else to look.

Okumura Roshi has written, “Meaning isn't an absolute, objective truth decided before we're born. Rather, when we begin to do something, like birds flying or fish swimming, help and meaning appear within us and in response to our activity, a meeting of ourselves and all beings.” When we’re sitting, we’re meeting the world with our zazen, and an action and a response arise together. This moment of zazen is complete in itself and isn’t a lead-up to something else, but we don’t understand that until we let go of our ideas about what sitting is about and what we can get from it. Even the idea that zazen is good for nothing is extra. There’s no room for it in a moment of zazen where our only activities are taking the posture, breathing deeply, keeping the eyes open and letting go of thought. As soon as we wonder whether zazen is good for nothing, it isn’t good-for-nothing zazen. We’re no longer focused on what’s happening here and now. We’ve left here-and-now and gone off to a place we’ve invented without realizing that we’re simply immersed in our own ideas.

And, of course, one of the key things about our assumption that zazen must be good for something is that there is a fixed and permanent self to receive the reward for that sitting.  I want zazen to be good for something for me.  That means I'm separate from sitting and from whatever I think arises from sitting.  But if this moment of zazen really does contain everything there is about sitting, then I and sitting and the total dynamic activity of the universe aren't really separate -- and there's nothing I can identify as "me" that gets the prize.  Even if we decide that we're sitting for the good of the world, non-separation pokes holes in that idea too.  We can say "Zazen is good for nothing," but we can also just stop at "Zazen is good."  Good is good enough.  It doesn't need anything else.


Part 1:  The search for meaning

    WHAT IS THE SANSHIN STYLE?

    In this lineage we look to a core group of principles and elements that make up the backbone of our particular style of practice—that in which we ourselves engage and the practice in which we lead others.  These come from the teachings of the Buddha, Dogen Zenji, Uchiyama Roshi and Okumura Roshi.  Learn more here.

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