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ANTAIJI LIFE

9/22/2020

 
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Sanshin looks to Antaiji in Hyogo, Japan, as the source of much of its practice style.  Founder and abbot Shohaku Okumura was ordained there on December 8, 1970 by his teacher Kosho Uchiyama and he practiced there until Uchiyama Roshi retired in 1975.

Antaiji was founded in 1921 by Oka Sotan as a place for scholars to study the Shobogenzo. At that time it was located in northern Kyoto, and many leading scholars studied there.  It was vacated during World War II until Sawaki Kōdō and Uchiyama Kōshō moved there in 1949 to create a place for the pure and simple practice of sitting zazen.  As Antaiji became more well known in Japan and abroad in the late sixties, practitioners started to gather there -- but the increasing number of visitors and the growth of the surrounding community made quiet practice difficult.  Abbot Watanabe Kōhō decided to move Antaiji to its present location in the peaceful mountains of northern Hyogo to offer a practice experience that returned Zen to the self sufficiency of its Chinese roots.

Today, Antaiji is a temple devoted to Zen practice as a natural expression of life.  The days consist of zazen, study and hard physical labor, which serves to support the practice.  Zazen and work are not simply practiced as one part of life; rather, all 24 hours of daily life itself are to be the manifestation of Zen.  Antaiji has no other special practices, teachings, meditation techniques, insights or spiritual guidance to offer.  Nor is it a place to get in touch with the mystery of the East, have occult experiences or just have a taste of Japanese culture.  It's a place where one can create one's own life as bodhisattva practice.  Although longer-term practitioners stay for three years or more, living harmoniously with the others in the temple, the responsibility for practice still lies solely with oneself.

What is most important is not to use the buddha way for one's own purposes, but instead to give up one's own ideas and throw oneself completely into the practice of the way.  Thus it's important be clear about the basis of practice and the motivation to be at Antaiji.  Expecting anything other than what life at this precise moment has to offer will invariably result in disappointment.  "Make sure you know why you want to come here – do not fool yourself or others."

At Antaiji, Zen is practiced without any additions or modifications.  This means that zazen is practiced solely for the purpose of zazen.  "Zazen will not get you anywhere.  Zazen without gain, zazen which is one with enlightenment, is what is put into practice here."

Each single day as well as the life all year round is centered on zazen and life is simple and pure.  Antaiji has no parishioners and there are minimal Buddhist services.  Instead, its self-sufficient life involves a lot of work in the fields and forests.  Practice is based on the Zen saying “A day without work is a day without food.”  Work and food are directly related, with all actions both rooted in and aimed at the one force that keeps us alive.

Visitors are expected to perform the same activities as the monks, mainly cultivating the farmland and zazen.  Agricultural work forms a substantial part of the daily routine.  Antaiji possesses 50 hectares of land, on which it grows its own vegetables and rice, and the cooking is done with wood, which has to be carried from the surrounding mountains, and cut and chopped by the practitioners themselves.

The self-sufficient life must not be an ideal – a product of the brain – but a practice which is manifested in the basic attitude of one's actions in every day life.  Thus Antaiji practitioners feel responsible for causing an inner revolution for themselves, covered with sweat and dirt in summer, persevering in the snow of winter.  This is no form of asceticism, but the plain, original form of Zen life, which requires long years of practice. However, self sufficiency is not a goal in itself – it only serves to support the practice of zazen.

Read more about Antaiji on its website.

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KODO SAWAKI'S NO-FRILLS ZAZEN

9/8/2020

 
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in an excerpt from his new book, Discovering the True Self: Kodo Sawaki's Art of Zen Meditation, Arthur Braverman explains his focus on Sawaki Roshi's sitting practice:

I am limiting my study of Kodo Sawaki to his emphasis on zazen. because I feel that the practice he embraced more than any other is expressed in his unique pronouncement, "All of Buddhism is a footnote to zazen."  I also feel that the practice saved him from himself.  Like his trips to the hot baths when he was worn out from his strenuous teaching schedule at Daijiji, zazen is what brought him back to the quiet space in his mind that his traveling around the country, lecturing, and running retreats took from him.

One more thing that brought me to the conclusion that zazen or Zen meditation should be the focus of the book goes back to when I went to Japan to study Zen.  Like most of the foreigners I met at and around Antaiji from 1969 until I left in 1977, I had come to temples in Japan to study meditation.  For most of us, the study of Buddhism was second to the practice of Zen meditation.  There were some, of course, who wanted to be members of the club, so to speak.  But they were the exceptions.  Kosho Uchiyama, the abbot of Antaiji, never encouraged any of the foreigners to become ordained, though a few did.  The abbot was primarily interested in the foreigners that came to Antaiji to learn his teacher's form of zazen and hopefully take that understanding back to their countries.

For his Japanese disciples, Uchiyama realized that if they were to teach Sawaki's form of zazen, the best way was to become priests of their own temples, and that required credentials from a recognized teacher, i.e., to be ordained as monks.  Before he retired from Antaiji, Uchiyama had his monks go to certified Soto Zen training temples  Because of its unique situation, having been opened for students to practice zazen, because it had no parish, and because of Sawaki's unique approach to simple meditation, Antaiji never became an official training temple.  It did, however, become a hub for both monks and laypersons who wanted to study and practice zazen with no frills attached. (71)

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[Sawaki] hadn't run off to Eiheiji because of the teaching of its founder.  In fact, he knew nothing of the teaching of Dogen.  He picked Eiheiji because it was far enough away from Ishinden that his adoptive parents wouldn't be able to find him and bring him back home.

When he did study Dogen, the ancient master's insistence on living in poverty, stress on the unity of practice and enlightenment in zazen, and attention to detail resonated so much with his own understanding that it felt like Dogen was speaking directly to him.

While he was very caring to his disciples, his insistence on the principles Dogen taught, and on the long hours of zazen, surprisingly made him a kind of outsider to the general Zen community.  This was compounded by his habit of denigrating monks who took advantage of their positions in the hierarchy of the Zen community to live comfortably and treat their temples as--what he called--Zen businesses.

Sawaki never charged money for his talks or retreats (though he was given donations) and he printed pamphlets of the texts he used for his talks with his own money and gave them to his audience free of charge.  He also sponsored students who wanted to study at Komazawa University but who didn't have the money for tuition.

Setting an example as a monk living in poverty at a time when Japan was slowly becoming an affluent nation did not endear Sawaki to much of the twentieth-century Zen world.  But to a small group of devotees who respected his authenticity and his attempt to live like the Zen monks of antiquity, it earned him great respect.  (242-243)

    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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