One summer day, a lay devotee came to Engakuji with an invitation for Soen Roshi saying, “Roshi, here at the temple you always eat what the monks prepare, but on this hot summer day, I would like to treat you to dinner, a small offering that may help you to forget the heat.”
“So, there’s going to be a feast, eh?” replied Soen Roshi, who was a very easygoing man. He gathered up his disciple, Josho, and set out for the restaurant with the layman.
As it was summertime, the bamboo doors separating the individual tatami rooms were left open, permitting guests to see directly into the rooms surrounding their own. Soen Roshi heartily ate and drank his fill and became altogether jolly. He picked up slices of the raw fish and remarked, “Ah, what rare vegetables! Why don’t the monks grow these in our garden?” and generally carried on until he was finally, in fact, down to his loincloth, dancing a naked jig.
The roshi was quite famous, his name known even abroad. Soon there was a ripple moving through the guests in adjacent rooms, “Isn’t that the abbot of Engakuji dancing naked over there?” Josho slipped over and shut the bamboo doors.
Without warning, the roshi seized Josho by the collar and began to scold him, saying, “Hey! Are you criticizing my behavior? Did you shut that door because you think I’m doing something wrong?”
Josho, who had shown a lapse of confidence in his teacher, suddenly found himself being showered with blows.
Zen monks undergo a training that is founded more on actions than on words. But even allowing for that, considerable saké had flowed into this particular situation, and the end did not appear to be in sight even after the roshi had administered five and six strikes. Josho, who had silently and obediently endured the first thrusts, refused to take more. Seizing his teacher’s hands, he spoke up, “Roshi or no roshi, you are not going to get away with any more of this.”
Soen Roshi shook his hands free and went back to his seat. Looking as though nothing whatsoever had happened, he continued drinking until he returned, in quite high spirits, to Engakuji.
Although the matter was settled right then and there, the layman who had invited them to dinner felt horribly anxious about the whole affair. Knowing that the masterdisciple relationship is very rigid, he worried that the roshi would expel Josho when they returned to the temple. Feeling that he simply could not leave the situation hanging, he soon made his way to Engakuji to act as a mediator.
“Thank you so much for doing me the honor of accepting my poor offering today and for showing pleasure in dining with me,” he said to the roshi. “I would also like to add that, although Josho was very discourteous to you at dinner, I am certain he meant no ill will. I beg that you will, for my sake, dismiss the whole affair and forgive him.”
“That’s between him and me,” was the roshi’s terse reply.
Now please understand that the roshi was not saying here that this was a problem between himself and his disciple and that interference was unwelcome. He was saying that he and his student might trade kicks and blows, but between the two of them, there was not a gap of even a single hair. For a Zen practitioner to have his teacher say this about him is something to be appreciated, but for a teacher to have a disciple who allows it to be said is also a wonderful thing. I have heard, by the way, that the devotee who sought to intervene in the relationship withdrew blushing after he heard this short reply.
This story calls to my mind the relationship between sumo wrestlers and the ring. The reason that two giant men, together weighing in at six or seven hundred pounds, can come together and wrestle, slamming all their might into the contest, is that there is a ring under them, which, like the bond between master and disciple, absolutely will not break. If a wrestler, however skillful, were to compete inside a ring drawn on ice, wouldn’t he creep around, throwing all his effort instead into ensuring that the ice did not break?
three types of students
IN ZEN PRACTICE, it is necessary to “break the ego”—there is no way around it. Furthermore, if one is timid about breaking this ego—which strenuously resists being broken—then the case is hopeless. Those who do not clench their teeth and hang in there, despite being slapped and kicked, beaten and driven out, will not hold out in this thing called practice. For this reason, it is said that disciples fall into three categories, based upon their relations with their teacher: The best students are attached by hatred, the mediocre by charity, and the worst by authority.
The best is a first-class disciple, a person of deep virtue. From the outside, such students might even appear hostile. The tougher the master treats them, the more they dig in, resolutely swearing to carry through, to show the master what they can accomplish. Nothing can make such students loosen their bite.
Mediocre disciples are those who are really having a hard time of it and would like to back out but feel they cannot possibly quit, what with the roshi bending over backward to be so kind and supportive. These students are pulled along by the roshi’s affection.
Lastly, the inferior students are those who, observing the roshi’s secular authority, “seek the shade of a big tree.” That is to say, they figure that since they must rely on someone in this world, it had better be someone who appears powerful. This maxim, “Inferior people are attached by authority”—does not stop at the gates of a Zen temple, but holds true for society in general.
All this calls to mind another of my many blunders, one that I made after I’d been practicing for some time. Someone happened to point out one of my shortcomings, and I lit in, “What the hell do you know!” and gave him a thrashing. I was displaying the swollen head that one sometimes suffers partway along in practice, a sort of “rust from training.”
When word of this incident reached my teacher, without delay he called me to his room to inform me that I was dismissed from the temple. The way he said it was, “Pack your bags.”
Pressing my forehead to the floor, I earnestly apologized for over thirty minutes, but my pleas for forgiveness were in vain.
“I didn’t think it over deeply and then decide to do it. It just happened by accident, when I was off guard,” I offered as an excuse.
“If it were something you decided to do after thinking it over deeply, and if you then noticed that you were in the wrong, it probably would not happen again,” he countered, “but if it happened ‘by accident’ when you were ‘off guard,’ it arose from someplace deep in your heart, in your disposition. This being the case, forgiving you is all the more unjustified!”
I had exhausted all means of apology. Finally, I raised up this body, which had been flattened out in prostration like a cringing spider, and looked Roshi straight in the face. His eyes had always looked big, but as he brought his gaze to bear upon me then, in a glare, it was as though his whole face had become just those giant eyeballs. I glared back, not giving an inch.
“There is nowhere for me but next to you. You can throw me out a thousand times or ten thousand times, but I absolutely will not leave your side!” I screamed out.
To my surprise, tears welled up in Roshi’s eyes, and I thought they were going to roll down his cheeks in big drops. Then I heard him say, “I forgive you. Now go on out and get to your work.”
When I remember this, even now, tears come to my own eyes.
The master employs strictness severe enough to arouse even hatred, feeling that the disciple will somehow be able to carry through to the end. No, in fact, the master really administers strictness with a deep prayer that the disciple will be able to carry through. If one of my own disciples today were to tell me, “Even if it kills me, I will never leave your side,” I’m sure that I, too, would cry.
So you can see why I feel grateful when I reflect on the way my teacher, who is no longer alive, behaved toward me. He acted, from start to finish, as though I, a real goodfor-nothing, were the best type of student. If Roshi had assessed me differently, if he had thought, “If I’m not careful, this one may drop out,” he may well have treated me more indulgently.
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br /> “for the disposal of your corpse”
I HOPE THAT SO FAR I have shown how a fellow, myself, who could not do anything properly, was taken in hand and turned into somebody who could at least cook food over a wood fire, make a bath, clean a toilet, and work in a garden. And, in time, I was also taught other things, such as sutra reading and the etiquette appropriate for a priest.
And then one day, after I had been at Daishuin over a year, the roshi said to me, “It is necessary for human beings, especially those who become priests, to have contact with other people. You must not live in isolation. You must form plenty of relationships. While it is, in a sense, sufficient for a disciple to practice alone under one teacher, for the purpose of forming social ties with others, you must go to a training hall.”
There are two types of Zen temples. Monks generally live in one type, as novices, until they graduate from the university. Once graduated, young monks gather in a professional monastery in order to carry on intensive zazen practice. It was decided that I would enter Daitokuji monastery for this latter type of training.
A monk takes with him to the professional training hall a sort of box to carry his robes in. It is traditionally a frugal affair made of thick paper hardened by lacquer, about a size larger than a book satchel. Bowls and chopsticks for eating, a razor and sharpening stone for shaving the head, sutra books, underclothes, and a raincoat are packed into two bundles and tied up with string so that the monk can carry all his worldly belongings on his back. He tucks his robes up at the waist, wraps his legs in gaiters, ties up his straw sandals, dons a wicker hat, and sets out for the monastery.
I was preparing my robe box when Roshi came into the room and asked, “How is it going? Have you tied up your box yet?”
“No, not yet. That is what I was just about to do.”
“Well, it’s good timing then. Bring the lid of your box with you and come into my room,” he instructed.
Wondering what roshi had in mind, I carried the lid into his room. The roshi took the lid from me and pasted three thousand-yen notes to its underside. (In those days, a thousand-yen note still carried some clout!)
“Do you understand the meaning of this?” he asked me after he had done this.
“Is it pocket money?” I started to ask, but checked myself before the words were out, knowing that I would be yelled at if I said something clumsy.
Roshi was already at the advanced age of seventy-one when I showed up begging to be taken in as his disciple. He had warned me then, “I don’t know how much longer I’m going to live. If your teacher dies on you, you might get cut off in the middle of your training. If there is nobody to take care of your financial needs, you are in trouble. You had better look for a younger master.”
“I still have something left from my father. I will not be a financial nuisance to you at all,” I had pleaded.
With this promise, I had been taken under Roshi’s wing as his disciple. In accordance with our agreement, he had never given me a penny for spending money.
Now, I was leaving for the monastery, and I thought that Roshi, even being as steadfast as he is, might be sending me off with some funds for personal expenses. Contrary to my expectations, however, he informed me, “This is nirvana money.”
The figure of Shakyamuni Buddha lying on his side to die is known as the “nirvana figure.”
“You’re heading out now for the training hall where you will lay down your life. If fortune goes against you, you’ll fall out and die by the wayside during training. So that you don’t become a burden to anybody, this money is for the disposal of your corpse.”
Roshi was ordinarily very stern and did not indulge in jokes. To hear him say, with that solemn face, “This money is for the disposal of your corpse,” sent a shudder down my spine. With renewed determination, I vowed to myself, “I will do it!”
I had thought about death before, as a student departing for the war front; however, the death implied in Roshi’s words—“This money is for the disposal of your corpse”— had a completely different meaning. It was not the death of the physical body to which he referred, but the death of my own ego.
No matter how cleverly we might manipulate ideas, coming right down to it, our real motive is to pamper our own precious selves. Unless we practice to overcome the obstinate attachment to looking out for our own dear person first, we cannot open our mind’s eye. This is how the roshi’s words struck me. I felt his words about disposing of my body as a spur in my side. Today, I send my own disciples off to the monastery with a ten-thousand-yen note attached, for the disposal of their corpses.
The next morning, when it was still pitch dark, I went to the roshi’s room to bid him a formal farewell, and then I let myself out the back door and stepped down onto the earthen floor at the entrance way. A novice monk is not allowed to use the front door. When I reached for my straw sandals, I heard Roshi come out behind me. Because Roshi was always one to stand on his dignity and not the type to see novice monks off at the door, it surprised me to see him come out through the kitchen. What’s more, he stepped down onto the dirt floor, squatted at my feet, and made to tie the strings on my straw sandals.
Embarrassed, I drew my foot back and protested, “No, that’s all right. I’ll do it myself.”
“Here, give me your foot,” he urged, pulling my leg toward him. After he had tied the strings on my sandals, he tapped his fingers on the knots and said, “Do not thoughtlessly untie these strings.”
Of course, once I reached the monastery and received permission to enter, I would untie the strings on these straw sandals. What he was saying, I understood, was not to ever lightly loosen the strings of the vow to practice. Again, I trembled under the strength of my own resolution as I sank into a deep bow before Roshi and then set out on foot through the still dark morning for the meditation hall at Daitokuji, in Kyoto.
the meaning of courage
WHEN A MONK aspiring to enter a training monastery reaches its entrance hall, he takes off his wicker hat and places it out of the way in a corner, climbs up the step, and announces himself. In a large Zen temple, there is a small step that gives way to a wide stretch of the vast corridor beyond. Although there may be dozens of monks in training within the heart of the temple, not a sound is heard in the tomblike stillness. Kneeling on that small step, the monk calls out in a long, loud voice, “I beg your favor,” in a form established many long years past.
The aspirant monk feels his own voice sucked up into the depths of the monastery. Presently an answer rises from the distance, “Who is it?” An older monk appears, wearing a cotton robe and looking very experienced. “Where have you come from?” he demands.
The young novice places his hands politely before him on the step, along with papers that he has brought with him. Included in the papers are a record of his personal history, a formal letter requesting entry into the monastery, and a statement in which he pledges to sacrifice his life for practice, all written with brush and ink and enclosed in an envelope.
With great formality, the newcomer states his name and identifies the prefecture, town, and temple from which he comes and priest under whom he apprenticed. He promises that he has come to this place because he would like to assume the mantle of training and hang his bowl, staff, and robe on a hook in this training hall. He then asks that his request be made known.
The applicant is bid to wait as the monk disappears into the back. Returning after some time, the monk categorically does not say, “You are most welcome here. Please step inside.” Instead, without fail, he conveys the verdict that the newcomer’s request is refused. He might say, for example, that the training hall is full at the moment or that, because provisions in the monastery are extremely meager at this time, another monk could not possibly be accommodated.
In my own case, while my present weight is 150 pounds, back then I weighed less than 90 pounds and appeared to be nothing but skin and bones when I first begged entrance into the monastery. I was turned down
with this excuse: “Your health appears to be extremely delicate. You would not be able to keep up with the intense training at this monastery. Please apply at another training hall.”
There are some forty professional training halls throughout the country, but a monk will be rebuffed wherever he goes. Upon rejection, he takes the envelope, which has been thrust back at him, and retires into a corner, out of the way of passersby. He takes up his post on the step, doubled over, forehead down to the ground in earnest supplication until he is granted permission to enter the monastery.
Bodhidharma, an Indian monk who lived in the sixth century C.E. was the twenty-eighth ancestral teacher in line from Shakyamuni Buddha and the founder of the Zen school. It is said that when Hui-ko (known in Japanese as Eka), who was eventually to become the successor to Bodhidharma and the second great Zen ancestor, came to seek the teaching, Bodhidharma utterly ignored him. Hui-ko stood at the gate and refused to move until Bodhidharma turned his way. Day after day, Hui-ko stood his ground. Snow began to fall on the ninth day of December, and it piled up around his knees, but still he did not budge. Finally, Bodhidharma turned to look at Hui-ko and demanded, “What are you doing here?”
Upon hearing the long awaited voice of the master, Huiko, shedding tears of gratitude, declared his intention to practice. Bodhidharma responded with the words, “The incomparable, marvelous way of the buddhas can be attained only by eternally striving, practicing what cannot be practiced, and bearing the unbearable. How can you, with your meager virtue, little wisdom, and with your shallow and arrogant mind, dare aspire to attain the true teaching?”
Thus, Hui-ko was told that with his little insight and few resources and with his inconstant and conceited mind, he was not capable of carrying out the kind of practice necessary to awaken to truth and real peace of mind. In answer to Bodhidharma’s allegations and in proof that his intention to practice was in no way frivolous, the story goes that Hui-ko drew forth a woodman’s hatchet from its sheath at his hip and cut off his left arm at the elbow. It was only when he placed the severed arm before Bodhidharma that he was at long last granted permission to practice under the master.
Novice to Master Page 4