Zen Masters of Japan. Richard Bryan McDaniel
Ogino Dokuon
Imakita Kosen
Soyen Shaku
Epilogue in Chicago
Acknowledgments
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Stories
List of Illustrations
Preface
This is the second of three volumes in which I gather together the Zen stories of China, Japan, and North America. As I explained in the Preface to Zen Masters of China: The First Step East, it was these stories that originally intrigued me and drew me to the practice of Zen.
Consider, for example, this brief Chinese tale:
A new student came to work with the 9th century Chinese master, Zhaozhou Congshen. He presented himself, saying, “I have just entered the monastery, and I beg you to accept me as a disciple and teach me.”
Zhaozhou asked him, “Have you had anything to eat yet?”
“Yes, I have. Thank you.”
“Then you had better wash your bowl,” Zhaozhou told him. And we are informed that upon hearing these words, the new monk attained enlightenment or awakening.
There is a comparable Japanese tale of a nun, named Chiyono, who came to awakening when the bottom broke from the pail she was carrying, and the moon was no longer reflected in the water.
The obscurity of these stories, when I first encountered them, was what made them so compelling. They were unlike anything with which I was familiar in the realm of religious literature. The stories made no reference to a deity or to morality. There were no miraculous events. Indeed, the events described—washing bowls, pails breaking—were of the most commonplace sort.
I pointed out in that earlier Preface that the
—lore of religion begins in myth, passes through legend, and only slowly comes to verifiable historical narrative. One sees this pattern in the dominant religious traditions of the West. First there are the tales of the Bible, followed by the legends of Christian saints and Jewish folklore. And only in the later centuries do we have what might be considered objectively accurate information.
The stories of Zen likewise begin with the anecdotes of 6th century China, pass through the legends of the Tang and Song Dynasties as well as of Japan, and continue in the records of the Zen teachers of more recent centuries, including those pioneers who brought the tradition to the world outside of Asia.
The spread of the teaching has been steadily eastward. From China, various schools of Buddhism, including Chan, spread to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan (where it was called Zen). While over time the Chan School declined in China, it continued to flourish in Japan where it had its fullest flowering. Finally, at the end of the 19th century, Zen took its longest stride east, across the Pacific Ocean to the shores of North America. (1)
The format of this volume differs in some significant ways from that of the first. To begin with, the time frame considered is much broader, and consequently I have made no attempt to be as inclusive as I was in the book on China. Instead, I focus on a select group of Zen Masters who are recognized for the impact they had on the development of the tradition in Japan. There may well have been other masters and students whose spiritual attainments equaled or surpassed those of the individuals I include in this collection, but these are the figures whose lives, for one reason or another, achieved legendary status.
Because there is more biographical information available about these masters, we have a clearer understanding of them