ANTAIJI --Great Peace

Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, founder of the San Francisco Zen Center, was a remarkable man by any measure. Short in stature, he had a nuclear fire of light within that dazzled everyone who met him. It was both subtle and powerful. His eyes laughed at first sight, even when dying I've been told. Suzuki's discernment was as equally dazzling. Somehow he managed to bring together at the Zen Center the most disperate group of individuals imaginable.

His choice of dharma heir, Richard Baker, was probably, to the outsider like myself, confusing. But, Suzuki knew exactly what he was doing--of course he did. Baker came to the Zen Center armed with an MBA from the ivy league and a business huckster's acumen for success. I liked Baker's then wife, Ginney, who seemed swept up into the Zen world against her better instincts. We met briefly once in Kyoto although she would not remember the occasion. Richard Baker, I grossly misjudged as I did most formal Center types whose practice impressed me then as pompous and form oriented--all black robes, bald heads, and 'zabutons'(meditation cushions)

In retrospect, that formal stiffness was probably needed to get Soto Zen Buddhism firmly established in America. Baker, it once seemed to me, was probably the only one at the Zen Center who didn't have that cult-like beatific smile which, to my immature, judgemental mind then, was such a turn off and maddeningly irritating. (Ok I confess it still irritates me).  He was, if nothing else, fully grounded in the real world and his ultimate contribution to the establishment of Zen practice in America is a substantial legacy.

However, Baker Roshi had a lot to confront besides priestly duties and the demands/complexities of corporate religious management. American purtianism was never so manifest as at the monastic Zen Center. I think that the Center's mountain retreat at Tasaraja was a bit more 'natural' in its practice from what I've heard.

Baker was undaunting, assertive, and fearless as he plunged head first into the world of conservative Japanese Buddhism. His often misbegotten adventures in Japan soon became the source of legend, much like that of the wild Alan Watts before him.  Like I say, although I didn't particularly warm to Baker, it was immeasurably funny when he sneezed and blew a cloud of green powered tea over the black robes at a formal Daitukuji tea; or when he tried to stand after a long formal sitting, his legs wouldn't work and his black robe went, 'rippa,' with dead weight to the muffled, hilarity of his Japanese, brother monks. I had been in that place too, and if you had experienced it, well it would have seemed funny. Baker, the 'gaijin' (foreign) monk, left a lasting impression on his Buddhist peers.

Baker, the priest, from what I hear, ultimately suffered the wrath of the American puritan strain running like toxic judgement through monastic life in America. I should know I was just as stupid with judgement. Baker's indiscretions bounced him out and I understand he went to New Mexico and opened a new zen center. What ever Baker's crimes were I will choose to think of him as a modern day Ikkyu (1394-1481) full of passion and bravado. Ikkyu , a famous abbot at Daitokuji in Kyoto, wrote some of the most beautiful love poems in the Japanese language.  More peace to Baker Roshi, where ever he is.

But, all the intrigues and politics of the San Francisco Zen Center never touched my life except indirectly. My relationship with Suzuki was confined to a meditation hall erected in a garage in the North Bay suburbs. Communicating with Suzuki directly in simple surroundings without the flagship of state and its courtiers was a remarkable blessing looking back on it after all these many decades. Why he even bothered with a pretentious, little dharma snot like me only confirms that profound Buddhist compassion which motivated his every breath.

I wanted to study zazen in Japan and asked Suzuki Roshi for help and he gave it. Suzuki did not send me to Eiheiji, the head monastic center in Japan for Soto studies, but to a funky, little run down training temple in the mountains outside of Kyoto into the enlightened embrace of Antaiji and its abbot Uchiyama Kosho. Suzuki's discernment in these matters was perfection.

For me Antaiji was perfection and Uchiyam became the guide of my spiritual life even to this day. Others, who came later from the Zen center, arrived with black robes, bald heads and zabutons. They were often disappointed with Antaiji and Uchiyama. Many left early, looking hungrily for the zen masters of their imagination--like hungry ghosts licking water from the sweat of the living. Many of them took years to realize the subtlity of Antaiji, its enlightened abbot and the misfortune of their impatience.

The year was 1967, Spring. I arrived at the entrance of Anjaiji on the eve of my 21th birthday and the beginning of that month's sesshin (an intensive retreat). I remember clearly walking down a long well-swept dirt road, past the main gate to a smaller gate at the end of the road. Green bamboo forest bordered either side of the road. like many old roads and trails it had worn itself below the level of the land surrounding it.

With a backpack an introduction from Suzuki Roshi I presented myself at the gate with a limited command of Japanese. At that age it never occured to me that such an act was a tad bit audacious. Although there were foreigners living in that neighborhood called Gentaku I was the first to apply as a monk at Anjaiji.

Then to my delight, a monk came out and spoke in perfect American english to welcome me. Ryuho San was to become a friend and my communication link with Antaiji's abbot, Roshi Uchiyama Kosho. A year later he took me to the island of Kyushu to meet his father, a famous zen calligrapher and priest. It was there that I experienced the tradition of the 'mondo', wherein a master asks his disciple a question and depending on the answer the master discerns the quality of 'mind' in his/her pupil.

Ryuho's father asked me, "Why do you 'gaijin' (foreigners) study Zen?" I answered, "Well, I don't know about other 'gaijin', but I have no reason." It was then that the old man called for his ink and paper and wrote my name, the date, and "has no Reason." I have the scroll to this day. Perhaps it was one of those moments when innocence speaking its nature was unaware, but spoke the truth. Or, it was mostly likely, the impulse of a considerably wise and generous old priest, who gifted a neophyte with hope.

Life at Antaiji then was like a Tolstoy heaven, simple, agrarian daily life infused with great conscious spirit. Five or so hours of meditation a day certainly helped. And, once a month, a week long sesshin of fourteen hours a day deepened practice considerably.

Antaiji was an exceptional place even by Japanese standards. First its history was unusual. Uchiyama's teacher was Kodo Sawaki, and excentric priest, brilliant scholar and foremost calligrapher of his day, who was known for much of his adult life as "Homeless Kodo." Until he was advised to settle at Antaiji, he had wandered around Japan speaking and lecturing on the dharma and the teachings of Soto's founder, Dogen Zenji (1200-1253).

Sawaki settled at Antaiji probably on the advice of powerful patrons who feared for his life. Sawaki was Japan's foremost pacifist, anti war voices when the Japanese government under a surge of Emperor worship was invading China and preparing for the establishment of empire in the Pacific. It was then that a young Uchiyama came to Sawaki as a disciple and after Sawaki's death became the  abbot of Antaiji.

One of Uchiyama's peers that I met was Motoko Ikebe, who was also one of his disciples. She lived in a remote mountain village in very humble circumstances supporting herself by Chinese fortune telling. She came once to Antaiji for a visit and gifted the monks, there were six or seven of us then, by telling each his fortune. Only three of us took her offer. The rest thought she was a 'dobaba' (old crazy woman).

She took my hand and scrutinized it very carefully then said, "You will have three loves in your life. You will marry , but have no children. It will end badly. Your second love will be the passion of a lifetime, but will die. Your third love will be the friend and companion you have always sought."

Then she said, "You 'may' have a long life, but there is much death here and I'm not sure how long." She was right--to the smallest detail. But, then I was 21, a Buddhist monk living in a monestary in Kyoto Japan and thought, "Maybe she is a 'dobaba.' As I implied in the beginning I am a 'dumb nuts' and would probably not recognize the Buddha  if I stumbled over him/her. Well, that's not true. Recognizing the Buddha is only the beginning.

The other Uchiyama peer and disciple that I practically adored was Joshin San, an elderly nun with quite a history and an abbot in her own right. She lived in retirement in a small little hut near the main gate and cooked during the sesshin periods. It was the one time of the month when the food was absolutely delicious. Joshin was a tiny lady with a missing finger joint.

Back, a long time ago, so it was rumored, she had cut it off to show her desire to study Zen. Sounds weird today and as far as I know only 'yakuza' criminals do it now for entirely different reasons. Joshin also made by hand my first 'kesa' (Buddhist garment) and zabuton--both of which have followed me along over the years as touch stones to the greater gifts of the intangible. Joshin Kasai assisted in the transmission of 'nyoho-e' sewing (sewing of Buddhist religious garments in which each stitch is a  mantra) and transmitted, most notably that ancient tradition to a disciple of Suzuki's, Zenchi Blanche Hartman.

Compared to the picture books of the great, ancient and beautiful Buddhist temple complexes in Japan, Antaiji was almost laughingly frumpy. Its living quarters were unheated. It had no modern plumbing. Water was pumped at well. Its old clay walls were often dillapidated and it was totally oblivious to the elegant culture that characterized its more illustrious neighbors like Daitokuji or Koetsuji.

Antaiji did have a spledid view though and it looked down over soft undulating hills and modest neighborhoods across the end of the Kyoto plain and across the valley to the majestic Mt. Hiei. During Japan's long turbulant history Mt. Hiei's warrior Tendai monks would swoop down and wreck havoic on the Emperor's capital. When I lived at Antaiji it was the back prop for our back lot softball games and late at night a visionary, far off distance for an outdoors meditation.

One of the singular memories in a lifetime of Japan experience was slipping out to that place on a frosty moonlite New Year's eve and sitting zazen while Japan's great bells tolled out their sonorous laments on the last day of the year. White and blue and then the snow began to fall.

Antaiji's gone now--- completely gone from Gentaku. A generous land developer bought the property and moved all to Northern Japan where it was reconstructed piece by piece and thrives again I've been told. Now the Gentaku neighborhood is filled with the villas of the rich and is discreetly elegant.

In 1967 it was a different story. Antaiji's inhabitant monks were unusual in that they came from secular society and were not from inherited priestly families. To choose a monk's life in isolation from family or career was considered extremely excentric. Thus, Antaiji's crew were very interesting.

There was no endowed money to speak of to support the monestary. Some small donations came in and Uchiyama's speaking engagements or book royalities kept the place going. Also, the tradition of 'takuhatsu' street begging by monks was frequent. As far as I know Antaiji was the only temple in Koyto to do such mendicant prowling.

I loved 'takuhatsu'. It occupied several days a month and we wandered all over the beautiful Kyoto valley, from side to side and back again. Wearing great straw hats that covered our heads we wandered along in a short line from place to place, chanting sutras, and opening our bags to the generous portions of rice and coins from housewives and their children. Only the little ones could tell I was a foreigner from the shorter advantage point. They would scream 'gaijin, gaijin' and their mothers would try with the greatest discretion, after dropping something, to take a peek up at me. They would also have seen the sutra pasted inside the straw hat to keep me on clue.

In 1967 Japan was just beginning the great surge in economic development following its post war depression. There were foreigners in the larger cities and certainly some in Kyoto. But, in Kyoto foreigners were still somewhat unusual and definately rare as Buddhist monks. Those 'gaijin' that did find their way to Kyoto were all of the uncommon lot. Many settled in the Takagami, Gentaku area where Antaiji was located because it was cheap and near the Rinzai Zen complex of Daitokuji, where centers of Zen practice had been opened to foreigners. Most prominent was Ryokoin and its abbot Kobori Nanrei.

Among the foreigners that haunted Ryokoin and drove Kobori nuts was Jon Covell, a magnificant, excentric woman who considered herself the incarnation of Ikkyu and said so in no uncertain terms to any abbot that might get in her way. In truth it can be said that most of Daitokuji gave her plenty of space. Jon, was the first woman in America to gather to her ample bossom a Ph.D in Japanese art history--from Columbia I think. Some years later she became my master's thesis director at the East West Center at the University of Hawaii. Also during her tenure there she brought over Kobori Nanrei to lecture and demonstrate caligraphy in concert with a zen painting exhibition to celebrate the inaugration of the first Hawiian Japanese president of the University.

Kobori was a wonderful experience for the East West Center and the students of the University. Dressed in a cap and slippers made by his mother from pounded Mulberry cocoons he would dip his mop sized brush in black sumi ink and dash forward like a sprinter to execute several zen calligraphies. To my great astonishment he gave me one nearly six feet in length that reads, "Mei Reiki Reiki," 'great light exploding'. Of the few tattered remains of the past that calligraphy still remains. It should probably go to one of Kobori's disciples who have established his teaching in a community in the States.

Great women abound in the traditions of Rinzai and Soto Zen. For a more thorough investigation check out http://www.mtsource.org/chants/Stories_of_Women_Ancestors.html and you will find a few of the women mentioned here.

Most well known perhaps was Ruth Fuller Sasaki who died the year I arrived in Japan. She was a dynamo, who restored the sub temple of Ryosen-an at Daitokuji and created a substantial library that drew foreigners from all over the globe to study. It is through her considerable accomplishments that the wealth of knowledge available at Daitokuji became open to foreign students.

Another formidable presence was the wife of Lama Govinda, a German Tibetian Buddhist Lama, who stayed briefly at Ryosen-an. Her bull dog-like protection of her other worldly spouse was touching if not daunting.

Mostly Daitokuji attracted serious wanderers to Gentaku, like Gary Snyder, the Chinese scholar and poet whose: "Cold Moutain Poems" emmulate those of its T'ang Dynasty Zen predecessors. I was introduced to Snyder once down at his house in Gentaku. All I remember was being awe struck by one of my beat heroes and the strange sumi ink paintings of cavorting lions on the 'fusuma' doors in his livingroom, which I was later told were the inspiration of a long 'sake' evening.

Later, a more notable event occured when a strange bearded man dressed in Indian clothing and a sign board around his neck came to visit Snyder for a brief spell. He had taken a vow of silence, having finally met his guru in India and changed his name from Dr. Alpert to Baba Ram Das. From this point of view, after all these long years, Baba Ram Das still remains one of the brightest flowers to emerge from American twentieth century spiritual movements. Although I am told a series of strokes have left him changed, his brilliant light still endures.

Among those 'gaijin' who actually attended zazen at Antaiji, Robert and Judith Hurley were the most generous outside influences on my stay there. On occasion they would invite me over for homecooked meals and long talks. Robert, who once taught at Columbia, found occupation teaching at Doshisha University while both he and Judy sought out Zen teachers and a life of practice. Robert used to call me "Owl".

Some time later while I was wandering around India he died of a terrible, debilitating and mysterious illness. Still, years later I would meet Judy once again when she sheparded students from The University of Colorado to a study year in Japan. She was so successful that none of the students returned to the University and now some in their maturing years have become young masters at ancient Japanese arts.

Life at Antaiji was masterfully simple. Except for Uchiyama's lectures on Dogen's "Shobogenzo" and "Bendowa" life revolved around simple 'sitting'--that was it. Just sitting. It was just so simple and uncomplicated that many folks, particularly from the Zen Center, couldn't see it and left disapointed. Arthur Braverman, who later wrote, "Living And Dying In Zazen: Five Zen Masters Of Modern Japan," was one of those. To his great credit he did eventually did understand and has writen a great book on his experiences.

Another student of Uchiyama's, and probably among his most brilliant foreign disciples, is Carl Bieldefedlt, a Dogen scholar who went on to teach and publish at U.C. Berkley and then Stanford. Back then Dr. Bieldefedlt and his wonderful wife Fumiko were fellow travelers and I imagine they still are.

Arthur Braverman writes, "So, with all the confusion about Uchiyama the man--why he didn't act as I imagined Zen Masters to act--there was a teaching of zazen to this day I hold in the highest regard, a zazen that doesn't look for special feelings or states, a zazen teaches you to sit through it all, the ups and downs, the fears and anxieties and joys."

Sitting across from Uchiyama at his low table and being given his first  pouring of 'sencha' tea was the greatest gift of all. His burning, compassionate eyes peering at you from a frail body only underlined the enormity of his strength . Uchiyama was the perfect embodiment of the ten Ox herding pictures of Zen practice--the very last one.  (http://www.sacred-texts.com/bud/mzb/oxherd.htm)  He was invisible to almost everyone in the hustle bustle market place--as are most Buddhas and Bodhisattvas.

Uchiyama gave me the name 'Hoto Zengen' roughly translated as 'Not Two'. That certainly was precient. I'm still looking at myself from across both sides. The Chinese translation of my last name on the zabuton Joshin made me reads, 'Dancing Naked Cloud.' That too was precient---then.

By Japanese standards I am now an old man telling stories by the roadside. By the content of posted blog enteries on this site you can tell that my passion, limited wisdom, and long years of battle and collection are like that first ox herding picture, where the journey has still just begun. Antaiji,like deeper wisdom, now seems a tale from Brigadoone.

The world seems so hoplessly corrupt these days and American culture so alien that I must occasionally ask myself, as did my father before me, if perhaps I've lived too long. Then I realize that some of us just carry a load of karma so that some others might not have too. Now if that isn't the essence of conceit, what is?

If any wisdom has evolved out of this journey its the understanding that even the little work of would-be Bodhisattvas makes a huge difference in the 'pass it along'. In questionable health and inhabiting a form falling apart at the seams it often occurs to me that when the time comes all the 'stuff' will be just dross and departure will occur through that unobstructed opening Suzuki and Uchiyama made possible so long ago.

Post Script: If anyone has the address of the new Antaiji and its abbot please send it along, because I'ld like to send my 'kesa' there and its lineage papers.