Nomon Tim offers a reflection on his experience being on pilgrimage in Japan with members of the sangha, and his return, and reminds us it is always "thus."  Nomon also shares some photos and stories from the journey at the end of his talk.

(NOTE: The recording for this talk was started late.)

Stream audio:

Tim's talk notes:

Japan, Dōgen, Culture, Ruth Fuller Sasaki

The other morning I had an appointment at our Credit Union at 9am. This turns out to be when they opened so when I arrived a little before 9, I had to wait for them to open. A woman came out and unlocked the door, not interacting at all with me or the other guy there waiting.

I had a moment of disbelief because a few days earlier I'd been in Japan and in Japan there is no way she wouldn't have come all the way outside, bowed to us and said "ohiyo gozaimasu!" - good morning. I felt a little judgement arise: here's a cold, unwelcoming person. Not polite anyway. At least she could have smiled and said "good morning."

And then when I went inside it turns out the same woman who'd unlocked the door was my notary - I had a document to get notarized. Cheerful, friendly, warm and welcoming in that encounter.

And I realized that I was falling into a kind of dualism and judgment. Judging one culture on the basis of another. Japanese culture is Japanese culture. American culture is American culture. Sure some people in America would have said good morning on unlocking the business door but plenty wouldn't have. But when it's time to interact with you, perfectly friendly.

Our way is to appreciate things just as they are.

And what's funny about our usual surroundings, and our usual mind while we're doing our usual things and going about our usual day is that we have don't really appreciate fully the magic and mystery and intricacy of each moment. We don't even notice what's happening half the time.

So it's helpful to us to go to the other side of the world. Or to come to the zendo in the church basement and do things differently for an evening. Or to log into Zoom and sit quietly with others in the morning for 30 minutes. These changes in routine and activity help us appreciate the depth of our activity.

They help us with beginner's mind.

Dōgen's Zen is all about this too. Deeply appreciating what is and he deliberately resists any tendency we might have to try to button hole or pigeon hole or any kind of putting things in boxes or holes. The world is vast and mysterious, and precious. Sometimes it's violent and harmful, yes, and that's a surprising mystery of it's own even if horrible. Sometimes, much more often actually or we wouldn't still be here, it's kind and nurturing. Sometimes it seems neutral and ordinary but that's probably because we aren't paying attention.

What helps you pay attention. Deeply? Fully?

I've been feeling more comfortable diving into Dōgen's masterwork Shobogenzo lately. As you probably know a group of our sangha meets weekly to read from this with Shudo Chris's support. Here's a passage from the chapter called  Hotsu Bodai Shin - Arousing the Aspiration for the Unsurpassable or Bringing Forth the Mind of Bodhi. It's chapter 69 in the Tanahashi translation or chapter 63 in the 75-chapter Shobogenzo that Dogen actually arranged.

Thusness is the body and mind right now. Arouse the aspiration with this body and mind. Do not avoid stepping on water and stepping on stones. To take up just one blade of grass and create a sixteen-foot golden body, or to take up a particle of dust and build a stupa shrine of an ancient buddha, is arousing of the aspiration for enlightenment. It is to see buddha and hear buddha. It is to see dharma and hear dharma. It is to become buddha and practice buddha.

In a way you can dive into this 1000+ page masterwork and pick out any one paragraph and study it, or give a whole Dharma talk on it.  Let's take this apart briefly:

Thusness is the body and mind right now.

Thusness, or suchness, is this deep sense of things-as-they are. It's naturally appreciation, depth, mystery, and beginner's mind without us trying to make our mind do something with anything. He says our body and mind nature is this.

 Arouse the aspiration with this body and mind.

We're naturally this way and we need to arouse our aspiration - our bodhichitta or Buddha mind - that's the "bodai shin" in his title.  This is practice-enlightenment. The natural state of things is awake and we need to practice this awakeness or at least turning towards it.

To take up just one blade of grass and create a sixteen-foot golden body, or to take up a particle of dust and build a stupa shrine of an ancient buddha, is arousing of the aspiration for enlightenment.

So it's active. In a blade of grass or a spec of dust, if we really engage with it, we experience Buddha. And that engagement with the world - whatever form it takes - is this arousing aspiration. Maybe it looks like going to a temple in Japan, maybe it looks like going to work, or calling your mother.

It is to see buddha and hear buddha. It is to see dharma and hear dharma. It is to become buddha and practice buddha. 

So that's pretty clear. Engage.

When Zen Buddhism started emerging in the awareness of folks in our dominant anglo-American culture some people felt a strong draw to it. Their aspiration took on a deep passion. One of the highlights of our Japan trip for me was following in the footsteps of one such person. A woman named Ruth Fuller Sasaki.

My colleague James Ford tells her story very succinctly in his blog called Monkey Mind.

Ruth Fuller was born in Chicago on the 31st of October, 1892. Her first marriage - the Fullers were the Fuller Brush people, a hugely successful cleaning supplies business - made her wealthy, and freed her to pursue wherever her heart took her. As such she took an early interest in matters Eastern. She studied for a time with the early Western convert yogi, Pierre Bernard. She also studied Sanskrit and Indian philosophy at the University of Chicago.

Critically, in 1930 Ruth went to Japan where she met D. T. Suzuki. He gave her basic instructions in Zen meditation as well as a copy of his book Essays in Zen Buddhism (presumably the first series). By her second trip she was sitting regularly at Nanzenji a Rinzai Zen temple.

She was a principal supporter of the Buddhist Society of America, and worked closely with its leader the remarkable lay Rinzai master Sokei-an Shigetsu Sasaki. Among the many interesting footnotes regarding these years, was that she seems to be the person who told the master that Westerners could indeed sit crosslegged on the floor. And, she would be a significant figure in Alan Watts‘ intellectual and spiritual evolution. He would in fact go on to have a brief if disastrous marriage with her daughter.

In 1944, now widowed, Ruth and Sokei-an married. However, he died within a year. In 1945 the Society renamed itself the First Zen Institute of America. At the war’s end, Ruth moved to Japan. There she became a student of Zuigan Goto Roshi, Sokei-an’s dharma sibling.

She would remain in Japan for the rest of her life. Ruth was ordained a priest at Daitokuji, and installed as head of a sub-temple, Ryosen-an. It appears she is the first Westerner as well as the first Western woman to be ordained a Rinzai priest and to be installed as head of a sub-temple.

But, in fact her principal work was leading a team of translators that thanks to her financial situation she was able to bring together. Among them were Japanese scholars Iriya Yoshitaka, Kanaseiki Hisao, and Yanagida Seizan. She also recruited the Americans Burton Watson, Philip Yampolsky, and Gary Snyder. As another footnote, she appears to have underwritten Snyder’s first trip to Japan.

The team was productive, producing some critical Zen texts and commentaries in English. My understanding is that she could be a harsh taskmaster. And, there is an ugly account of her wrongly accusing Burton Watson of taking their collaborative work and publishing it on his own. But, on balance the proof of the pudding is the amazing work that came out of those fruitful years.

These included, as listed at Wikipedia, “Zen: A Religion, Zen: A Method for Religious Awakening, Rinzai Zen Study for Foreigners in Japan, The First Zen Institute of America in Japan, Ryosen-an Zendo Practice, and The Wooden Fish: Basic Sutras and Gathas of Rinzai Zen.” In addition to these her translations, the Record of Linji, and the Recorded Sayings of Layman P’ang are considered classics.

Probably her most important work, done with Isshu Miura was Zen Dust: The History of the Koan and Koan Study in Rinzai (Linji) Zen. It was published by the First Zen Institute in 1966 and then in 1967 made available through Harcourt, Brace & world. This was an amazing book.

For many years finding a copy of this critical book for anyone interested in koan study was a major project for the English speaking Zen practitioner. My spouse spent a small fortune trying to find a copy to give to me for a birthday gift. A gift I remain forever grateful for.

However, finally, a second edition is now available. It remains the monumental introduction to Koan Zen for the English speaker. My own small effort to introduce the koan and koan introspection would not have been possible without this pioneering work.

Ruth Fuller Sasaki died from a heart-attack on the 24th of October, 1967.

What James didn't mention was her group in Japan also worked on a translation of a central work in Rinzai Zen - the Rinzai Roku - the "record of Rinzai"- the founding teacher of that school, who was actually a Chinese Chan teacher called Linji in Chinese, Rinzai is the Japanese pronunciation of this name.

And they went very deep on that project. Digging into every character of the book, translating it six ways form Sunday, looking up other places that character or phrase or quotation was used in Zen literature, when they could figure out there was a quotation which isn't so easy to do in a block of Chinese character - this is much easier to do with computers now. I remember reading somewhere they had thousands of index cards cross referencing everything.

It was so monumental they never really finished it.

And then 4 or 5 years after Ruth Fuller Sasaki died an American named Tom Kirschner fell in love with Japanese culture and with Zen and moved to Japan for university and became a monk. He's one of the few Americans to complete the full Rinzai monastic training including all of the koan study they do and he was at for years at different training monasteries in Kyoto. 5 years here, 3 years there. Now he's in his 70's I think.

Anyway one of the places he ended up living for a time was in a tea house in the next temple over from Ruth Fuller Sasaki's Ryosen-an and found out about this unfinished translation.

So he spent 10 years editing it and getting it out to publication. He says he did lots of other things as well during those years, it wasn't a full time thing, but he kept at it. My friend Koshin at Puget Sound Zen through the American Rinzai community connected with Tom and helped me, and then us on our pilgrimage connect with him and he kindly gave us a tour of the temple he's living at now called Tenryū-ji and then we took the bus across town to Ruth's old temple which is now sitting empty as knows the abbot of the neighboring temple that takes care of it from back when.

Here are a few pictures and a bit more of the story.

Bodhi mind arises and manifests in so many ways. Releasing from dualism about one culture being better than another on a rainy day outside a bank, training as a monk, working hard on a translation project with a team, lots of ways.

Here's that passage from Dōgen's Bringing Forth the Mind of Bodhi again:

Thusness is the body and mind right now. Arouse the aspiration with this body and mind. Do not avoid stepping on water and stepping on stones. To take up just one blade of grass and create a sixteen-foot golden body, or to take up a particle of dust and build a stupa shrine of an ancient buddha, is arousing of the aspiration for enlightenment. It is to see buddha and hear buddha. It is to see dharma and hear dharma. It is to become buddha and practice buddha.

Small groups if time: what helps you tune into your life fully, what aspiration arises when you do?