ZEN MESTEREK ZEN MASTERS
« Zen főoldal
« vissza a Terebess Online nyitólapjára

両忘庵釈宗活 Ryōbō-an Shaku Sōkatsu (1870-1954)
Shaku Sokatsu, Tetsuo Sokatsu, Tetsu'o Sokatsu, Sekibutsu Koji

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetsuo_S%C5%8Dkatsu

ON SOKATSU SHAKU ROSHI
by Shigetsu Sasaki Roshi (1882-1945)
Wind Bell, Fall 1969, Vol. VIII, Nos. 1-2. pp. 9-14.

Among those who came to study under Kosen during the later years of his
life was a young layman cal!ed Sekibutsu Koji. 'Sekibutsu' means 'Stone
Buddha', and 'Koji' means 'lay-disciple'. Kosen passed away, but Sekibutsu
continued his Zen study under Soyen Shaku, Kosen's heir. When Sekibutsu
shaved his head Soyen gave him the name of Sokatsu, which means 'energetic',
and still later when Soyen adopted him as his son, he assumed Soyen's family
name of Shaku. It was this Sokatsu Shaku who was my Zen master.

Sokatsu Shaku was barely twenty-nine when he finished his Zen. Wearing
the big mushroom-shaped hat and the straw sandals of the traveling Zen monk,
and with all his worldly possessions packed in a little box strapped on his
back, he started out upon a pilgrimage to the great Zen temples of the
country, begging his food from pious adherents and sleeping now under the
broad caves of a temple, now under the humble thatch of a country
farmhouse. Still begging his way, as did the early members of Buddha's
Sangha, he continued his journey even as far as Siam and Burma.

It was after his return from these foreign lands that his master Soyen
summoned him one day and told him that the time had come for him to
promulgate Zen.

"You have acquired the great wisdom of Buddhism. Now you must
complete the Four Great Vows which you made and turn the wheel of
supplication for the benefit of others,'' he said. "The assemblage which
Kosen Osho called Ryomokyo-kai has dispersed, Sokatsu. You must go to
Tokyo for the purpose of reviving it, blowing once more the bellows and
rekindling the flame to forge those laymen who wish to attain enlightenment."

So my master went to Tokyo. With the help of four gentlemen, whom he
had met while he was still a monk at Engaku-ji and who were his first students,
a little temple was built in the village of Negishi at the foot of the slope
behind the hill of Ueno. The students brought furniture and utensils and
Sokatsu Shaku settled here. In the beginning he had ten or fifteen lay disciples
to whom he gave lectures on Buddhism and whom he instructed in
the methods of Zen practice. As was the custom, he often went about the city
of Tokyo begging alms, holding a staff in his hand and wearing straw sandals
on his feet. He was then thirty-two years old.

Gradually the little hut became too small for the students who gathered
about him. After three years a new and larger temple was built at Nippori, a
suburb of Tokyo. It was then that I came to my teacher. At that rime I was
a student of sculpture at the Imperial Academy of Art.

One day my teacher summoned me to the hojo and said: "I am going to
America. Will you come with me?" I answered, "I should like to go, if my
mother will permit me." "I shall speak with your mother about this," he said.

Gary Snyder: Sokatsu Shaku ordered Sasaki to marry one of the girl lay
disciples because for some reason he felt they should have one married
couple in the group. That was Sasaki's first wife. Their children are running
ranches in the San Joaquin Valley right now.

And so in September of that year, 1906, Sokatsu Shaku sailed for the
United States with six disciples, including myself. As several of his former
disciples had become students in the University of California we first settled
in Berkeley. We laughed heartily at our Roshi when, at the University Hotel
in Berkeley, he used a knife and fork for the first time. We watched his face
as a plate piled with corned-beef and cabbage was placed before him. His
expression was more serious than ever as he struggled to eat this food, which
was certainly not the customary food for a monk! This was our first lesson
in "When in Rome do as the Romans do.''

Sokatsu Shaku had other plans for our future, however. One day he
announced that he had bought ten acres of land in Hayward, California, about
two hours by trolley from Oakland. When our group reached there we found
a farmhouse, a barn, an emaciated cow and ten acres of worn out land.
Sokatsu's eldest disciple, Zuigan Goto, now President of Rinzai University in
Kyoto, Japan, had seen in a newspaper an advertisement for the sale of the
farm and had been sent by our teacher to purchase the property from the
farmer, who certainly must have had no regrets in parting with it! We had had
confidence in Zuigan because he was a graduate of the Department of
Philosophy of the Imperial University of Tokyo. But the land which he had
purchased was absolutely exhausted land. The cow, also, was exhausted!

Under such conditions we began our lives as farmers. On clear days we
worked hard in the fields cultivating strawberries, On rainy days we meditated.
Our neighbors made fun of us. There was not a real farmer among us; all
were monks, artists or philosophers.

The day finally arrived when Zuigan drove to market the wagon piled
with crates of the strawberries we had grown. A market man picked out one
of the smallest of our strawberries and cried in a derisive voice, "What do
you call rhis, school-boys?" "It is a strawbeny," we replied. Showing us a
strawberry almost the size of his fist he said: ''This is what is called a
strawberry! You had better send your produce to the piggery!"

I can hardly describe the conference we held with our teacher that night!
Our Japanese farming neighbors had advised us that what the land needed
was thorough fertilization and real farmers to cultivate it. We realized that
the knowledge we had gained from our study of Zen Records had not fitted
us for such work. The disciple who protested against continuing this futile
undertaking was myself. As a result I was temporarily expelled from the group.

I went to San Francisco and entered the California Institute of Art. The
following spring my fellow-students came to San Francisco. Abandoning the
idea of establishing a monastery at Hayward, Sokatsu Shaku opened a new
Zen center in Sutter Street. He accepted my apology for rebelling against his
plans and I resumed my study of Zen.

Again we moved, this time to Geary Street. Zuigan Goto acted as interpreter
for our teacher as he was the only one among us who had a sufficient
understanding of English. There were in the group at that time about fifty
Japanese students and several American ones whose names I cannot remember.

Mrs. Sasaki: The majority of Sokatsu's students in San Francisco, aside from
the few Japanese in San Francisco who studied with him, were all missionary
ladies who were going over to Japan to do mission work. There is somewhere
a picture of Sokatsu-- who was one of the handsomest men you ever laid
eyes on-- sitting in his clerical costume, which was a long coat buttoned up
to the top something like the Indian swamis wear, with all the big busty
missionary ladies in their white blouses with high lace collars and their
pompadours and so forth, and a few Japanese sitting on the floor.

Two years passed. Then Sokatsu Shaku was summoned back to Japan by his
teacher, Soyen Shaku, but after six months he returned to America.

Another year and a half passed. Again, in 1910, Sokatsu Shaku went back
to Japan, this time for good, raking his disciples with him. I was the only one
left behind.

Alone in America now, I conceived the idea of going about the United
States on foot. In February, 1911. I crossed the Shasta Mountains through
the snow into Oregon. On the hillside of the Rogue River Valley was the
farm of an old friend. He asked me to stay with him for a while.

Summer came with the month of May. I began again my praclice of
meditation. Every evening I used to walk along the river-bed to a rock ,
chiseled by the current during thousands of years. Upon its flat surface I
would practice meditation through the night, my dog at my side protecting
me from the snakes. The rock is still there.

Mrs. Sasaki: During that time he was thinking about going back to Japan to further
his Zen studies and so he sat down during that summer and worked out the answers
to 100 koans, solved them, so that he would be all ready for Sokatsu when he got back.
And when eventually, some years later, he did go back, every answer was wrong.

For several years I led a wandering life, finally reaching the city of New York.
My carving-tools, cherished from the age of fifteen, provided me with a hand-to-
mouth livelihood. One day, all of a sudden, I realized that I must see my
teacher. I packed up my things and in October, 1919, left New York.

Mrs. Sasaki: Before they (Sokei-an and his first wife) got settled in Seattle
proper, they had a shack on one of those islands up there where there were
lots of Indians. And she was very happy with that kind of life, but was very
unhappy with civilized life, so to speak. And so in 1914, when she was
pregnant again, and his mother was not well, she took the two children and
went back to Japan and left him here.

Then he went to New York and lived in Greenwich Village and got to
know some of the poets of those days. He knew the first of the Beat Poets,
shall I say, Bodenheim, and another person he knew was Crowley. And while
his interest in Zen kept on, during this period he was finding out a lot about
life. And then in 1919, in the summer, on an awfully, awfully hot day in
July, he was walking down the street and suddenly in the street he saw the
carcass of a dead horse, and something happened to him psychologically and
he went straight home to his rooms and packed up his things and got a ticket
for Japan and went back to Sokatsu. He also went back to his wife and to his
mother and the three children and had apparently a very unhappy time. All
the time he was writing and had several books published and was quite a
literary figure in Tokyo at that time. He told me he used to make on an
average of 1200 a month, which was a lot of money in those days, with his
articles, because he had an article every month in the Chuokoron, and that
was given to his wife.

In my forty-eighth year I completed my study of Zen. I was ordained as
a Zen master in July, 1928. Under the guidance of a single teacher I had
passed through the training of Zen from beginning to end. My Roshi
authorized me to promulgate Zen, saying, "Your message is for America.
Return there!" With the help of friends I came back to New York and began
my work. That was eleven years ago.

Mrs. Sasaki: He had a semi-pennanent visa for America which became invalid if he
remained out of the country for more than two years. He came back to Japan in 1926.
He had completed his Zen study the time before but this time he hoped he could become
a Roshi, which, of course, he eventually did. But before that, while he was in Japan,
he had one of the greatest shocks of his life. He went one day to Chuokoron
and he was told that his day was over, they didn't need anything more, that
there were other men coming up who were taking his place and that his
vogue was finished. So when he went back again to New York in 1928 he
felt he was completely alone with nothing but his Zen. His teacher had told
him that now his life was to be devoted to teaching Zen and no more to
earning his living by some other manner and toying with Zen on the side. And
so at first he didn't know quite what to do. He didn't have any group to go to.
He was more or less alone. He had a commission from some magazine or
newspaper, I don't know which it was, but not Chuokoron, to write a series
of articles on the various foreign people who lived in New York City and
made up its population. So instead of going back to Greenwich Village and
picking up that type of friend again, acquaintance, he lived for two or three
months apiece with an Italian family, a Portuguese family and eventually a
Negro family-- I don't know how many others-- but the Negro family was the
last and then he was forced to do something to eat and he went to Mr. Mia,
who at that time was one of the most important men in the New York office
of the Yamanaka. Whether he had known him previously, or how he got to
know him I don't exactly know, but at any rate Mr. Mia was very interested
in Zen, had studied Zen previously, and so he gave Sokei-an $500 and went
around and hunted for a place for him to live and to begin to give his lectures.

On April 16, 1939, we celebrated the seventieth birthday of Sokatsu Shaku.
On that day he recounted to us the history of Ryomo-an. relating many of
the experiences of his half-century of Zen life. He told us that during the
forty years of his teaching three thousand men and women had come to study
Zen under his direction. Of these he had initiated nine hundred into Zen.
Thirteen of the nine hundred had completed the training, but of these
thirteen only four had really penetrated to the core of Zen. These four he
had ordained as teachers.

The eldest of the four is Zuigan Goto, known at Ryomo-an as Soseki Goto.
He was originally a Zen monk of the Myoshin-ji school. I have already spoken
of him. The second is Eisan Tatsuta, who is ten years my junior. He is a
graduate of the Department of Zoology in the Imperial University of Tokyo
and a professor of Zoology. The third, Chikudo Ohasama, graduated from the
Deparrment of Ethics in the Imperial University of Tokyo and completed his
studies at Heidelberg. His Der Lebendige Buddhismus in Japan is a partial
translation of the famous Zen text, Hekiganroku. The fourth is myself.

Cary Snyder: Sokatsu Shaku was really intent on starting a lay Zen line and
Sasaki did not become a priest until after he finished his Zen study. He was
always a lay student, and when he said, now I wish to become a priest, I want
to go back to America as a priest, Sokatsu Shaku was infuriated. He said, I
want this to be a lay transmission, and Sasaki said, Americans will not pay any
attention to a lay person. That was his view and he insisted on going ahead
and shaving his head and putting on robes and so forth, and functioned as a
priest with a priest's name and a priest's style ever after in America and his
master never forgave him, never spoke to him again. In fact he officially
declared him not to be his disciple.

Mrs. Sasaki: (Sokatsu said that Sokei-an) had never studied flower arrangement,
couldn't play Go, didn't know tea ceremony, and his calliiraphy was bad. There
were five things that an accomplished Japanese Roshi should have and Sokei-an
didn't have any of these five. And when Sokei-an refused to go back, he disowned him.

Sokatsu Shaku has now retired, leaving his teaching in the hands of
Eisan and Chikudo. They are carrying on the work of Ryomokyo-kai, the
promulgation of Zen among lay intelligentsia, at Ryomo-an and its eight
branches in various parts of Japan. The seed planted by Kosen has grown
to a mature tree which flourishes under the care of his descendants.

Ryōbō-an Shaku Sōkatsu's Dharma Lineage

[…]

白隱慧鶴 Hakuin Ekaku (1686-1769)
峨山慈棹 Gasan Jitō (1727-1797)
隱山惟琰 Inzan Ien (1751-1814)
太元孜元 Taigen Shigen (1768-1837)
儀山善來 Gisan Zenrai (1802-1878)
洪川宗温 Kōsen Sōon (1816-1892) [今北 Imakita]
洪岳宗演 Kōgaku Sōen (1859-1919) [釋 / 釈 Shaku]
輟翁宗活 Tetsuō Sōkatsu (1870-1954) [釋 / 釈 Shaku]

▶ 瑞巌宗碩 Zuigan Sōseki (1879-1965) [後藤 Gotō]

▶ 指月宗岑 Shigetsu Sōshin (1882-1945] [曹渓庵 佐々木 Sōkei-an Sasaki]