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大愚宗築 Daigu Sōchiku (1584–1669)

[also read Taigu]

Daigu Sōchiku. (大愚宗築) (1584–1669). Japanese ZEN master of the RINZAISHŪ lineage. Daigu was born in Mino, present-day Gifu prefecture. In his twenties, Daigu went on a pilgrimage around the country with several other young monks, including GUDŌ TŌSHOKU and Ungo Kiyō (1582–1659), in search of a teacher. In his thirties, Daigu built the monastery of Nansenji in the capital Edo, which he named after his home temple in Mino. He also founded the monasteries of Enkyōji in Kinkō (present-day Shiga prefecture) and Enichiji in Tanba (present-day Hyōgo prefecture). Daigu was active in restoring dilapidated temples. In 1656, he was invited as the founding abbot of the temple Daianji in Echizen (present-day Fukui prefecture). During the Tokugawa period, temples were mandated by the bakufu to affiliate themselves with a main monastery (honzan), thus becoming a branch temple (matsuji). The temples that Daigu built or restored became branch temples of MYŌSHINJI. Daigu’s efforts thus allowed the influence of Myōshinji, where he once served as abbot, to grow. Along with Gudō, Daigu also led a faction within Myōshinji that rejected the invitation of the Chinese Chan master YINYUAN LONGQI to serve as abbot of the main temple.

Zen Master Tales
Stories from the Lives of Taigu, Sengai, Hakuin, and Ryokan
by Peter Haskel
Shambala, 2022

PDF: Introduction + Taigu Tales, pp. 1-34, 35-46.

A lively collection of folk tales and Buddhist teaching stories from four noted premodern Japanese Zen masters: Taigu Sōchiku (1584–1669), Sengai Gibon (1750–1831), Hakuin Ekaku (1686–1769), and Taigu Ryokan (1758–1831).

Zen Master Tales collects never-before-translated stories of four prominent Zen masters from the Edo period of Japanese history (1603–1868). Drawn from an era that saw the “democratization” of Japanese Zen, these stories paint a picture of robust, funny, and poignant engagement between Zen luminaries and the emergent chonin or “townsperson” culture of early modern Japan. Here we find Zen monks engaging with samurai, merchants, housewives, entertainers, and farmers. These masters affirmed that the essentials of Zen practice—zazen, koan study, and even enlightenment—could be conveyed to all members of Japanese society in ordinary speech, including even comic verse and work songs.

In his introduction, translator Peter Haskel explains the history of Zen “stories” from the tradition’s Golden Age in China through the compilation of the classic koan collections and on to the era from which the stories in Zen Master Tales are drawn. What was true of the Chinese tradition, he writes—“its focus on the individual’s ordinary activity as the function, the manifestation of the absolute”—continued in the Japanese context. “Most of these Japanese stories, however unabashedly humorous and at times crude, impart something of the character of the Zen masters involved, whose attainment must be plainly manifest in even the most humble and unlikely of situations.”