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Author with Ueda Shizuteru Sensei at his home in Hieidaira, August 2012

Bret W. Davis

閑風 Kanpū

https://loyola.academia.edu/BretDavis
https://wisdomexperience.org/content-author/kanpu-bret-davis/
https://www.loyola.edu/academics/philosophy/faculty/davis

Kanpū Bret W. Davis is Professor and Thomas J. Higgins, S.J. Chair in Philosophy at Loyola University Maryland, where he teaches classes in Western, Asian, and cross-cultural philosophy, and where he directs The Heart of Zen Meditation Group. In addition to publishing more than seventy-five scholarly articles, he has authored, edited, and translated a number of books, including Japanese Philosophy in the World (in Japanese), Heidegger and the Will: On the Way to Gelassenheit, Martin Heidegger: Key Concepts, Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School, Engaging Dogen's Zen: The Philosophy of Practice as Awakening, The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy, and Bipedal Philosophers (in Japanese). In 2001, he obtained a Ph.D. in philosophy from Vanderbilt University. He lived in Japan for more than a dozen years, during which time he studied Buddhist thought at Otani University, and Japanese philosophy at Kyoto University, while practicing Zen at the monastery of Shokokuji in Kyoto. He is fluent in Japanese, semi-fluent in German, and proficient in reading Classical Chinese. In 2010, he was formally recognized as a Teacher (Sensei) and Director of a Zen Center by Kobayashi Gentoku Rōshi (小林玄徳, 1963-), the current abbot of Shōkokuji (相国寺).

小林玄徳 Kobayashi Gentoku (1963-)
相国僧堂師家 Shōkoku sōdō shike (2008-)

茶禅一如　Hashi nashi (no edge) by Kobayashi Gentoku Rōshi, Master of Shōkokuji Monastery
Gentoku Roshi's painting and calligraphy play on two homonymus of the word "hashi": hashi 橋 as "bridge" and hashi 端 as "edge", with the bridge in his painting having no right edge (and with a small sign on its left edge saying, "Be careful on this bridge!"). Our lives are defined by borders and edges: the border in between self and other, the borders between things in the world, etc. These separations are important, but so too is the interdependence that connects us all. Where, then, does "self" really end and "other" really begin?
Translated by Thomas Kirchner

Author with 田中芳州 Tanaka Hōjū rōshi (1949-2008)
in Shōkokuji monastery, Kyoto, November 2004

Tanaka Hōjū Rōshi (1950–2008) and Ueda Shizuteru Sensei (1926–2019)

Tanaka Rōshi fulfilled his vow to become an “educator of educators.” For a decade
he guided me in my practice. Time and again I entered the electrifying atmosphere
of his interview room to be tested on kōans. Often swiftly dismissing me and
my muddles with the ring of a bell, his compassionate severity allowed me to
undertake an “investigation into the self ” more rigorous and more revealing than
I could have imagined. That decade of doing sanzen with him changed my life.
Tanaka Rōshi wrote very little. He taught with the living words of his speech, with
his piercing gaze, and with his ear- to- ear smile. He exemplified Zen for us with
the crispness of his movements and with the purity of his motives. May some of the
spirit of his holistic pedagogy flow through these pages to benefit its readers and all
who are, in turn, touched by their lives.

For nearly a quarter of a century I had the great privilege of learning directly
from Ueda Sensei in both scholarly and Zen contexts. He modeled for me what
it means to walk the parallel paths of Zen and philosophy, allowing them to
illuminate and enrich each other without compromising the distinct nature
and rigor of either one. Ueda Sensei’s profoundly insightful philosophical
interpretations of Zen inform many pages of this book. Tanaka Rōshi’s successor
and my current teacher, Kobayashi Gentoku Rōshi, asked Ueda Sensei to
formulate the Zen layperson’s name (kojigō) that I was given: Kanpū 閑風
(literally “peaceful wind”). Ueda Sensei used one of the characters from his own
given name: the kan in Kanpū is another reading of the character for shizu in
Shizuteru 閑照 (literally “peaceful illumination”). I am deeply honored to carry
forth part of his name along with his mission of relating, without conflating, the
Eastern and Western paths of Zen and philosophy.

Bret W. Davis, “The Kyoto School,”
in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2010 edition)
ed. Edward N. Zalta, at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2010/entries/kyoto-school/

PDF: Zen Pathways: An Introduction to the Philosophy and Practice of Zen Buddhisms
by Bret W. Davis

PDF: The Oxford Handbook of Japanese Philosophy
Edited by Bret W. Davis

PDF: Seeing into the Self in Nature: Awakening through Cao Jun’s Painting
by Bret W. Davis
in: 曹俊 Cao Jun: Hymns to Nature
edited by John Sallis
McMullen Museum of Art, Boston College, 2018. pp. 25-34.

PDF: Expressing Experience: Language in Ueda Shizuteru’s Philosophy of Zen
by Bret W. Davis
In: Dao Companions to Chinese Philosophy, Volume 8. 2019, Pages 713-738.

PDF: The Legacy of Ueda Shizuteru: A Zen Life of Dialogue in a Twofold World
by Bret W. Davis
Comparative and Continental Philosophy, Volume 14, 2022 - Issue 2: pp. 112-127.

PDF: Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School
(Studies in Continental Thought)
edited by Bret W. Davis, Brian Schroeder, Jason M. Wirth
Indiana University Press, 2011

PDF: Contributions to Dialogue with the Kyoto School
by Ueda Shizuteru
Translated from the Japanese by Bret W. Davis
Chapter 1 In: Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School (Studies in Continental Thought) 
edited by Bret W. Davis, Brian Schroeder, Jason M. Wirth
Indiana University Press, 2011, pp. 19-32.

PDF: Dialogue and Appropriation: The Kyoto School as Cross-Cultural Philosophy
by Bret W. Davis
Chapter 2 in: Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School (Studies in Continental Thought)
edited by Bret W. Davis, Brian Schroeder, Jason M. Wirth
Indiana University Press, 2011, pp. 33-51.

PDF: Nishitani after Nietzsche: From the Death of God to the Great Death of the Will
by Bret W. Davis
Chapter 5 in: Japanese and Continental Philosophy: Conversations with the Kyoto School (Studies in Continental Thought)
edited by Bret W. Davis, Brian Schroeder, Jason M. Wirth
Indiana University Press, 2011, pp. 82-101.