Tag Archives: Kodo Sawaki

Pull Your Own Nose and Lift the Ancient Kōan

Dōgen’s Chinese Poems (53)

Pull Your Own Nose and Lift the Ancient Kōan
Dharma Hall Discourse Beginning the Summer Practice Period [1247]

「結夏」(結夏)
掘空平地搆鬼窟　（空を掘り地を平らげ鬼窟を搆う。）
臭惡水雲撥溌天　（臭惡の水雲、撥ねて天に溌ぐ。）
混雜驢牛兼佛祖　（混雜す、驢牛と佛祖と。）
自家鼻孔自家牽　（自家の鼻孔、自家牽く。）

Digging a hole in the sky, leveling the earth, and constructing a demon’s cave,
The monk’s bad-smelling waters splatter, pouring over the heavens.
Donkeys and cows mix together with buddhas and ancestors.
Pull yourself by your nose.[1]

— • —

This is verse 52 in Kuchūgen and Dharma Hall Discourse (上堂, jōdō) 238 in Volume 3 of Eihei Kōroku. Dōgen Zenji recited this verse at the beginning of the dharma hall discourse and made a short speech. This verse in Manzan’s version and Monkaku’s version are the same.

The speech he gave after the verse is:

Tell me, how shall we today lift up the ancient kōan from two thousand years ago?
After a pause Dōgen said: A copper head and iron brow keep practicing. A wooden ladle and a clump of soil clap their hands and laugh.

Pull Your Own Nose and Lift the Ancient Kōan

This is the dharma hall discourse on the occasion of the beginning of the summer practice period on 15^th day of the 4^th month in 1247. Dōgen Zenji and his sangha moved from Kōshōji in Fukakusa, near Kyoto to Echizen (presently Fukui Prefecture) in 1243. The buildings of the new monastery Daibutsuji were built in 1244 and they moved in the winter of 1244. In 1245, they had the first summer practice period (ango) at Daibutsuji. In 1246, the temple name was changed to Eiheiji, and Pure Standards for Temple Administrators (知事清規 Chiji Shingi) was presented during the summer practice period. So it was in this year, that the sangha began to practice following the traditional system based on the Chinese pure regulations (清規 shingi). The sangha was divided into two groups. One group stayed in the monks’ hall and concentrated on practice, following The Model for Engaging the Way (弁道法 Bendoho); another group worked in the administration building, kuin (庫院), which included the kitchen, storeroom, and various administrative offices to support the practice.

“Pull Your Own Nose” in the title is from the fourth line of this verse, and “Lift the Ancient Kōan” is taken from Dōgen’s speech after the verse. The ninety-day summer practice period is an ancient kōan given by the Buddha in which each monk is studying and practicing using their karmic self in order to study the self that is empty and interconnected with all beings. Another way to understand the title is that the empty and interconnected self pulls and trains the self-centered karmic self.

Digging a hole in the sky, leveling the earth, and constructing a demon’s cave,
The monk’s bad-smelling waters splatter, pouring over the heavens.

“Digging a hole in the sky, leveling the earth,” is a translation of kukku heichi (掘空平地). The sky and earth mean the entire world. Monastic practice is not simply a means to develop monks’ individual bodies and minds, but allows us to discover the emptiness and interconnectedness with the entire heaven and earth. This expression might also mean that monks work with emptiness (空), the ultimate truth, oneness of all beings and also work with the earth (地), one of the four great elements, the concrete, the conventional truth, multiplicity. Digging emptiness is making it concrete, and leveling the earth is to see oneness. By seeing and working with both sides, the monks can act in the middle way between discrimination and beyond discrimination.

“Constructing a demon’s cave” is kō kikutsu (搆鬼窟). By working with all beings in heaven and earth, the monks construct a demon’s cave. A demon’s cave is an abbreviation of kokusan kikutsu (黒山鬼窟), a demon’s cave in the black mountain, commonly used in the negative meaning—that is, being caught up with discriminative thinking or clinging to non-discrimination. For example, in Case 25 “The Hermit of Lotus Flower Peak Holds up His Staff” in the Blue Cliff Record, there is a sentence in Yuanwu’s commentary, “As soon as you make a comparative judgement, you’re in the demon cave of the mountain of darkness making your living.”[2]

In Shōbōgenzō Ikka myōju (一顆明珠, One Bright Jewel), Dōgen quotes Xuansha’s dialogue with a monk, in which Xuansha used this expression in the common, negative way.

Once a monk asked, “I have heard that you said that the entire ten-direction world is one bright jewel. How can this student (I) understand it?”
The master said, “The entire ten-direction world is one bright jewel. What is the use of understanding it?”
The next day, the master asked the same monk, “The entire ten-direction world is one bright jewel. How do you understand it?”
The monk said, “The entire ten-direction world is one bright jewel. What is the use of understanding it?”
The Master said, “I know that you are making a livelihood inside the demon’s cave in the black mountain.”[3]

In his comments on this dialogue, Dōgen changed the meaning of the expression and said, “Therefore, forward steps and backward steps within the demon’s cave in the black mountain are nothing other than the one bright jewel.” Thinking using the dharma-eye, which sees both discrimination and beyond discrimination, is one bright jewel that is the entire ten-direction world. In the verse from Kuchūgen, he used this expression in the same way. Seeing both the ultimate truth and the conventional truth, we use our thinking based on beyond-thinking during the practice period.

“The monk’s bad-smelling waters splatter, pouring over the heavens.” This is an ironical expression, probably taken from Tiantong Rujing’s verse for the Librarian:

The Librarian
Excreted directly from the mouth of old bandit Gautama,
A lot of donkey-dung (sutras), and horse manure (Vinaya texts) as well!
Rolling them all into a ball, turning them around,
The bad-smell pervades the heavens, annoying people in the sahā-world.[4]

As many Zen masters did, Rujing sometimes used “dirty words” to express the Buddha’s awakening and teachings. The most famous example might be case 21 of the Gateless Barrier (無門関, Mumonkan), Yummen’s Dried Shit-Stick.[5]

Rujing’s verse is about the manager of the storage for scriptures. Within a building on the monastery grounds, there was a huge rotary bookcase in which scriptures (tripiṭaka) were stored. There was a belief that, when a person turned the bookcase once, there was merit produced, just the same as reciting the entire Buddhist library. Probably this was for air circulation, keeping the bookcase cool and dry to protect the books.

Rujing said that the Buddhist scriptures were like the excrement of the old bandit Gautama, that is, Shakyamuni Buddha. By turning the scriptures, the bad-smell pervades the entire world. The word “bad-smell (臭悪, shūaku)” is used in the description of the smell from the process of a corpse decaying; this was used as a method for the contemplation of impurity (不浄観, fujōkan).

Dōgen Zenji sometimes used this kind of expression. There is a story that an old Pure Land Buddhist master once listened to Dōgen’s dharma discourse, and he was stunned when Dōgen used the expression, “a dried sit-stick.” This master declared that Zen was a terrible teaching, which says the buddha is a dried shit-stick. Hearing that, Dōgen said, “I want to cry, that even such a respectable master said such a foolish thing.”

In this verse, Dōgen says that the monks splash their bad-smelling water over the entire heaven. This is a reference to the actual practice of monks during the practice period; they have to use their karmic body and mind and yet practice the Buddha’s practice. Of course, there are tons of beautiful phrases to praise the Buddha’s awakening and teachings, and monks’ practice. I think Zen masters tried to avoid using such flowery, hackneyed words, and tried to make their audience or readers wake up.

Donkeys and cows mix together with buddhas and ancestors.
Pull yourself by your nose.

Donkeys and cows refer to the monks’ karmic bodies and minds. Yet in their practice, based on zazen and on following the Buddha’s teachings and on the proscriptions of the pure standards (shingi), buddhas and ancestors manifest themselves within the monks’ practice.

“Pull yourself by your nose” is an expression Dōgen also took from Rujing. This is from a verse on the eighth of the ten ox-herding pictures titled, “Forgetting both Person and Ox,” in which only the round circle is there and nothing is in it. In the first two lines of his poem for this picture, Rujing said, “One’s own nostril is drilled by the self, and one’s own rope is pulled by the self.”[6] This means that the both the person and the ox are the self. The self makes a hole in the ox’s nostril and the self puts the rope in the hole and pulls the rope to guide the self. That is the monks’ practice during the practice period. I think this is the same as Dōgen’s expression jijuyū-zanmai, and the same as Kōdō Sawaki Rōshi’s expression, “self selfing the self.” The monks make a vow to practice during the ninety-days practice period; they make a hole in their nostril and pull their own nostril to guide themselves.

— • —

[1] Dōgen’s Extensive Record Volume 3, Dharma Hall Discourse 238, p.238) © 2010 Taigen Dan Leighton and Shohaku Okumura. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications, Inc., www.wisdompubs.org.
[2] The Blue Cliff Record (translation by Thomas Cleary, Shambhala, 1977), p.168.
[3] Okumura’s translation.
[4] This is Okumura’s translation from “Recorded sayings of Tiantong Rujing” in Study on Zen Master Tiantong Rujing (天童如浄禅師の研究）by Genryu Kagamishima (Shunjusha, Tokyo, 1983), p. 380.
[5] In Zen Comments on the Mumonkan (Zenkei Shibayama, Harper & Row, 1974), p.154, the case reads:
A monk asked Unmon, “What is Buddha?”
Unmon said, “A shit-stick!” (Kanshiketsu!)
In Master Yunmen: From the Record of the Chan Master “Gate of the Clouds” (translation by Urs App, Kodansha America,1994), p.126, the dialogue is:
Someone asked, “What is Shakyamuni’s body?”
The master said, “A dry piece of shit.”
[6] 自家の鼻孔自家穿つ。自家繩索自家牽く。

— • —

Translation and commentary by Shōhaku Okumura Roshi.

— • —

For further study:
See Dōgen’s Extensive Record.

> More of Dōgen Zenji’s Chinese Poems

Who could measure the ocean of merit?

Dōgen’s Chinese Poems (37)

Continuing the Previous Rhyme from Mount Potalaka

「續寶陀舊韻」（寶陀の舊韻に續ぐ）

The ocean waves crash like thunder below the cliff.
I strain my ears and see the face of Kanjizai.
Upholding this, who could measure the ocean of merit?
Just turn your eyes and see the blue mountain.^[1]

潮音霹靂海崖間　（潮音霹靂たり海崖の間、）
側耳辺看自在顔　（耳辺を側てて看る自在の顔、）
拈此誰量功徳海　（此れを拈じて誰か量らん功徳海、）
只教回眼見青山　（只だ眼を回らしめて青山を見るのみ）

This is verse 36 in Kuchūgen and verse 28 of volume 10 of Eihei Kōroku (Dōgen’s Extensive Record). In Manzan’s version, this is verse 45 and there are some differences in each line:

潮音霹靂斷崖下　（潮音霹靂たり斷崖の下、）
The ocean waves crash like thunder below the cliff.
湧現分明自在顔　（湧現分明なり自在の顔、）
The face of Kanjizai appears clearly.
至者誰量功徳海　（至る者誰か量らん功徳海、）
Among the visitors, who could measure the ocean of merit?
只回望眼見青山　（只だ望眼を回らして青山を見るのみ）
Just turn your eyes and see the blue mountain.

Continuing the Previous Rhyme from Mount Potalaka

This is the second verse concerning Dōgen Zenji’s pilgrimage to the sacred place of Avalokiteśvara on Mount Potalaka. It is not clear if he visited the same place again and composed another verse continuing the first rhyme, or if he created the second verse thinking that somehow the first did not fully express what he wanted to say. In his teishō on this verse, Kōdō Sawaki Rōshi said that Dōgen Zenji might have visited the place twice.

The ocean waves crash like thunder below the cliff.
I strain my ears and see the face of Kanjizai.

Sawaki Rōshi visited China for four months in 1934 to make pilgrimage to the sacred places of Zen masters. The first place to which he paid a visit was Mount Potalaka. Sawaki Rōshi said that reading the first line of this verse, he could see that Dōgen Zenji had actually visited the place, because his description of the spot below the cliff was exactly the same as Rōshi saw seven hundred years later.

According to Sawaki Rōshi, the place was in the precinct of a temple named Fau-si (法雨寺, Hōu-ji, Dharma Rain Temple) established in 16^th century. The temple was located near the ocean cliff. There was a shrine hall named Chaoyin-tang（潮音堂, Chōon-do, Rolling-tide Voice Hall) right on the cliff, where waves incessantly crashed against the rocky cliff and made a roaring sound in a cave.

The name of the temple, “Dharma Rain” and the shrine hall, “Rolling-tide Voice” are from the 25^th chapter of the Lotus Sūtra, often called Kannon-kyō (観音経). Close to the end of the final verse of the sutra, it says:

悲體戒雷震　慈意妙大雲澍甘露法雨　滅除煩惱焔
(悲體の戒は雷震のごとく慈意の妙は大雲のごとく甘露の法雨を澍ぎ煩惱の焔を滅除す.)
Precepts from his compassionate body shake like thunder.
His compassion is like a great cloud
Pouring Dharma rain like nectar,
Quenching the flames of affliction!^[2]

“His compassionate body” is a translation of 悲體 (hi-tai, body of compassion). The character 悲is a translation of Sanskrit word karuṇā, one aspect of Buddha’s compassion, wishing others to be free from suffering. In this case, 體 could be interpreted as essence instead of body. Avalokiteśvara’s teaching as the precepts are powerful like thunder.

“His compassion” is a translation of 慈意 (ji-i, compassionate thought or intention). Ji (慈) is a translation of Sanskrit word maitrī, another aspect of Buddha’s compassion, wishing others to be happy. Avalokiteśvara’s compassionate mind is like a great cloud that covers the entire sky. From the great cloud of compassion, the dharma teachings fall down like rain drops to extinguish the flame of the three poisonous minds (greed, anger/hatred, and ignorance) that make our life into the burning house of samsara.

The name of the shrine hall, Chaoyin (潮音, Chō-on) came from another part of the verse:

妙音觀世音梵音海潮音勝彼世間音是故須常念
(妙音・觀世音梵音・海潮音 勝彼世間音あり　是の故に須らく常に念ずべし。）
Wonderful voice, regarder of the cries of the world,
Brahma-voice, voice of the rolling tide,
World-surpassing voice –
He should always be kept in mind.

This verse is about sound (音, yin, on); this character is a part of Avalokiteśvara’s name 觀音 (Ch. Guanyin, Jp. Kannon). The sound (voice) of his compassionate teaching is wonderful or wonderous. It is the voice of the bodhisattva who sees the cries of the world. “Brahma-voice” is a translation of Sanskrit word, brahma-susvara, meaning clean, undefiled voice. The wonderous voice, powerful like the voice of the rolling tide, is revealing the ultimate truth beyond the worldly, karmic life of suffering.

I think that when Dōgen uses the expression 潮音 at the very beginning of this verse, he expects his readers know these expressions from the Kannon-kyō. Ocean waves, crashing against the rocky cliff, incessantly make roaring sounds.

In the second line, he uses the other translation of the name Avalokiteśvara, Kanjizai (観自在, Seeing Freely) which appears, for example, in the Heart Sūtra. Dōgen says he “strains his ears” to see the face of Avalokiteśvara, or Kanjizai. Straining his ears to see the Bodhisattva’s face sounds unusual, but “Kannon” literally means “seeing the sound.” Dōgen twists this expression and says that he sees Avalokiteśvara’s face with his ears.

These expressions, “hearing with eyes” and “seeing with ears” came from a poem by Dongshan (洞山, Tōzan). They appear at the end of a dialogue between Dongshan and his teacher Yunyan (雲巌, Ungan), regarding the expression “the expounding Dharma of Insentient beings (無情説法, mujō seppō).” The poem is as follows:

也太奇、也太奇、(也太奇、也太奇、)
無情説法不思議。(無情説法不思議なり。)
若将耳聴終難會、(若将耳聴は終難會なり、)
眼処聞聲方得知。(眼処に聞聲して方に知ることを得ん。)
How wonderous! How wonderous!
The expounding of the Dharma by insentient beings is unthinkable.
If I tried to hear it with the ears, it would never be possible to understand.
Only when I hear the voice with my eyes am I able to know it.^[3]

Upholding this, who could measure the ocean of merit?
Just turn your eyes and see the blue mountain.

In some suttas in the Pali Nikaya, Shakyamuni Buddha taught that when the six sense organs encounter the six objects of the sense organs, the six consciousnesses arise. Together, these are called the eighteen elements. When there are eighteen elements as cause, there is the dependent origination of contact→ sensation→ perception→ craving (taṇhā)→ clinging (upādāna). From perception, we have another stream of dependent origination, thinking→ mental proliferation (or conceptualization, papañca) → discrimination (vikalpa). These are the two aspects of things happening within our mind based on the separation and relation between subject (six sense organs) and object (emotion and conceptual thinking). These two sides of our karmic consciousness are also interdepending on each other. When we take actions based on conceptualized, distorted ways of thinking and self-centered emotions influenced by the three poisonous minds, we create wholesome or unwholesome karma and we transmigrate within the six realms of samsara.

When we clearly see the reality of impermanence, no-self (no-substance, anatman), and suffering of all the eighteen elements, we are released from the cycle of transmigration. For example, the Heart Sūtra says, “Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva, when deeply practicing prajñā paramita, clearly saw that all five aggregates are empty and thus relieved all suffering.” Later in the Sutra, it is said that all eighteen elements are empty.

In the case of Dōgen’s practice, our immovable sitting of letting go of thought is itself prajñā paramita. When we see things from dropping off body and mind, we see all myriad things are Buddhadharma. I think that is what Dōgen is saying in the 3^rd and 4^th lines of this verse. There is no way to measure the vastness of the ocean of merit, the network of interdependent origination. Whatever we see, for example the scenery of the blue mountains and the ocean, has no separation from Mt. Potalaka. Each and everything in the ocean and mountains are expounding the dharma of Buddha’s wisdom and compassion. Avalokiteśvara is a symbol of this interdependence in which myriad things are supporting each other.

— • —

^[1] (Dōgen’s Extensive Record 10–28, p.616) © 2010 Taigen Dan Leighton and Shohaku Okumura, Dōgen’s Extensive Record. Reprinted by arrangement with Wisdom Publications, Inc., www.wisdompubs.org.
^[2] Translations by Gene Reeves from The Lotus Sūtra: A Contemporary Translation of a Buddhist Classic (Wisdom Publications, 2008) p.378–379.
^[3]This is Okumura’s unpublished translation. Dōgen discusses this kōan in Shōbōgenzō Mujō-seppō (The Dharma-expounding of Insentient beings).

— • —

Translation and commentary by Shōhaku Okumura Roshi.

— • —

For further study:

See Dōgen’s Extensive Record.
See The Lotus Sutra.

> More of Dōgen Zenji’s Chinese Poems

Teacher and student: the dog’s buddha nature

Mattias Johansson from Halmstad, Sweden / CC BY-SA

A monk asked Zhaozhou, “Does a dog have a buddha-nature or not?”
Zhaozhou said, “Yes.”
The monk said, “Since it has, why is it then in this skin bag?”
Zhaozhou said, “Because he knows yet deliberately transgresses.”
Another monk asked Zhaozhou, “Does a dog have a buddha-nature or not?”
Zhaozhou said, “No.”
The monk said, “All sentient beings have buddha-nature—why does a dog have none, then?”
Zhaozhou said, “Because he still has impulsive consciousness.”^[1]

The koan about Zhaozhou’s (Jp. Joshu’s) dog appears as Case 18 in the Shoyoroku (Book of Serenity). The main point of the interpretation of this koan in the Shoyoroku concerns Zhaozhou’s teaching method. In the first part of the koan, Zhaozhou offers buddha nature by saying “u,” indicating yes, a dog does have buddha nature. In other words, “Here it is, you have a buddha nature”– it’s a kind of encouragement. You have a precious jewel, so you have to take care of this and practice. In the second part of the koan, to the another monk, who has already matured in practice, and doesn’t rely on whether or not he has buddha nature, Zhaozhou removes this encouragement by saying “mu,” indicating that a dog does not have buddha nature. Zhaozhou says there’s no such thing called buddha nature.

First Zhaozhou gave buddha nature – here you are, you have buddha nature, so practice diligently, take care of it, become free from your delusion, and the beauty of this jewel reveals itself. That is a type of teaching for beginning students. To the mature student, Zhaozhou said there’s no such thing called buddha nature. It’s just an illusion. So he took it away, and he knew that student would be all right without that concept of buddha nature. For Zhaozhou himself, buddha nature is neither “u” nor “mu,” but he could say “u” or “mu” depending on the person’s need. That is basically the interpretation in Shoyoroku of the story of a dog’s buddha nature.

In a funny way, a teacher is always deceiving students, and the student neither perfectly nor completely trusts the teacher. That is a problem. If you are lucky, you meet the right teacher, but as a beginner we cannot really evaluate the teacher, so we cannot tell whether this teacher is trustworthy or not. This is a really difficult point, but this is what Uchiyama Roshi said – the teacher is just an ordinary human being. In this case, the teacher he was referring to was Sawaki Kodo Roshi – he was a really great teacher. But Uchiyama Roshi practiced very closely with Sawaki Roshi for twenty-five years, until his death, so he knew Sawaki Roshi was not a special person, but an ordinary human being. Uchiyama Roshi’s important point was to understand that all people, even Zen masters, are ordinary human beings. But as students we need to study Dharma from that person.

In this case from the Book of Serenity, the Dharma we need to study is about buddha nature and karmic nature, or karmic consciousness. Even a great teacher like Sawaki Roshi has both. Uchiyama Roshi said many people studying with Sawaki Roshi were attracted by his karmic features. Sawaki Roshi was a very strong, strict, and very attractive person, as a karmic being. Many people practiced with Sawaki Roshi because of that attraction. But that was not Sawaki Roshi’s Dharma, according to Uchiyama Roshi. What Sawaki Roshi did was just sitting. Not so many people sat like Sawaki Roshi, but they loved to listen to Sawaki Roshi talking. Uchiyama Roshi said that we as students need to study the person’s Dharma, not the person’s karma. Karma means karmic attribute – their good points and bad points, as they are the person’s – how can I say? – characters, or personalities. But as a beginner we cannot tell which is Dharma which is karma.

Somehow I became attracted to Uchiyama Roshi’s way of life. At that time I knew nothing about Buddhism, or Zen. I didn’t know even what he was doing. But somehow what he wrote in his book and how he lived his own life was very attractive to me. So somehow I was sucked into that path. I was so fortunate that it was when I was seventeen years old; now I am sixty-five, so more than forty years I walked this path, only this path, and I have no regret. I think it’s really a rare thing. I know some people who have had some difficulty with their teachers and then quit their practice. There’s no one hundred percent safe way. Somehow we have to find our own path. It’s really difficult to make judgments about teachers. When we judge and evaluate teachers, then we can’t be really a true student. We have to accept everything the teacher can offer to be a real student. But we cannot tell if what the person is offering is really true Dharma or not, because we don’t know yet. So we need to go through a really difficult process to find out if this is really my teacher, and if I really want to be this person’s student. This is not an easy path. On the one hand we have to accept everything from the teacher, and at the same time, we have to doubt.

Dogen said in Shobogenzo Jisho zanmai that whether we study Dharma following the teacher or following the text, we’re studying the self – ourselves. So that means we have to – how can I say? – accept everything the teacher can offer, and yet we should not rely on that person. It’s kind of contradictory, but both are important. That means we need to walk on our own legs, our own feet.

That is another thing Uchiyama Roshi taught me. It was right on the day after I was ordained as a priest. For the ordination ceremony – I was twenty-two years old – my father came, and as a greeting to Uchiyama Roshi, my father asked him, “Please take care of my son.” The next day Uchiyama Roshi said to me, “Even though your father asked me to take care of you, I cannot take care of you. It’s not possible. You have to walk on your own legs.”

Uchiyama Roshi also said he never watches his students, but he is walking toward the path he needs to walk, toward the direction he needs to walk. That’s his own practice. If I want to be his disciple, I need to walk toward the same direction with my own legs. To me, this is a really interesting thing. Basically what he said is: “Don’t rely on me.” Therefore, I accept this teaching, and I try not to rely on him, except as an example of Dharma practice. And by doing this, I completely rely on him. So both are there. This teacher-student relationship I think is the same as the one between parents and children. The parents’ goal is to raise children to make them independent – “Don’t rely on me, or on us.” But to do so, the children need to rely on the parents. This is an interesting aspect of our life.

— • —

^[1] Thomas Cleary, trans., Book of Serenity: One Hundred Zen Dialogues (Boston, Mass.: Shambhala, 2005), p. 76.

— • —

Commentary by Shōhaku Okumura Roshi

The Dōgen Institute offers an occasional series of perspectives on koans from Okumura Roshi. This is the first of the series. These perspectives are taken from Okumura Roshi’s recorded lectures, and are lightly edited.

— • —

For further study:

- Read Book of Serenity

> Other posts on koans

Podcast: Stories from Modern Zen Masters

Wisdom Publications, which publishes many of Okumura Roshi’s books, recently invited Okumura Roshi to record an episode in their series of podcasts.

“For this episode, host Daniel Aitken speaks with Shohaku Okumura Roshi, Japanese Soto Zen priest and revered writer and translator. Shohaku Okumura is also the founder and current abbot of the Sanshin Zen Community in Bloomington, Indiana. In this conversation, you’ll hear Okumura Roshi tell powerful stories, not only from his own life, but from the lives of his teachers: Zen Master Kosho Uchiyama, and the great Kodo Sawaki Roshi, one of the most influential Soto Zen teachers of the twentieth century. Okumura Roshi explains the emphasis on zazen over monastic rituals within his lineage, drawing parallels to both Dogen’s teachings as well his teachers’ own personal encounters with zazen. You’ll also hear how this emphasis on zazen has played out in Okumura Roshi’s own development as a practitioner as well as his development as a translator later in life.”