Encouraging Words : Zen Buddhist Teachings for Western Students
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'X iSmISS,70’1 PUBLIC LIBRARY R0025546673 rCLCt L vtr err z n buddhist% teachings for western students FPT $23.00 U.S.A. $29.00 Can. 'The inspiration that guided monks and nuns in ancient times is our own deepest incentive as we establish our practice in a world that desper¬ ately needs new forms of kinship and love/' — Herbert A £ t t c n * As the senior Zen master in the West, Aitken Roshi stands at the forefront of a pursuit both unprecedented and complex: the creation of an American Zen. Through his writings and teaching he provides an introduction to Zen practice at once faithful to Eastern tradition and responsive to Western problems and attitudes. His Writings are remarkable for their clarity and insight. Encouraging Words is a collection of short talks and brief essays that Aitken has offered his students at extended meditation retreats during the past two decades. These essays and talks are arranged according to themes central to all spiritual seekers, such as "Attention," "Coming and Going," "Emptiness," "Dili¬ gence," "Death and the Afterlife," "The Sacred Self," "The Moral Path." Aitken Roshi provides guidance on pursuing religious practice in a lay context, "re-casting the Dharma to include women, jobs, and family, a fascinating course with many pitfalls." He also charts his own quest to develop a set of moral codes in keeping with Buddhism's basic precepts and honoring the enormous ethical challenges faced in the twen¬ tieth century. Also included is The Syllabus, containing a A "Lattice of the Dharma," which includes the major tenets of Buddhism articulated in their shortest forms as vows and promises, a section ( c cr n fc t n i< c d ix n (rack- -fLa-fx) Digitized by the Internet Archive in 2018 with funding from Kahle/Austin Foundation https://archive.org/details/encouragingwordsOOOOaitk Encouraging Words ALSO BY ROBERT AITKEN The Dragon Who Never Sleeps The Gateless Barrier The Mind of Clover Taking the Path of Zen A Zen Wave Encouraging Words Zen Buddhist Teachings for Western Students ROBERT AITKEN Pantheon Books, New York and San Francisco Copyright © 1993 by Robert Aitken All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Pantheon Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Portions of “Words in the DdjS” were previously published in Blind Donkey. “Words from the Roshi” were previously published in newsletters of the Diamond Sangha. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data [Aitken, Robert, 1917— Encouraging words / Robert Aitken. p. cm. 1. Spiritual life — Zen Buddhism. 2. Zen Buddhism — Doctrines. I. Title. BQ9288.A35 1993 294.3 ^444 — dc2o 92-50467 ISBN 0-679-4170 i-X Book Design by Maura Fadden Rosenthal Manufactured in the United States of America First Edition For Anne Wishing to entice the blind, The Buddha has playfully let words escape his golden mouth; Heaven and earth are ever since filled with entangling briars. — Daio Kokushi (Translated by Daisetz T. Suzuki, Manual of Zen Buddhism) CONTENTS Acknowledgments xiii Introduction xv WORDS IN THE DOJO Introduction 3 The First Night 6 Coming Home 9 The World Does Zazen 11 Emptiness 14 Condition 17 The Single Point 22 Carry Your Practice Lightly 24 Attention 27 Coming and Going 30 Patience 3 3 The Sacred Self 3 5 Becoming Settled 38 Switch Back to Mu 40 CONTENTS Diligence 43 The Dark Night 48 Simple and Clear 51 Like a Dream 53 The Last Night 54 Afterword 56 Notes 57 WORDS FROM THE ROSHI Introduction 63 The Middle Way 65 Using the Self 68 Ordinary Mind Is the Tao 73 Cycles and Stages 79 The Moral Path 86 Dreams and Archetypes 94 Impermanence 105 The Lay Sangha 107 Koan Study and Its Implications 118 Integrity and Nobility 123 The Net of Indra 127 Nonviolence within the Zendo and Outside About Practice 136 Death and the Afterlife 147 Notes 148 THE SYLLABUS 15 Introduction 157 Lattice of the Dharma 161 Wu-men kuan: Case I 166 CONTENTS xi The Zen Buddhist Sutra Book 168 Schedule of Services 168 The Gathas 170 The Sutras and a Dharanl 172 The Dedications and the Evening Message 180 Mealtime Sutras 185 The Jukai Ceremony 189 Roshi’s Introduction 189 The Three Vows of Refuge 190 The Three Pure Precepts 191 The Ten Grave Precepts 191 Verse of the Rakusu 194 Dedication 195 The Sesshin 197 Daily Schedule 197 Leadership 198 The Three Essentials 200 Doj5 Percussion Instruments 202 A Glossary of Buddhist Terms and Usages 205 An Annotated Bibliography 224 \ ACKNOWLEDGMENTS First and foremost, I am grateful to my teacher, Yamada K5un Roshi, whose exacting guidance and compassionate trust encour¬ aged me to stand on my own feet. David Steinkraus helped me to edit these pieces, to arrange them in good order, and to sort out and correct the back matter. Jack Shoemaker of Pantheon Books deftly brought coherence to the manuscript with his developmental editing, and Jason Binford accordingly helped to rearrange the text and prepared the index. Nil Ozbek transcribed many of the pieces, Trish Dougherty and Johanna Bangeman the others. Anne Aitken studied the penulti¬ mate draft and made cogent suggestions. It was Anne’s idea to note down my extemporaneous “Words in the Doj5,” and she insisted that I record them when she was absent. We used the occasion of preparing the manuscript of this book to revise the translations in our Daily Zen Buddhist Sutras for inclusion in the Syllabus. We held classes at Koko An to discuss XIV ACKNOWLEDGMENTS some of them. Joseph Bobrow, Kazuaki Tanahashi, and Norman Waddell sent helpful recommendations from afar. Ryozo Yama- guchi, Priest of the Myoshinji branch temple on Maui, shared his expertise generously. I am grateful to all members and friends for their loving support over the years as this book gradually came together. Finally, I wish to acknowledge the lifework of such eminent students of Buddhism as Thomas Cleary, Daisetz T. Suzuki, and Kazuaki Tanahashi, whose translations I cite for reference. I work with less accessible texts in Chinese and Japanese as well, so my translations will sometimes differ from those cited. R.A. Koko An Zendo Spring Training Period, 1992 INTRODUCTION The establishment of Zen Buddhism in the West can be traced to Dr. Daisetz T. Suzuki’s Essays in Zen Buddhism: First Series, published in London by Luzac in 1928. At about that same time the monk Senzaki Nyogen Sensei established the first Western Zen center in San Francisco. There had been earlier introductions, notably with the appearance of Shaku Soen Zenji at the World Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1892, and with the trans¬ mission of Zen and Ch’an Buddhism to the United States around the turn of the century to serve immigrant populations. It was Suzuki and Senzaki, however, who cleared the way for the natu¬ ralization of Zen as something Western. Dr. Suzukfs three vol¬ umes of essays on Zen, his Training of a Zen Buddhist Monk, Manual of Zen Buddhism, and other works introduced the religion to West¬ ern intellectuals, and Senzaki Sensei’s teaching centers offered the way of practice. Sasaki Shigetsu Roshi followed soon after Sen¬ zaki, and founded the Zen Buddhist Society of America in New XVI INTRODUCTION York, later renamed the First Zen Institute of New York. More roshis followed: Suzuki Shunryu founded the Zen Center of San Francisco in the early 1960s, and later in that same decade Sasaki Joshu established centers in Southern California and New Mexico, Nakagawa Soen and Yasutani Haku’un led retreats in Hawaii and on the East and West coasts of the United States, and Maezumi Haku’yu established the Zen Center of Los Angeles. These teach¬ ers and others were able to encourage the growth of a Zen movement in North America and elsewhere in the Western world. The Diamond Sangha is part of this larger movement, and was established in Honolulu in 1959. Finally, in more recent times, Korean and Vietnamese teachers have enriched the process. As Western Zen students we have experienced certain problems during the acculturation process, some of them relating to our own perceptions and motives. It has been clear from the outset that Zen Buddhism offers understanding and strengths we missed in our own ways of life, but as we got better acquainted with our new religion, we have found that it was monastic, and perhaps not readily translatable into our egalitarian society. Certain cultural accretions are firmly embedded in the traditional way and seem unsuitable in the Western context. Our task, in relatively short order, has been to distinguish what is relevant from what is not, and to turn on some lamps that our ancestors left dark — no easy chore. One such lamp would illuminate the lay path of marriage, children, and career. As Westerners our natural predilection is to seek ways to practice rigorously at home and in the workplace, a path some ancestral teachers thought impossible. Moreover, the unspoken understanding in the Far East has been that Zen is a practice for men. We are recasting the Dharma to include women, jobs, and family — a fascinating course with many pitfalls. A stick¬ ing point has been the lack of any specifically Buddhist moral code within the teaching of Japanese Zen masters. Though Ma- hayana Buddhism, the tradition of the Buddha Way found in East Asia, teaches the innate value of each being and the essential INTRODUCTION XVII harmony of the universe, we find the Precepts of the Buddha treated metaphysically rather than practically in the Zen tradition.