Transcultural Zen Sōma Shōei’S Training with Korean Masters
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Chapter Four Transcultural Zen Sōma Shōei’s Training with Korean Masters ne afternoon in late April of 1929, a young Japanese Sōtō Zen priest Oarrived at a large temple in the mountains of southeastern Korea. He wore a traditional long, white robe in the Korean style and carried letters of recommendation from influential Japanese and Korean lay Buddhists. His name was Sōma Shōei (1904–71), and he had just grad- uated from Komazawa University the year before.1 Sōma sat down anxiously before the abbot of Pŏmŏ Temple and, through an inter- preter, begged the abbot to permit him to join the monastery’s three- month meditation retreat. He had long wished to learn Zen meditation from the great masters of Korea. The abbot, Kim Kyŏngsan (1852–?), replied, Although we have a meditation hall here in this head temple, it is against the rules to accept anybody in the middle of retreat. In addition, the monastic regulations will be too strict for you to follow. Moreover, it will be quite disruptive to the other monks already in retreat if somebody who is unfamiliar with our language, customs, and culture suddenly joins us. What do you think about practicing meditation at a nearby 1. Sōma was born in Niigata Prefecture (Sōtōshū shūhō 767 [July 1929]: 6). Little else is known of his early life except that he was affiliated with the Tentaku’in in Aichi Prefecture (Sōtōshū shūhō 764 [April 1929]: 10). 144 Chapter Four branch temple, one that also has a meditation hall and that can accom- modate your needs?2 Sōma was so eager to join a meditation retreat of any kind that he was not disappointed by the abbot’s reply. He hurried over to the branch temple a quarter mile away and received permission to enter the retreat there. Thus began Sōma’s six-year relationship, from 1929 to 1936, with Korean Buddhism. During these years, he did retreats at different Korean monasteries, studied with Korean Sŏn (Ch. Chan; Jp. Zen) masters, made pilgrimages to major temples and religious sites, and traveled throughout Korea. Sōma wrote at length about all these expe- riences, compiling the most extensive firsthand account and perhaps the only account of colonial Korean Buddhism ever written by a Japa- nese Buddhist priest. Sōma’s youth and determination to practice in Korea seem to have kept him relatively free from ideological interpretations of his monastic experiences. His narratives lack an air of Japanese superiority and reveal a deep respect for Korean masters and his fellow meditation practi- tioners. His writing also shows that he primarily identified himself as an unsui, an itinerant monk—a monastic modality that Zen monks in China, Korea, and Japan had used for centuries with origins in the practices of the historical Buddha. This transnational and transcul- tural modality allowed Sōma to share a feeling of brotherhood with the Korean Sŏn monastics he met and vice versa. As a result of his time in Korea, his understanding of Zen practice and Buddhism was trans- formed. More important, his writings on Korean Sŏn had a significant impact on how Japanese Buddhists viewed Korean Buddhism as well as how they understood their own identity as Buddhists. More broadly, Sōma’s accounts furthered the idea, under discussion among Buddhist leaders and intellectuals, that Zen Buddhism, as opposed to other forms of Buddhism, could appeal to modern East Asians. This chapter explores Sōma’s adventures in Korea to argue that traditional Buddhist ideas, practices, and worldview, including the unsui modality, continued to be operative for Buddhists in the modern period. In other words, Buddhist transnationalism in the modern pe- riod comprised not just modern elements such as governmentality 2. Daruma Zen 16 (1929): 290..