To view a statue carved by the Busshi—a community of Japanese sculptors who create intricate wooden replicas of Buddhas and bodhisattvas—is to view a style of sculpture that has been virtually unchanged for nearly 1,400 years.

In Yujiro Seki’s documentary Carving the Divine: Buddhist Sculptures of Japan—which is currently available to watch for free as part of Tricycle‘s Film Club series—viewers get an inside look at how the Busshi have passed on their meticulous carving techniques from generation to generation. The film introduces us to Master Koun Seki, who has devoted his life to his craft while also running a school for apprentices and other emerging artists. Watching Master Seki interact with his pupils, viewers quickly learn that the craft requires immense dedication.

Tricycle spoke with Yujiro Seki about this ancient art form and its preservation.

How would you describe the traditions of the Busshi to those who are unfamiliar with this community?
Simply put, Busshi are the practitioners of a 1,400-year-old lineage of Buddhist wood carving that’s at the heart of Japanese Buddhism. The Busshi tradition was most likely introduced by the artisans from the Asian continent, one of whom was Tori Busshi, in the mid-seventh century. At first, the styles of Japanese Buddhist sculptures were very similar to their contemporaries from China and Korea, and the primary material they used was bronze instead of wood. But around the 11th century, because of Japan’s diplomatic break from China and the advent of a legendary Busshi named Jocho, among other factors, Japanese Busshi began producing their own style, called Wayo style.

Even today, the craft of a Busshi differs considerably from Western notions of creativity. Busshi are almost always required to create the exact figures that have been established by generations of predecessors—though Carving the Divine features one great exception to this rule. This rootedness in tradition has led to an almost unbelievable level of technique and stylistic refinement among Busshi. Throughout history, Busshi have worked closely with the government, temples, wealthy patrons, and middle-class laypeople. Undoubtedly, the Busshi tradition is one of the greatest legacies of Japan.

What inspired you to create a film about these carvers?
Making a documentary about Busshi was the last thing I had in mind when I was younger. I am a son of a butsudan (Buddhist altar/furniture) maker. When I was little, I was surrounded by Buddhist objects: furniture, statues, incense, shrines, and so on. My father took me to temples all the time, where he’d meet with clients, so I didn’t think there was anything special about the environment I grew up in. It was just a part of family business.

When I became a young adult, I grew fascinated with the art of cinema and came to the United States to pursue the path of a filmmaker. By being so far away from home, interacting with people from different cultures and seeing different kinds of art, I finally realized that the environment that I grew up in was special, and developed a new appreciation for Buddhist art.

I found that modern Busshi would be the perfect subject to put my heart into. Though many aspects of Japanese culture have been appreciated by the Western world, the Busshi tradition remains virtually unknown outside of Japan. Since my family had been in the Buddhist furniture and statues business for so long, I had access to the Busshi world. I knew my Japanese identity would allow me to make a movie few others could, and believed my American sensibility help me share it effectively with a Western audience.

Do people training to become Busshi spend a lot time studying Buddhist teachings and texts?
I’m sorry to dispel idealized notions of the Buddhist carver, but at least in initially developing one’s craft, having a deep understanding of Buddhism has nothing to do with becoming a successful carver.

In order to complete the “hard training,” as it’s called, having talent, patience, and perseverance are basic prerequisites. But I did find it interesting that, just like learning a language, the younger the apprentice, the faster he or she was generally able to learn about this craft. If you become wrapped up in your ego and refuse to suppress your anger and disobey your master, you make little progress and will quickly be dismissed.  The only way to survive is to diligently listen to your master even if you think they are wrong. So whereas I didn’t see much connection between pupils’ purported passion for Buddhism and their success at carving, the Buddhist values of patience, of overcoming the ego, and the conscious negation of suffering would all be very valuable to a Busshi in training.

How do novices adapt to this lifestyle where they are expected to be so obedient?
The Busshi culture is the epitome of a micro-authoritarian society, where the hierarchical structure is firmly established and there is no place for negotiation. The master holds power almost like that of a god. You must always obey your master—period. Below the masters, there are various degrees of seniors. If you are a novice, you cannot disobey the seniors. If you’re bullied you can talk to your master, but most of the time you must tolerate unreasonable living circumstances. It is common for novices to not even be allowed to work on wood, but constantly be kept busy with menial work for a quite some time.

Yes, the biggest challenge is to suppress your emotions, go with the flow of things, and accept the tradition as it is.

I was struck by one quote by one of the senior sculptors who essentially says that younger artists should try their hardest to attract foreign interest in their work because Japanese people tend to overlook Buddhist art, as they are desensitized to it. Have you found that to be the case?
Though this statement could be a mere opinion of one person, I believe it contains some brutal truth. As Japanese people, we grow up with treasures around us—to the extent that it’s hard to appreciate them because we see them all the time. I am a perfect example of this: I grew up seeing Japanese Buddhist objects more than an average Japanese person because of my family’s business, and I didn’t have any appreciation for them, because while they were amazing, they were also so familiar. It wasn’t until I left Japan, lived abroad, and saw Japan from the outside that I developed a new appreciation for Buddhist art.

Related: Kamakura Craftsmanship

It’s very difficult for Japanese people to see what’s truly in front of them in these sculptures. And the fact there’s still a craftsman occupation called a Busshi—artisans who make and fix these sculptures—never even crosses the mind of most Japanese people today.

Nonetheless, this is an artistic tradition that needs to be more widely appreciated to be kept alive. So I think this statement by the Busshi in the film is not about forgetting Japanese opinion and only seeking the approval from abroad, but leveraging recognition from abroad to remind Japanese people of the treasures that lie in front of them.

Update (1/23/2019): Yujiro Seki has changed the name of his documentary from Carving the Divine: The Way of Būshi, Buddhist Sculptors of Japan to Carving the Divine: Buddhist Sculptors of Japan. He has also switched the English spelling of the Japanese word Būshi in his film to the more commonly used Busshi. (Not to be confused with bushi, another term for samurai.) The article has been updated to reflect these changes.

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This article was originally published on June 1st, 2018.

The post Carving the Buddha—the Same Way—for 1,400 Years appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

I came into this world with a great debt—my mother gave her own life in order to give birth to me. She already had three children, and when she was pregnant with me she was diagnosed with stomach cancer. The doctor urged her to apologize to the baby and to have the cancer removed from her stomach. Those around her, my father as well, tried to persuade her to do it, but she stood firm, vowing “This baby in my belly is going to be born.”

I was born on August 24, the day we worship Jizo Bodhisattva. After that it was too late for the surgery. Just before she died, she very clearly expressed herself to those close to her: “Even after I die, I will care for and protect this child.” She must have prayed fiercely for my protection. She died before my first birthday, and left me in the care of Jizo Bodhisattva.

When I was still very young, when I came to understand what my mother had done for me, I wrote on a piece of paper “My mother laid down her life for me. What does she mean for me to do with this gift?” I continuously wondered what it was that I should do with this life. What was my mother telling me?

A deep questioning arose in me. Whenever I felt a touch of a wind or looked up at the sky overhead, I would ask myself  “What is there down deep beneath the surface of things? There is something I feel but don’t understand. I sense its presence, but I can’t take hold of it.” My inability to answer those questions was a source of such discontentment that I always felt separated from people and things.

I would ride my bicycle home, past shops with their lights shining brightly. The streets were still bustling with people at that time. There were old people, young people, people in between, and as I rode through the streets, with groups of people passing under the bright lights, I would be asking myself “There is life, and all these people are living it. But what is this life? There is something, there is something . . .”

I kept searching, thinking that I had never really been given the opportunity to understand the reason for living. When I was seventeen, I thought I had found it.

I resolved to become like a chair. A chair doesn’t refuse its services to anybody; it just takes care of the sitter and lets them rest their legs. After it has served its purpose, no one gets up and gives thanks or offers words of kindness to the chair. It will more likely get kicked out of the way. The chair doesn’t grumble or complain or bear a grudge, but just takes whatever is given.

A chair doesn’t plop itself down on top of the sitter, right? When there is a job to be done, it puts forth all its energy without picking and choosing according to its desires. I thought “Wouldn’t it be great to have such a heart?” I wrote on a big sheet of paper “Be like a chair,” and every day I took note of how close I came. If even a little dissatisfaction arose, I would regard that as a disgraceful state of mind for a chair. I considered how thoroughly I was of use to others. If I possibly could, I wanted to put others before myself. The endeavor was not at all forced or unnatural; it arose from life itself and was enjoyable, not painful.

Then the war began. We were told by the government that Japan was in real danger. We had to fight against enemies who were portrayed by military propaganda as if they were devils themselves. My perspective was severely limited. I had the sense that I must give my own life to protect those close to me—my parents, my siblings, my teachers, my friends, my fellow countrymen. I was still bound, tied down by a false sense of place, attached to boundaries, to us versus them. I believed that there was an enemy. I didn’t have a sense of wanting to kill or to save my own life, but I wanted to give it to save others.

I volunteered to fly as a kamikaze pilot. My goal in life was already to be of service to others, so sparing my own life was not a factor for me. I gave myself to the training that was required.

I was only nineteen, the youngest one in my company. The training was very strict; they didn’t give us any leeway at all—the slightest mistake and we were out. They were not worried about the human life involved, but they wanted to protect the airplanes. So to get the license you had to be extremely careful. We had to line up in front of military officers responsible for our training, and I was asked “What is your weak point?” I answered that I was prone to act on my own authority, to decide on my own to do something and do it. “That’s not a shortcoming,” I was told. “When the control stick is in your hand, any number of things can happen, and you have to be able to decide and react immediately. You won’t have any time to consult anyone else. You must act on your own authority. So it is a strength,” they said.

Then they asked me what my strength was. “Acting with resolve,” I said. “When I commit to doing something, I don’t back down or get discouraged midway. I definitely carry through with my goal.” But now I see that this wasn’t much of a strength, because when you don’t know what’s right you can carry through with the wrong aim.

We trained hard, finishing in just one year a course that should have taken much longer. We were up against a large, strong country with powerful weaponry. Our hastily and poorly built planes were no match in combat for their fine ones. So our battalion was moved to Manchuria, where the pilots would wait for their orders to fly from there. One by one, the pilots would board airplanes loaded with explosives, take off and aim for large ships. If just one would hit right, a large aircraft carrier with one hundred or so planes could be sunk in one blow. That was what we were studying to do. We all wrote our last words, which were carefully folded, wrapped, and carried by the commander of our battalion. I wrote that I was ready to die for my country at any time, that even knowing I might die in training, I felt no remorse.

It was only five days after my graduation—August 15, 1945—that I was supposed to take my final flight. Other pilots went before me, giving their lives, and I waited my turn. Since I was the youngest, our commander was keeping me last in line. I had my last ritual sake cup. Just when I was on the verge of setting off, we heard the emperor on the radio announcing the unconditional surrender of Japan and the end of the war.

I couldn’t believe my ears. I was devastated, because I was not able to do anything to protect my country. Later we learned that we had been deceived by our leaders and that it was Japan who was the aggressor. I was shocked. All my comrades had given their lives, and here I was, still alive, but to what purpose? Nothing made sense to me.

All my comrades had given their lives, and here I was, still alive, but to what purpose? Nothing made sense to me.

It was then that I tasted the bitter pain of living. I suffered the anguish of being alive when so many were dead.

I was in the 24th Company, which is the number of Jizo. The bodhisattva must have followed me right into the army, because I was saved many times over. If the war had ended even one day later, I would have flown my final flight, and I wouldn’t have been able to meet with the teaching of the buddhadharma in this lifetime.

When the war ended, I was sent to a Russian prisoner of war camp for almost a year. Many of my friends died there. We had to bury the dead, yet the ground was so frozen that we couldn’t. So many soldiers died there, most of them in their twenties, dreaming of their homelands and their families.

One day, one of the Russian soldiers asked me to drink alcohol with him. He wouldn’t take no for an answer, so I had no choice but to join him. Since I was so weak and had almost never drunk alcohol before, I got very sick, and I was left in bed in the hospital. The next morning most of my fellow soldiers were sent to the labor camps in Siberia, where they died. Just on the brink of death, again my life was miraculously spared. I was taken care of.

But I couldn’t rejoice in this. I couldn’t appreciate it, not yet. I felt only anguish and despair. Those who had died, was their death in vain? What is the meaning of life? These questions stayed with me. They took over my mind. I had to find out what I could do, what was in my own power to do, to somehow, in some way, make it up to all those young men who had given their lives.

I returned to Japan on June 9, 1946. I spent the next year in suffering. Just at that time of greatest pain and anguish, a concerned friend arranged for me to see a Buddhist nun: Sozen Nagasawa Roshi, the top female disciple of Sogaku Harada Roshi. When I first met her, I knew nothing about Buddhism and I wasn’t even particularly interested in it. She told me that there was a very wise man to whom I could take my questions, someone who could help me find the answer, to help me understand the meaning of life. She arranged for me to attend the November sesshin at Hosshin-ji, where I would meet him. But in the meantime she invited me to come and sit the October sesshin at her own zendo.

At sesshin, Sozen Roshi showed me the lotus position. “Zazen is sitting full lotus; zazen equals full lotus,” I was told. So I jammed my legs in a full lotus position, and the pain was intense—I was in hell after thirty minutes. The pain ran through my body as if my legs were being sawed off at the knees. One minute was eternity, but what an incredibly good thing it was that I practiced as I was instructed, without trying to sneak away from it.

Fortunately, I was told to count my breaths. The practice in her temple was to count out loud during sesshin, and I counted so enthusiastically that the glass of the windows rattled. The children who were out playing near the zendo could hear each count, and they came up to the window and peered through the curtain at me. Then, I was asked to count in a softer voice. The zazen of even a beginner manifests the whole essential nature.

After that October sesshin I went to Hosshin-ji as planned, and I was fortunate to be given an audience with Daiun Sogaku Rodaishi, the great master who was to become my teacher. He was tiny and very thin, but he had an enormous surging power. I openly talked to him about my problem, saying “I just can’t live knowing that there were so many that had to die. What can I do in atonement?”

He told me that he understood my suffering, that I could come to be at peace, that there was a way to solve the problem of life and death at its root:

You yourself, you are still alive, so that you can forever and ever follow the path of giving. You can steadily, evermore, give your life to save others. Even with the death of this body, genuine life continues. There is something that does not die. True nature does not disperse like a mist. Knowing true life, you can be at peace. If you really want to understand the meaning of life, true life, it will take all the determination and effort that you can possibly muster. You will not realize the truth if your aim is unclear and if your practice is weak. Your resolve must be absolute. You must be prepared to persevere with single-minded conviction and effort. If you can really commit yourself to seeking this truth, to this one important thing, then you can stay here. But if you are not earnest and sincere, if your commitment is lukewarm, if you won’t be able to make a complete, whole commitment, then you can go home now.

I vowed then and there to awaken to truth, to come to realize my true nature. I had no doubts. I had already resolved to give my life once in the war, so putting my life on the line wasn’t a problem for me. My answer came from the bottom of my heart: “I will give it my all, to practice just as you show me.”

I will never forget the look in his eyes at that time, when he stared right into me—this kid, still well behind in years, who knew nothing—as I vowed to follow his teaching. His eyes were small and black as coal. How they shone when he said simply “You may stay. The Way is one. You follow this one Way, this one practice. Don’t allow your value judgments to enter into it. Be a pure white sheet of paper. Let go of everything. That is the only way.”

From then on, I did give it my all. Of course, my practice was still greedy, immature, far from perfect—but I practiced just as I was instructed. Doing each one thing, this one thing, I poured my entire being into it. I hurled myself into zazen without knowing anything about ordination, without even considering the possibility of becoming a monk myself. I simply tried to listen to my teacher’s instructions.

On the first day of each sesshin, we were told: “Those who have resolved to break through during this sesshin, make gassho.” We couldn’t get by carelessly making gassho, whether we meant it or not. If you did gassho at that time, it meant you were prepared to give your life in practice. You would break through even if it would cost you your life. You weren’t permitted the luxury of that gassho unless it was life or death.

The zendo was set up to make sure that we didn’t look away from our practice. At any given time, several monitors patrolled ready to strike anyone who was looking away in distraction. The sound of the kyosaku could always be heard, cracking, urging us to stay with it, to remain attentive to our practice. From the first round of the morning till the last round at night, we were given no slack.

Going for dokusan [a private interview between student and master] with Daiun Roshi could be really frightening. He never smiled. With just a phrase, just one word from him, sweat would pour down my back. One day I remember going into dokusan, and I sniffed through my nose. I was intending to be practicing wholeheartedly and that sniff was part of it, but it must have been posturing wholehearted practice. “What’s this? Coming in here to sniffle?” he growled at me and immediately rang me out before I had even finished my prostrations. If I didn’t put myself into it one hundred percent, I was not allowed to come into the room. An instant of carelessness, grasping, or holding, and immediately—clang, clang, clang—I was out. I often thought “He sure can see it like it is, can’t he?”

When Daiun Roshi would come into the zendo, he would walk around hitting everybody with the kyosaku. He would shout “You have all your meals provided for you, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. Your futon is ready for you to rest; you can sleep at night. So what are you dawdling over? Get on with it!” And then this long stick would fall on our shoulders. I felt the blows from the tip of my head right down to the tailbone.

At night, after the last round of zazen, I would go to the graveyard or to the forest or mountain and practice. In wintertime if I would grow sleepy during yaza [voluntary meditation time in addition to the sesshin routine], I would break a hole in the ice of the pond and jump in, then go back and continue my sitting. I made efforts in a way that I would not want anyone to try to imitate. I thought that I would concede my very life for the sake of dharma.

I have to mention as a caution that in giving my all to this practice I went overboard and ruined my health. That was not good, so Daiun Roshi told me to leave Hosshin-ji until I had recovered. While I was ill, I was blessed to meet and develop an acquaintance with Tenshu Nakano, an older monk and student of Daiun Roshi who took me under his wing and cared for me in his temple. That monk skillfully led me to become a monk myself. So when I got better, I returned to Hosshin-ji and was ordained.

I continued to give myself to the practice more and more. Daiun Roshi was very strict with me. It was taking me a long time. He continued pushing, refusing to recognize my experience, any experience that was not thoroughgoing. I made my final resolution: I would break through during the next sesshin or die. I was really serious about it; I knew it came down to this last sesshin, practicing with all my might.

I made my final resolution: I would break through during the next sesshin or die.

It must have been the seventh day of sesshin. I can never forget that morning as I sat absorbed in the samadhi of one doing, unaware of my surroundings, unaware that the dokusan bell had been sounded and the zendo was practically empty. The tanto [monk in charge of training] tapped my shoulder very gently, just a light touch—but a touch with a vast resonance. My mind opened. Even a gentle touch of encouragement can be received, can resonate unutterably, as it did for me that morning.

I flew to dokusan boldly and surely, just naturally, differently from any other time before. Up until then, if I went into dokusan and tried to say anything, Roshi would immediately ring his bell. But this time I just glided in, and Daiun Roshi breathed in deeply, swallowing me up. He stared into my eyes fiercely. For the first time a half smile appeared on his face.

That time I didn’t have to hear a bell ringing, instead my teacher said “Let’s check you.”

My responses were spontaneous, uncontrived. 

 “At last, moderate understanding,” he said, “at last.”

That night I was so filled with pure happiness that I couldn’t sleep, but I might have been dozing off and on in a state of wakeful sleep. I didn’t know if I was dreaming or not when my own mother, whom I had never seen, came to me.

From behind she wrapped her arms around me and took my hands in hers. Together, we rose into the sky. Flying through the sky, I could feel the cold air on my cheeks. She was like an angel. As we flew, she communicated this to me, though not in words but through her life: “I’m very glad; I’m so glad.” 

If I had not broken through during that last sesshin, I would not have been alive that night. I had made the final determination. But I believe that to my mother the most important thing was not that I had satori but that I had not lost my life. I believe she was expressing her deep wish that I would be protected: “I’m very glad; I’m so glad.” A mother’s mind is universal.

After that sesshin, my world was transformed. All stingy grasping fell away; all distinctions melted away. I continued to practice as Daiun Roshi instructed me, but now even if I wanted to look away, I could no longer do so. I just continued my practice. I knew true peace, that all is well. There is no inside, no outside. All is one—one all-encompassing one. This truth which I was able to accept and receive holds true, remains steady anytime, anywhere, wherever I walk on this wide, wide planet. This truth is universal. Wherever you find yourself, there is only this one truth.

Now I’ve told you the story of my experience in Zen practice, but there is a danger here. The danger is that you might get the discouraging idea that my story and experience were too dramatic and special and that you yourself could never hope to experience anything like it. This is not true. I just did the one and only thing I was told to do. I did it to the best of my ability. You cannot do what you cannot do, but you can do this one thing to your utmost. Regardless of what I did in my practice, the key remains the same for everyone—complete sincerity. You must give your all. Holding on to nothing, you must become your practice. So from my own experience, I can tell you this: If you set out to do it, it will be done—if you don’t try, it won’t be done. When something isn’t done, it is because you didn’t try to do it.

♦

Adapted from Throw Yourself into the House of Buddha: The Life and Zen Teachings of Tangen Harada Roshi by Tangen Harada, translated by Belenda Attaway Yamakawa and edited by Kogen Czarnik. Translation © 2012 by Belenda Attaway Yamakawa. Edited and revised translation © by Piotr Czarnik. Reprinted in arrangement with Shambhala Publications, Inc.

The post Break Through or Die Trying appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

It was a crisp Sunday morning in late January. I stood with a group of pilgrims lined up before a village shrine at the base of Mount Ontake. Our white robes pressed down fleeces and bulky jackets that threatened to spill out from their cotton sleeves. Suddenly, we were ordered to prostrate and bow our heads to the ground. I felt grateful to have worn ski pants as I rested my knees on a footpath of uneven cobblestone and snow. A shrill voice pierced the air, and we listened with rapt attention. This was the first oracle of the day.

The group comprised young men and women, couples, friends, and elders. We shared deep bonds forged out of neighborhood parish gatherings, chartered bus rides to Ontake, and strenuous ascents up the mountain. This and other séances over the course of the day would provide us with close encounters with Buddhist divinities and departed loved ones. Having left behind our ordinary lives in the metropolis of Nagoya, we were assembled here for another day of shared miracles on one of Japan’s most sacred peaks.

Oracle and séance are not rituals that readily align with modern notions of Buddhist practice. Those notions, however, were conceived by 19th-century intellectuals, many outside the tradition, who put forth a narrow vision of the Buddhist path. Amidst the harsh environment of a winter mountain, the pilgrims in this group were proving just how narrow that vision is.

Rising above 10,000 feet at the southern end of Japan’s Central Alps, Mount Ontake is massive in terms of elevation and surface area. It is also an active volcano, a trait that hikers and devotees were tragically reminded of when a deadly eruption killed sixty-three people there on September 27, 2014. It would take several years before pilgrims felt safe returning to the mountain.

But today’s group had been visiting the mountain long before the eruption. While some members had recently joined, others were carrying on a tradition that stretched back generations in their families. Today had begun with quiet, individual prayers at Shusshō Motogumi, the group’s temple in Nagoya, shortly before 7 a.m. Boarding a chartered bus, we journeyed several hours along highways and roads that eventually led us along a broad river valley rising into the mountains. 

The first dramatic event I witnessed that morning occurred at the village of Satomiya, which serves as the traditional entrance to the Ontake massif. In this familiar ritual, a lead guide acts as a vessel for a deceased visiting spirit or mountain deity, and an assisting guide orchestrates the encounter to ensure the safety of the spirit medium. On this particular occasion, the mythological Shinto deities Izanagi and Izanami entered the body of our lead guide. They welcomed us and noted that the weather would be calm for the day. Assisting guides performed rapid-fire mudra signs, dialogued with the visiting deities, offered saké, and instructed us on when to prostrate, rise, and so forth. Throughout this séance, our lead guide stood bolt upright and held a festooned paper wand (gohei) in front of his face to conceal the deities from the human world. 

Witnessing the presence of the divine, everyone in the group bowed and listened intently. The encounter seemed to take us out of our mundane reality and into intimate proximity with the sacred. After the deities’ farewell and the medium’s return to consciousness, life resumed. Jokes, banter, smartphone selfies, and stumbles across an icy road back to the bus.

The next event was equally dramatic, if not harrowing. Above the road were narrow steps leading to a waterfall flowing through curtains of ice. Our lead guide stripped down to a loin cloth and submerged himself under the waterfall, a regular practice in Japanese pilgrimage but not so common in the dead of winter. As one element in a regiment of ascetic cultivation (shugyō), it is intended to purify and align the practitioner with the gods (in this case, the wrathful Fudō Myōō, known in India as Acala). 

As our guide locked hands in prayer, the group vigorously chanted the Heart Sutra and other incantations to ensure his protection. Afterward, he was embraced with towels and escorted to an outdoor changing stall. 

Lunch was followed by an ascent up snow-laden steps to a cluster of memorial stones. The lower slopes of Ontake are populated by thousands of tall memorial stones dedicated to the spirits (reijin) of former guides. They provide a contact zone for meetings between the living and the dead, or in Japanese, this realm and that realm. As we gathered around one stone and adorned it with flowers and photos of a deceased member, a séance began. In an instant of transformation, our lead guide was washed over by the gentle voice and mannerisms of one of their departed guides. She came in kindred spirit, delivering messages and counsel to dear friends. Some wept, others smiled in reassurance. A few laughs erupted when she offered a word of welcome to the visiting foreigner (“Gaijin-san”). An assisting guide discreetly whispered an introduction into our lead guide’s ear to acquaint us.

Ontake has a long history of Buddhist itinerants frequenting its slopes to perform ascetic rituals, including seclusion and fasting, chants under waterfalls, and prayers to the mountain’s pantheon of buddhas and local gods. Ordinary pilgrims did not venture up its higher reaches until two ascetics guided their followers up the mountain in the late 18th century: Kakumei (1718–1786), traveling from the Kansai region in 1784, and Fukan (1731–1801), arriving from Kantō in 1794. Generations of pilgrims have since traced their roots back to them. Over time, they formed pilgrimage associations that collectively worshiped the mountain and its resident deities. Under the leadership of pilgrimage guides (sendatsu), they conducted services at neighborhood temples and on the mountain. It is important to note, here, though, that women were historically barred from climbing many sacred peaks, including Ontake, as misogynistic discourse over notions of female impurity led to fears of invoking the mountain gods’ wrath should they enter. Although the government banned these restrictions in 1872, ideas about impurity, especially menstruation, continue to surface, and religious institutions remain androcentric.

Worship at Ontake has typically blended Buddhism, Shinto, and Shugendō (Japan’s premier mountain-based tradition). Ascetic priests and itinerants historically performed services on behalf of various deities and spirits centered on appeasement, gratitude, and teachings of the Buddha. They prayed to divine embodiments of the natural world (boulders, waterfalls, trees, mountains), ancestral spirits, numinous dragons, and even vengeful ghosts (who required pacification). In doing so, they brought local deities and those who worshiped them into the Buddhist worldview. 

Local mountain deities were believed to dwell in symbiosis with the Mahayana pantheon of awakened buddhas and bodhisattvas. Collectively, they provided water to the plains below via the mountain streams, and when summoned by the spiritually advanced, they granted mountain priests heightened abilities in divination, healing, and merit accumulation. As pilgrimage to sacred peaks became widespread in the 18th century, more and more people ventured to higher elevations to meet and pray to the divinities themselves. 

Then, religious sites in Japan underwent a radical transformation in the late 19th century. The Meiji government (1868–1912) promulgated the separation of Buddhism and Shinto in 1868, a policy that had sweeping effects on religious communities nationwide. In response, the Ontake pilgrimage associations nominally became Shinto organizations, but this did not stop them from engaging in Buddhist practices and beliefs. In their parish temples and on the mountain, they continued to invoke buddhas and bodhisattvas in prayer, chant sutras, perform mudras, and wear prayer beads. In the subsequent century and a half, pilgrimage continues to encompass elements of Buddhism and Shinto. Because neither tradition is maintained by a strong sense of personal, communal, or institutional identity, the majority of practitioners do not see this type of synthesis as problematic.

In the early 20th century, the Ontake pilgrimage rivaled that of any other mountain in Japan, including Mount Fuji, drawing tens of thousands of pilgrims from Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, and beyond every summer. That said, annual government survey statistics reveal a long-term decline since at least the 1970s, which can be attributed to the country’s aging population, occupational shifts away from self-employment and small businesses (operated by many devotees), and disrupted community and family networks as younger generations gravitate from towns and villages toward the major cities.

My introduction to Ontake worship had come from vivid, if not unsettling, accounts dating back to the late 19th century. As visitors from Europe and the United States landed on Japanese soil with increasing frequency, some chronicled their explorations for a Western readership captivated by the Far East. These impressions provided illuminating windows into Japanese ritual life but, at the same time, eerily placed their subjects in realms of the exotic and nonmodern. The Bostonian businessman, author, and astronomer Percival Lowell began his famous book Occult Japan: or The Way of the Gods, an Esoteric Study of Japanese Personality and Possession (1894) with a description of a “strange” and “ungodly” séance on the summit of Ontake. He summed it up in sweeping fashion: “There proved to exist a regular system of divine possession, an esoteric cult imbedded in the very heart and core of the Japanese character and instinct, with all the strangeness of that to us enigmatical race.”

Two years later, Walter Weston, a British Anglican minister celebrated as the founder of modern alpinism in Japan, offered another account. While many of his writings portray mountain worship in Japan in respectful terms, he, too, mused on the “weirdness” of a series of Buddhist mudras performed on Ontake in a similar séance: “Each twist, each knot, has its own meaning, and resembles a sort of dumb alphabet, spoken with all the expression that physical action can put into it. For language it is really meant to be addressed to those invisible powers of evil against whose malevolence the pilgrim is appealing for protection.” At first glance, the accounts of Lowell and Weston reflect a sense of cultural superiority and Orientalism common at the time. On a deeper level, however, they represent formative ideas about what constitutes acceptable forms of religious faith and what gets excluded. 

Defining religion as a distinct component of the human experience, 19th-century Western intellectuals naturally drew from their Protestant values and Enlightenment ideals, privileging textual authority over lived religion, belief over ritual, and spirituality over materiality. Popular practices outside formal institutions—divinations, exorcisms, and séances like the ones on Mount Ontake—were deemed superstitious and needed to be expunged from religion. 

Under this thinking, theologians like Edwin Arnold, Henry Olcott, and Paul Carus attempted to “correct” contemporary Asian Buddhism, promoting their vision of a rational, ethical, and scientific tradition at its core. In Japan, interlocutors like the cosmopolitan Zen priest Shaku Sōen joined this movement at events like the World’s Parliament of Religions in Chicago in 1893. As scholar Donald Lopez puts it, there was no place for superstition and unenlightened behavior in this new convergence of Buddhism and science.      

Protestant Buddhism and its paternalistic impulses do not die quickly. Nor does its bedfellow, Orientalism. And long after the dismissive remarks of 19th-century visitors to Japan, there has still been little attempt to understand the ritual life of Ontake pilgrimage. As I witnessed on Ontake firsthand, however, these practices and the surrounding communities reveal a broader, more inclusive scope of how we might understand the Buddhist path.

The culmination of the Sunday in January came at a goma temple in a series of powerful rituals. The goma is an empowering fire ritual that traces back to ancient India, where it was adopted into Buddhism. Our lead guide, taking bundles of wooden sticks purchased by parishioners and dedicated to themselves and their loved ones, sat cross-legged before the altar and built a lurching Jenga-like tower that rose to his eye level. Flames spiraled into the air, higher with each successive build, licking the ventilation shaft in the ceiling. On two occasions, flaming sticks pitched off the tower and dropped onto his lap and between his seat and the altar. Smoke encircled the room as the group vigorously chanted sutras and mantras, rattled bells, and blew conch-shell trumpets to help control the fire while enhancing its efficacious benefits. One parishioner collected our prayer beads so he could wave them through the fire, purifying and emblazing them with healing powers that we could rub onto aching limbs and joints.

As the fire dimmed, all fell quiet. A deity had once again taken over the body and voice of our guide. Springing from the seat cushion in a deft 180-degree turn, Nyoirin Kannon faced us and announced her presence. Typically female in Japan, Nyoirin is one form of the bodhisattva Kannon (Ch. Guanyin, Skt. Avalokiteshvara). She is especially popular among women and parents for fertility, childbirth, and healthy children. Embodying her, our guide sank into the form of a tender, feminine figure gracing the room with her divine presence. All leaned forward in quiet anticipation.

We were tapped to line up to commune with Nyoirin Kannon one at a time. She spoke to each person with the compassion emblematic of a loving bodhisattva. Each encounter brought an intimate exchange of soothing whispers, healing rubs to arms and thighs, and responding nods of recognition and gratitude. As a participant observer, I felt somewhat uneasy when called forward myself. I politely nodded through most of her counsel, yet was taken off guard when she informed me of my grandmother’s presence by our side. Nyoirin’s departure was sad and protracted, like a parent saying goodbye to a child. She thanked me for making the trip from Fukuoka and invited me to return for the group’s summer ascent of Ontake.

I reflected on the day on my return home. Its events were not simply empty rituals passed down from the previous generation and now upheld out of familial obligation. They did not feel like superstitious forays into the strange and exotic, as earlier Western intellectuals would have us believe. Instead, this brief Sunday pilgrimage conferred simple, if not powerful, touchstones of joy. The chance to reconnect with a departed loved one, to pray for an auspicious year, to be surrounded by a caring community, to share a delicious meal—as well as several gifts rare in this world—visits from distant deities, healing hands, and for a few, the ability to host spirits of the divine in their bodies. 

The post Reimagining the Path: Buddhist Séances and Oracles on a Japanese Mountain appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

When I was a girl, I was very close with my aunt, my mother’s sister. She didn’t have children of her own, so she treated me as if I were her daughter. She took me to the park, to the beach, and for drives. She taught me to cook and do patchwork. During summer vacations, I stayed at her house for many days. I really loved her.

Shortly before I graduated from high school, my aunt got sick and in just a few months passed away, at the age of 36. It was too sudden. I was shocked and depressed, and I cried for many days. “Why did Aunty Michiko have to die?” I asked myself. In my grief, I began to wrestle with the meaning of life.

A concerned friend invited me to her church. I hesitated, because my parents were Buddhist, but I went, and while listening to the Gregorian chants I felt a kind of restoration and peace of mind come over me. The priest talked about eternal life, which made a deep impression on me, especially in light of my aunt’s death and my nascent search for meaning. I went back to the church after the first visit and ultimately became an active member of the congregation.

Meditating at the convent confirmed for me that monastic living was the only way I could be truly at peace in this world.

After five years of church attendance, I had the opportunity to visit and meditate at a Catholic convent. I went, but not with the intention of becoming a nun. I didn’t know anything about monasticism; rather, I was seeking to further and deepen my relationship to God. The convent’s sacred silence and the nuns’ sincere practice moved me. I returned a number of times, and over the course of those visits I came to realize the inadequacy of my ordinary life. I had enjoyed a normal upbringing with a stable and supportive family, a good education, and many friends (including a romantic partner). But I wasn’t fulfilled. Meditating at the convent confirmed for me that monastic living was the only way I could be truly at peace in this world. So I decided to take the vows that would make me a Catholic nun.

The convent sat on vast stretch of land in the northern part of the Kanto region of Japan and was surrounded by a tall concrete block wall. In three years, I only left twice— both times to see a doctor when I got sick. We were twelve sisters practicing together—four novices and the other eight our seniors. The schedule was strict. Every night we were awoken at midnight to go to the chapel for one hour of prayer. We then went back to sleep until four o’clock morning prayer, which lasted for three hours and included Mass. During the day we prayed five separate times; between these sessions we worked in the chapel, kitchen, and vegetable garden and cleaned the convent thoroughly.

All activities except for prayer were conducted in silence. The convent was very quiet, and at first the silence scared me. Only once per day, during a 45-minute recreation period, were we allowed to speak freely to one another. On Sundays, we observed the Sabbath and so did not work. But we never stopped praying. We prayed every day of the year.

As a nun, I wore a head cover made of very thick material that fit tightly and completely covered my ears, which made it hard to hear and to open my mouth. On top of the head cover I wore a veil, which restricted my peripheral vision so that I could only see what was in front of me. These measures were intended to prevent us from seeing, hearing, or speaking bad things. In that way, we wouldn’t be distracted by the world, and it would be easier to focus on God. At all times, our minds were supposed to be full of love for God so that there was no space for evil. When someone said, “Thank you” to me, I was to answer, “Thanks be to God.”

I loved how this monastic life enabled me to feel great peace and joy for the first time. I had many difficulties there, but my mind was calmed and I was no longer preoccupied with my aunt’s death. But still I felt that something was missing. One day, after I had spent three years in the convent and ten as a practicing Christian, I heard a sermon that would change my life. There was a men’s monastery in the same town as our convent, and every morning one of the priests came to the convent and led us in the Mass. One day, the priest recounted his experiences at a recent gathering of religious leaders from different faiths. He touched upon zazen [seated meditation] in his sermon. This resonated with me because I was familiar with the word zazen through my family’s practice of a Zen-inspired tea ceremony. I didn’t actually know anything about zazen but imagined it must be a Japanese style of prayer, and I wanted to try it.

Nowadays, Catholics and Buddhists talk to each other freely through interfaith dialogues. But at that time, I was told—in no uncertain terms—that in order to try zazen, I would have to leave the convent. This posed a major dilemma: While I cherished my convent sisters and our life together, I was feeling the pull toward a more Japanese style of faith. The convent and our practice were completely Western, lacking any elements familiar to me as someone born and raised in Japan. In spite of my years in the Church, both the nunnery and Catholicism remained foreign to me.

Nobody can authentically be a nun without experiencing a calling to Christ, and my quest to find a Japanese form of sacredness was leading me away from Him. It was a very hard decision, but I left the convent in order to discover zazen. When I made my vows, I had given up all worldly possessions: my money and personal belongings were left to my parents, while I was allowed to bring with me only some underwear and personal effects in one bag. Now, upon leaving the convent, I gave back my nun’s habit and in return received the bag that I had brought as well as a little money. And just like that, I was back in the world. But I didn’t know anyone in the area. I didn’t even know the town, since we were never allowed to leave the convent.

“What should I do?” I asked myself. “Where can I practice zazen?”

I hailed a taxi and told the driver to take me to a Buddhist temple.

“Which temple?” he asked.

“I don’t know. Whichever.”

He drove me to a big temple that by chance was part of the Soto Zen sect. “I came from a Catholic convent,” I told the priest. “I’d like to try zazen.”

The priest looked at me skeptically. “If you want to practice zazen, go to Nagoya,” he said. “There is a women’s training monastery there.” He showed me a video of the nuns’ hard practice and austere life, thinking it would scare me off. My reaction surprised him: “Yes, this is exactly what I want!” Sensing my determination, the priest advised me to write for permission from the abbess if I wanted to go to Nagoya.

Since I couldn’t go straight to the monastery, I first returned to my parents’ house. I just showed up out of the blue, yet they were overjoyed to see me. They knew that had I stayed in the convent, I would never have been able to see them again, not even if they were sick and near death, not even for their funerals. Those were the rules. I wrote a letter to the Zen abbess, and while I waited for a reply I catered to my parents. I cooked, cleaned, and did everything for them, all the while trying to explain why I was so drawn to the idea of zazen.

Eventually I heard back from the abbess telling me to come to a threeday sesshin, a period of intensive zazen practice. The nuns and laypeople there sat zazen and did kinhin (meditative walking) from four o’clock in the morning to nine o’clock at night. I was awed by the unfamiliar monastery and its rituals. On the first day, I learned to sit zazen and to eat using the oryoki bowls. Five minutes into the first sitting, my knees began to hurt. Long prayer sessions at the convent had disciplined my mind, but my body was not prepared to be bent into the lotus posture. “What shall I do?” I fretted. “How can I survive three days of this pain?”

Eventually the sesshin ended, and I had survived. I didn’t know anything about Soto Zen, but I did know that by the end of the three days my mind was perfectly refreshed. I told the abbess about my experiences in the Catholic convent and why I had left to come to Nagoya.

“Zazen is not one part of Buddhism,” the abbess told me. “It is the core.” Probably sensing my willingness to leave home again, she described how the Buddha had left his palace and family to enter practice. “Do you think you can fully understand zazen if you don’t give up anything?” she asked.

“That makes sense,” I replied. “I should completely dedicate myself to practicing zazen. I should become a Buddhist nun.”

Within a short time of entering the Nagoya monastery, however, I came to realize that the daily schedule actually did not allow much time for zazen. Except for our monthly sesshin, we normally only sat only twice a day. This was not nearly enough for me.

Most of our daily routine was spent doing samu (work). Dogen Zenji, the founder of Soto Zen, said that all our daily activities are zazen. I knew this intellectually, but I didn’t understand its deeper meaning. I dutifully followed the schedule, thinking that doing so without ego was good practice. But after three years in Nagoya, my frustration exploded.

“We should sit zazen more!” I complained to the abbess.

Obeying the teacher is a fundamental tenet for a Buddhist nun or monk. Still, I couldn’t help but express my dissatisfaction: without extensive zazen, being in the monastery felt just like ordinary life to me. My teacher responded angrily to my complaint. She was (and remains) the most famous Soto Zen nun in Japan, with more than 40 disciples who have been trained to follow and obey her.

“Do you think you can fully understand zazen if you don’t give up anything?”

“If you want to sit zazen so long, go to America!” she snapped.

“Why?” I shot back. “I was ordained in Japan. This is Dogen Zenji’s country. Why do I have to go to America to sit zazen? That doesn’t make sense!”

It would be several years before the answer came to me. I had never been abroad, and I spoke no English. But my teacher had said go abroad, so off I went. I traveled alone to a Soto Zen temple in Pennsylvania run by an abbess who had trained at my Nagoya monastery. Mt. Equity Zendo was a very beautiful place in an area dotted with corn and soybean fields. The backyard of the Zen center was forest, and on its land lived horses, cows, birds, squirrels, and many other animals. Its vegetable garden grew potatoes, corn, broccoli, carrots, chard, and other plants that were cooked and served for our meals.

At Mt. Equity, I had many chances to sit zazen. Sesshin was held every month, and people came from all over the US to attend it. The center’s evening zazen drew local people three times a week. But happiness still eluded me. One clear night after zazen, I went out to the garden and looked up at the dark sky. I could see the moon. It dawned on me that Japanese people were also looking at this moon—and I burst into tears. I had fought my teacher about wanting to sit more zazen, and I had come to America, where I could sit a lot of zazen; but I had not found true happiness. That was my ego, I realized. “I should have obeyed my teacher. I always do what I want to do. This is not Buddhist practice.” I finally understood that my teacher had sent me to America to confront my own ego; she had kicked me out of the monastery to help me.

Now, I thought, I was ready to return home, but I couldn’t go back immediately. Even though I was disappointed, I did my utmost to continue to learn and practice. It helped that the abbess at Mt. Equity was a sincere and compassionate teacher who had trained in Japan for more than 15 years. She once explained to me how Pennsylvania and Japan were connected in the dharma: “Japanese people practice all day sitting zazen. When they go to bed it is dawn here, and we take over their practice and sit zazen. Our never-ending practice is embracing this earth.”

At the end of my time in the US, a shinsanshiki (“mountain seat”) ceremony was held to officially recognize her as a Soto Zen abbess, and I arranged much of the event. My Nagoya teacher came and brought about 40 people, including nuns and monks. I wanted to apologize immediately and ask if I could return to Japan. But after the ceremony, a Japanese priest who ran a Zen center in Germany approached her. “I’m going to have the same ceremony next year,” he said. “I’d like to invite many Japanese priests. Please send Yuko to help.”

“OK!” my teacher answered, without asking me. I was crestfallen.

Soon I was on my way to Germany, where I spent six months preparing the ceremony for the abbot. It was very successful, and afterward, I was relieved to know that my duties were completed: now I could return home. But the leader of Soto Zen in Europe had come to the ceremony in Germany and called my teacher before I could. “Your disciple is here in Germany. Why don’t you send her to other Zen centers in Europe?”

“It’s a good idea!” she replied, again without asking me. So for another year I visited Zen centers in Italy, Switzerland, France, and Spain. I met many sincere students; sitting with them made me happy, and being in Europe was an adventure, but I couldn’t understand the deep meaning of dharma talks in English, let alone in European tongues. I still longed for home.

I spent two and a half years in America and one year in Europe before I was finally able to return to Japan. It has now been 20 years since I converted from Catholicism to Buddhism. When I meet Zen practitioners, especially from the US and Europe, they often ask me why I switched religions and whether I was disillusioned with the Catholic Church. I genuinely loved my convent life, and my conversion was not influenced by the many scandals that have rocked the Church.

Why then did I leave it to pursue zazen? I have asked myself this question many times. I know that I lacked the calling to Christ, but over the years I also have observed differences between zazen and Catholic prayer that helped explain why I was drawn to Buddhism.

For one, I have come to believe that the contrast in body postures in Catholic prayer and zazen have profound significance. As a Catholic, I knelt down to pray while bowing my neck slightly forward, clasping hands, and keeping eyes closed—all gestures of respect to God. While I struggled mightily in my early days of zazen to get comfortable in the lotus position (being Japanese did not make the pose natural), I came to understand it as the platform of Zen: not a gesture of respect—a means to an end—but a practice unto itself. Our lives are constantly throwing us off-kilter, but zazen restores balance and returns us to our birthright of universal harmony.

I also think back to the restrictive head coverings we novices wore in the convent. Zen Buddhists do not practice limiting their senses in that way, for it is important to open our eyes, ears, and noses to use all five senses in harmony with the universe. Unlike prayer, zazen does not shut out the world; we embrace everything to realize our orig – inal connection with the universe and to accept reality as it is.

Just as important is the contrast in Catholic and Buddhist approaches to the notion of purity. In the convent, we novices modeled ourselves on the white lily. Our comportment, how we kept our rooms, confession—all was designed to deliver us from evil and make us as unblemished as the lily. I remember my feelings of hopelessness after confession—how I thought that no matter how hard I tried, I would never be pure in mind and body.

I never had this feeling after converting to Buddhism, because I was taught to embrace imperfection rather than seek to eliminate it. The Buddhist symbol is the lotus, a beautiful flower that blooms in muddy water. Such water represents our imperfections and the suffering that make us who we are. If the environment is too clean, the lotus cannot bloom; if we are at war with our imperfections, we cannot become who we really are. Buddhists accept reality as it is: pure and impure but still always perfect.

In expressing my sense of the differences between zazen and prayer, I don’t mean to imply that Catholicism is bad and Buddhism is good. Despite their differences, I believe that both prayer and zazen are touching the same deep silence that is at the heart of all faiths. I still respect my Catholic sisters and brother. Though I no longer see them, I feel that their constant prayer encourages my zazen practice. Because they never stop praying, I can’t stop practicing. We are practicing in different ways, but we are still connected. Wherever I am—in Japan, Europe, America, or somewhere else—I want to bloom like the lotus, to help all people embrace both purity and impurity, and to support peace and happiness in this world. That, for me, is zazen.

The post One Nun, Two Faiths appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

My Year of Dirt and Water: Journal of a Zen Monk’s Wife in Japan
By Tracy Franz
Stone Bridge Press, July 2018
308 pp., $16.95, paper

Tracy Franz’s My Year of Dirt and Water is the gracefully written record of a challenging year in the life of its author. The vivid and highly distilled prose drew me in from the beginning and gave me the pleasurable sense of a journey to a world different from my own. Yet as I read, I found a kind of writer’s koan emerging: how does one write about an ongoing state of loneliness and isolation in a way that creates a palpable sense of intimacy for the reader?

From the outset, the reasons for the author’s sense of disconnection are clear: she is an American living in Japan while her American husband is spending the year in a Zen monastery, furthering his training as a priest. The book is written in present tense as the chronicle of a momentous year for the couple, even as they shared it primarily through absence, long stretches of time when the only contact was a postcard or a fragment of almost inaudible phone conversation.

Related: There Must be Some Kind of Way Out of Here 

Franz had already been living in Japan for several years by the time her husband entered the monastery, and she was gradually growing more proficient in the language. Still, the ongoing sense of being on the outside looking in at the culture surrounding her is one of the book’s central themes. It’s not that she doesn’t have interactions and affiliations: Franz teaches English at a university, trains in a karate studio, sits with a Zen meditation group, and devotes herself to the art of pottery, melding “dirt and water” under the gaze of a brilliantly gifted teacher. In each context she enters into a shared discipline, and her connections go well beyond the realm of superficial social chitchat. Yet she often sees herself as a fish out of water, not quite following the drift of conversation around her, feeling as if she’s fumbling, dropping a stitch, or missing a step.

This recurrent sense of failure is closely intertwined with the loneliness Franz experiences. Often she seems to blame herself for her sense of isolation, even as she knows that there has always been something deeply self-contained at the core of Japanese culture, a pearl that foreign hands can’t pry from its shell. In this context, I discovered another, related writer’s koan: if one is a reserved person, living in a culture that values reserve, discretion, indirect communication, how does one break through the layers to fully engage the reader? And Franz is a very reserved writer. Early on, there are hints that her childhood in Alaska was marred by deep unhappiness. But it’s not until halfway through the book that some big biographical blanks are filled in and we finally learn about not one but two troubled stepfathers who clearly impacted her life.

Similarly, it’s not until deep in the book that her husband, Garrett (who now goes by his priest’s name, Koun), starts to emerge as a three-dimensional character. In part this is because we, along with the author, are only catching glimpses of him during brief and highly supervised visits to the monastery. During these scenes, we see flashes of his tenderness toward his wife, but mostly what we see is his serious, highly disciplined nature. Nearly 150 pages in, I was startled to discover that he was the family “ham” as a child, and I felt somewhat cheated that I hadn’t been more fully introduced to him earlier.

In some ways, you might say the book mirrors life: we become more intimate with the characters over time, as they gradually reveal more facets of themselves. From the start I felt drawn to Franz as a narrator, the way she moves through the world with open senses, a delicate irony, and a gift for detail. As I continued to read, I felt a deepening appreciation for her heart that dares to love through absence and despite a painful history of ruptured and abusive relationships. But at some point I began to feel that the book was keeping me on the outside looking in at someone who experiences herself as on the outside looking in, and I longed for her to dive headlong, with abandon, into the question, the mystery, the suffering of this perspective.

Related: The Tree Guardians of Kyoto 

This is precisely the kind of question that—in the proper context and with adequate support—one can dive into in meditation, but here too, there seemed to be a kind of shoji-screen between the author and her experience. At one point she acknowledges it: “Sometimes I think I just want to sit zazen because it is like sitting with Koun—this little thread of connection across time and space. Maybe that’s all this is for me. Maybe that’s it.” Certainly I admired her honesty in describing this somewhat tenuous, ambivalent relationship to Zen practice, but overall I kept hoping she would discover more of the passionate intensity and exuberant playfulness that lie beneath its austerely beautiful and sometimes even harshly formal surface.

Toward the end of the book, when her mother’s cancer diagnosis calls her back to Alaska in the middle of winter, I felt the author becoming braver and less veiled on the page as certain extremely painful memories from the past refused to stay under wraps. At one point, contrasting the extreme cold of Alaska’s winter to the low-grade chill of Japan, she writes: “Early this morning, I step outside into darkness and the singular clarity of true Alaskan cold. In Japan, I find the comparably milder winter chill annoying and ever-present, not unlike the vague discomfort that is the constant second-guessing of self and cultural habit.”

That’s it! I thought. Throughout the book I kept wishing that a certain gray, low-grade discomfort that kept her always “second-guessing” would fully intensify into the blackness of pure unadulterated pain—a blackness that, if we let it, can provide the most potent fuel for burning through the past and releasing us, finally, into full and intimate presence.

The post One Step Removed appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Bartenders are easy to confide in. Not just because you’re probably wasted, but because so many others have been before you. Your neighborhood barkeep has already heard it all, and though he might not be able to impart any sage advice, he’s at least developed some good listening skills.

While barkeeps seem to have always occupied this unique social position, it’s therapists who often do these days. Before therapy, which developed from the Christian culture of confession and divulgence, it was the clergy who saddled this responsibility.

Vowz Bar in Tokyo revitalizes that once important role of clergy, placing them right behind the bar, where Buddhist-themed cocktails are mixed for spiritually thirsty patrons. Run by monks in the bustling Shinjuku district, it’s likely the only bar where boozy-and-stirred concoctions are offered with a prayer.

The post Meet Tokyo’s Bartending Monk appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

Even before the triple disaster of earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear meltdown last year, Japan was a nation in crisis, writes Jonathan S. Watts in This Precious Life: Buddhist Tsunami Relief and Anti- Nuclear Activism in Post 3/11 Japan, a Tricycle Fall 2012 “Books in Brief” book of choice. Watts has been a research fellow at the International Buddhist Exchange Center (IBEC) in Yokohama since 2006. He teaches contemporary Japanese Buddhism and social issues at Keio University.

This Precious Life represents the work of IBEC’s Engaged Buddhism Project to document in English for the world outside of Japan the experiences, activities, struggles, challenges, and hopes of the Japanese Buddhist world in confronting the 3/11 disasters and the larger implications of them. IBEC was founded in 1966 in order to develop modern, international perspectives on Buddhism through study and research, to create opportunities for those interested in Buddhism to learn and study further through lectures and events, and to cooperate with Buddhists inside and outside Japan on various social issues. IBEC’s Engaged Buddhist Project (EBP) was created in April 2006. The project has placed deep emphasis on researching critical Japanese social issues like suicide, poverty, problem youth, and since March 11th, 2011, emergency relief aid and nuclear activism.

Tricycle caught up with Watts last month to ask him about the making of This Precious Life and the on-the-ground realities of a country only a little over a year past a national tragedy.

The post Video Interview with Jonathan Watts of the International Buddhist Exchange Center appeared first on Tricycle: The Buddhist Review.

This week marks the final chapter of Josh Korda’s Retreat Making Friends with Your Demons and Hungry Ghosts: Buddhist Tools for Recovery. Josh has been our guide in exploring Buddhist approaches to working with and letting go of underlying stress that propel us towards addictive behavior. Josh’s approach is distinct from traditional twelve-step programs that emphasize a relationship of faith to a higher power. In Buddhist approaches to recovery, the task is not to demonize the mind but learn to discern skillful perceptions from unskillful perceptions. Josh introduces the Brahma Viharas as a means of establishing a wholesome relationship to ourselves as we take a careful look at and uncover the sources of our addictions.

If you are a Tricycle Supporting or Sustaining Member, you can now watch this week’s retreat here. If not, join or upgrade your membership here.

Here’s a preview:

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Buddhist practice and Buddhist art have been inseparable in the Himalayas ever since Buddhism arrived to the region in the eighth century. But for the casual observer it can be difficult to make sense of the complex iconography. Not to worry—Himalayan art scholar Jeff Watt is here to help. In this “Himalayan Buddhist Art 101” series, Jeff is making sense of this rich artistic tradition by presenting weekly images from the Himalayan Art Resources archives and explaining their roles in the Buddhist tradition.

This week Jeff examines life story paintings & literary genre.

Himalayan Buddhist Art 101: Life Story Paintings & Literary Genre

Buddhist literature is overflowing with narratives about Shakyamuni, his followers, and of almost every possible human situation. The code of ethics for the monks and nuns, the Vinaya, is framed in narrative. When reading the life stories of historical figures such as Asanga, the mahasiddha Virupa, or the Tibetan teacher Tsongkapa, intention and intended audience are not always clear to the novice reader. Well, it is exactly the same when looking at life story paintings.

Buddhist art transforms these literary narratives and visually creates a representation based on written examples, sometimes the representations are even based on oral tradition. The written examples are drawn from various established genres of traditional narrative literature. There are at least ten genres of life writing that are quite distinct. Alongside the old standards of biography and autobiography there are, for example, hagiography, secret biography, and revealed treasures. Each of these genres has a particular point of view, intention, and audience. These literary genres map directly from literature to art.

The first example, a painting of the Virupa, fits the genre of a specific life event. In this case it is a moment in the life of the Tibetan teacher Sachen Kunga Nyingpo, when Sachen had a vision of the mahasiddha Virupa appearing in the sky surrounded by very specific attendant siddha figures. Sachen is not depicted in the painting, only the vision. The painting does not belong to a set of paintings. It is a one-off meant to depict a special moment in Sachen’s life.

The second example is also narrating a life event genre story. This image of Arya Asanga highlights a series of episodes in Asanga’s spiritual life, which ultimately led to his having a direct communication with the Bodhisattva Maitreya. The result of this meeting between Maitreya and Asanga led to the writing of the famous philosophical texts of Asanga, although the texts are sometimes ascribed to Maitreya.

The third example is a painting of Je Tsongkapa surrounded by nearly 100 separate vignettes narrating his entire life story in great detail. Each vignette is accompanied by an explanatory inscription written beneath the scene. This painting follows a very straightforward biography style literary genre. 

Life story and narrative paintings are a popular topic in Himalayan and Tibetan art. While it is not really necessary to understand literary genre in order to appreciate the beauty and aesthetics of narrative art, it is helpful to know that the relationship between narrative literature and art is a very important and popular subject in Tibetan Buddhism.

To learn more about life story paintings click here. To learn more about literary genre click here.

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 Marathon Monks of Mt Hiei is a compelling documentary that captures the final leg of Tendai Buddhist monk Tanno Kakudo’s 1000 day kaihogyo. The documentary is based on a book written by John Stevens also titled Marathon Monks of Mt Hiei. Here is some information from John Stevens’ book that will help bring the documentary into perspective:

The marathon monks of Mt Hiei are a small group of monks within the Tendai sect. The Hiei marathon monks are called kaihogyo monks, which literally means “practice of circling mountains.” The practice of kaihogyo has a long history, beginning in the 9th century CE with a boy named So-o, who arrived at fifteen years of age to the Tendai Buddhists of Hiei. He encountered, or met, God Fudo Myo-o and spent his life building halls in Hiei to house Fudo Myo-o images. The hall throughout Mt Hiei became part of the Hiei monk’s kaihogyo, completing long terms of walking to these sites to pray and chant.

Becoming a monk at Mt Hiei requires at least an 100 day term, then one must ask for permission to complete the remaining 900 days. This 1,000 day trek takes over 7 years, over which the monks walk 27,000 miles (longer than the circumference of the earth, which is 24,900 miles). Those who choose to participate in this task are called gyoja, or “spiritual athletes.” They don white garments and carry a knife and rope to kill themselves if they cannot complete the distances.

There are rules for the kaihogyo:

1) During the run you must not remove robe or hat
2) One must not deviate from course
3) There is no stopping for rest or refreshment
4) There is no smoking or drinking

The terms are divided into 3:

Term 1: 100 days
80 pairs of sandals are provided, 40km/day walking or running, a special white hat is worn.

Term 2: 700 days
First 300 days are still 40km/day, but in the fourth and fifth years you must complete 200 consecutive days. Following this 200, you receive a walking stick and special tabi hat (this is where the movie picks up). In addition, you must complete the grueling doiri (a 7-9 day fast without food, water, or sleep, which used to be done for 10 days in summer but was discontinued after all of the participants died from their bodies rotting from the inside). This exercise is meant for the gyojo to meet death.

Term 3: Two 100 day terms. 84 km runs daily.

Join us as a Supporting or Sustaining Member for this exciting film! A link is provided below to watch a clip:

http://www.der.org/films/marathon-monks-preview.html

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