This podcast is offered by San Francisco's Zen Center on the web at sfcc.org. Our public programs are made possible by donations from people like you. It's very nice to come back. The last time I came here, it was almost two years ago. And it was a very sunny day as well. I still remember. And he's very happy to come back. I have been very fortunate in my life. I was raised in a Zen temple. I had the opportunity to learn meditation and Zen life practices from my grandfather and my father. And later from my Zen masters at Heirinji Monastery, in Saitama Prefecture in Japan.

[01:00]

Can I hear my voice? Yeah. And also, do you have a handout? Everyone has a handout? Yes. During all of these experiences, I have always felt that meditation as a method of cultivation and the Zen way of living has been a real gift to my life. My everyday activities, from sweeping my house to cooking and raising my family, my relationships, and my dreams and intentions, as both a Zen priest and scholar of Japanese Buddhism, have all found stability in meditation practice that has moved me deeply and made my life feel very deep and rich. I am thus grateful to the many teachers who have come before me and left such a well-lit path for me to follow.

[02:11]

I am aware, however, that meditation practice, and Zen training in particular, requires not only good teachers and disciplined mind, but a strong sense of caution. Meditation can be a very sharp knife. How we use it determines whether we cook wonderful meal or enjoy ourselves or others terribly. Meditation is a powerful stuff and taken lightly by teachers or students or entered into without respect for its potency can have disastrous consequences. This is something I try and impart to my meditation students in the U.S.

[03:17]

and Japan and remind myself each time I sit on a cushion or light a stick of incense. Here, I would like to discuss Hisato's disregarded aspect of the work of one of Rinzai Zen's leading figures. He left us clear messages about this very problem. he had a name for disregarding it, Zen sickness. Japanese Zen master Hakuin Ekaku, who lived from 1686 to 1769, is a seminal figure in the history of Japanese religions. In particular, he is widely known as a reviver or even a

[04:22]

de facto founder of the Rinzai Zen tradition, which is currently monopolized by his lineage. The meditative practice on Koan as the core discipling of the tradition is attributed to him and dominates this religious order today. All present-day Rinzai priests trace their religious heritage to Hakuin. Contemporary Japanese Rinzai-zen has been even called the Hakuin School. Our contemporary Rinzai-zen has been a tradition almost exclusively unconcerned with moral formulations and contemporary social issues. Instead, this sect has been focused solely on the quest for deep religious experience, let's say Kensho or Satori.

[05:29]

Under the banner that claims that meditation and enlightenment express the core Rinzai experience, Hakuin's religious writings and his considerable production of brush paintings are held up almost exclusively as examples of a highly developed capacity for religious experience. Indeed, the previously dominant scholarship has been limited to three ways of regarding Hakuin. First, viewing Hakuin as a reviver or even founder of the tradition. Second, seeing him as a meditation master. And third, studying Hakuin as an artist and writer. All three are clearly correct.

[06:36]

Hakuin is all of these things. But do we in fact take to heart the very clear and loud messages he left as his legacy about violence and overzealousness in Zen tradition? I don't think so. This is what I would like to discuss today. Given the fact that we just observed the 250th anniversary of his death, Last year, 2017, it seemed fitting to do so. What did Hakuin do and say that we ignore today? I will offer my own triad of dimensions of Hakuin. First, he was deeply engaged in issues of social justice.

[07:44]

Second, he talked about a sick obsession with meditation that neglects the human body's balance in meditation practice. Third, he talked at length about what in today's language we would describe as abuse of power in monasteries. Hakuin used his own experiences in his life as a model, not for what he did on a daily basis, but for the failures he experienced and the many changes he had to make. I think that Hakuin intended us to regard his failures and transformations as models. and not the day-to-day manic experiences he decoded as something to be emulated.

[08:50]

He was a gifted and sensitive person, but that talent was not merely focused inwardly. He was deeply moved with compassion for what he saw around him. In Hakuin's autobiographical text, Yasen Kanna, or Idle Talk on a Nightboat, written in 1757, Hakuin wrote of his experience of Zenbyu, or the Zen sickness, which he suffered from in his youth, as his meditation practice went from being a healthy quest for enlightenment, Let's now turn to this text and ask a simple question. What did Hakuin mean by the term Zenbyu or Zen sickness?

[09:56]

It is unclear because he is intentionally vague about it. It has been proposed by scholars and physicians for the last decades that this malady was possibly is a tuberculosis or some neurotic disorder or something from both these causes. I personally think that had Hakuin suffered from tuberculosis, it would have been very difficult for him to conduct the itinerant life that he led at this time. I am more inclined to think that this incredible artist and intellectual suffered from a self-induced neurotic disorder, I mean breakdown, but that

[11:03]

the term was meant to encompass much, much more. Whatever this malady was, it is true that it disturbed his practice. Here, here is what happened described of his own Zen training. Notice how he describes what on the surface Looks like a satori experience, but turns out to be something he later regards as an unstable delusion as he sinks into illness. Please look at the handout and please read quote number one. So here, Hakuin was both physically and mentally exhausted from the regards of Zen training.

[12:12]

And in his deluded state, he became anorexic and seriously ill. He describes the complete collapse of health. In the Yassenkana and his other writings, he describes... going from master to master in the Zen tradition, asking for help. All say, work harder, sit longer. He finally goes to a mountain hermit outside the tradition, named Hakuyu. So the hermit Hakuyu instructed Hakuin, in some of the meditation techniques of inner contemplation, which is called in Japanese nai kan no ho. The essence of these techniques emphasizes, in the first place, the practice of concentrating vital energy, let's say ki, in the lower body in general, and more specifically, the tanden or cinnabar field

[13:29]

located below the navel. This is the secret technique of inner contemplation, naitan. The secret formula in the relation of inner contemplation to nourishing life is this. Please look at quote number two. Hakuyu said, The secret of sustaining life and attaining longevity is found in disciplining the body. continue to read quote number three and four, three.

[14:31]

Father Hakyu tells, this is interesting. You probably look at my appearance and take me for some kind of Taoist. Because of that, you may think what I have been telling you has nothing to do with Buddhism, but you are wrong. This is Zen. If in the future you are able to understand this, you will smile as you recall my words. And after that, Hakuya analyzed the factor of Zenbyu had been developed. Then the Hamid Hakuya also teaches two techniques of the inner contemplation of Naitan that keep the key energy replete in the lower body and making one calm down.

[15:41]

And then continue to read quote number four and five. Number four is basically talking about meditation technique which is called Susokkan. It's a technique of counting Our breathing. When we breathe out and breathe in, number one. Breathe out, breathe in, number two. We are counting one to ten, and ten to twenty, twenty to thirty, and going to hundred and going back to one. And again, one to ten. So that is a susokkan, the technique of counting breathing. That is talking about number four, talking about that technique. And then number five, talking about in Japanese, let's say butter method. Simply talking, let's say that is a body scan.

[16:43]

We can imagine we have a butter on the top of the head, and then butter is melting down. And we can feel like... relaxed feeling. And warm. Basically, here talking about the sense of relaxation as a meditation and also the meditation that makes our feeling calm down. So, Hakuin's recounting of what he was taught also included this advice. hardly the kind of austerities that had brought him to collapse. Hakuin wrote, and please look at number six again. That is talking about susokkan, technique of counting breathing.

[17:48]

basically talking about meditation is a method for making the person's mind calm down, feeling calm down. Hakuin goes on to describe in depth the methods the Hamid Hakuyo taught him. The teachings ended with Hakuyo telling Hakuin that If he did these things, his skin would grow with health. These are hardly the teachings of body mortification. The Yassenkanna ends with Hakuin's notes that describe how after receiving these meditation techniques from the Hermit, Hakuin started to practice them which brought about a successful recovery from his malady over time.

[18:59]

Hakuin adds that he became very healthy even in his later life, and he became energetic not only in devoting himself to his everyday training, but also in leading the training of his students. What is relevant here for our purposes is that Hakuin did not, as many people led him, regard all his early flashes of enlightenment as his legacy, healthy legacy. Rather, it was a practice of relaxation and careful breathing he learned later. after his collapse, that he sees as integral to a state of well-being.

[20:01]

So, in this short talk, I would ask that we focus not simply on the details of Hakuin's advice about breathing, but on the very clear shift On the details of Harkin's advice, sorry, shift, this shows to focusing on actions that he regards as enhancing of the body and not detrimental to it. Let's look at how this experience perhaps condensed into one encounter with Hamid as a literary device. caused a transformation in how Hakuin regarded as his own students. It appears Hakuin was perhaps extending sickness to include abuses of power by teachers and Zen masters.

[21:09]

In the preface of Yasenkana, Hakuin begins by telling us that when After 40 years, he returned to the place where he had once been a student and saw the monks at Sho Inji. He was shocked. They had lost their regulation of their practices and were sick and haggard. In a moving passage, he recounts a great transformation. So this is the most important quote. Please look at the number seven. A little bit long, but his reflection of his days, the 40 years ago. So here, the master means Hakuin himself.

[22:20]

He was the one who went from a spewer of venomous trouble to the worried mother. In short, he is describing his own realization that his method of training students took them from being healthy human beings to people walking close to death. And he regrets it. He regrets it. And made a cloud descend. A cloud of transformation and maternal care. I would like to submit that Hakuin here is suggesting that his own transformation is a needed collective in them masters and monasteries. He was too harsh, and his students suffered.

[23:22]

From this brief passage, I feel Hakuin was trying to flash a beam of light on violence and abuse of power among Zen masters and Zen monasteries at that time. I would now ask you to indulge me. while I turn from Hakuin and discuss how his experiences helped me as I underwent my own monastic training. Recalling my own experience in monastic settings, the three biggest enemies were, first, the lack of sleep, which was five hours on a regular daily schedule, but which was drastically cut to three hours, especially during sessions. Second, the pain of sitting with crossed legs in meditation.

[24:27]

And third, the mental and physical exhaustion. The regulation of food was not a critical problem for me. During meditation time, while I searched for a state of self-observation, I very often had illusions and delusions. For example, I experienced visual illusions such as seeing real objects appearing to move and seeing lights. Perceptional illusions, such as feeling myself becoming a stone and not being able to move at all. Or oral illusions, such as singing of evening shiketas like an orchestra.

[25:37]

Delusions is an easy part. When I had these illusory experiences, I had the delusion that I was already enlightened or I was being enlightened. When I was 25 years old and I was a third year practitioner at the Heirinji Monastery, I developed serious meningitis. Possibly the austerities had reduced my immune system. Honestly, I really don't remember what happened. I don't remember being transported to the hospital or how I was examined in the initial stage there. The only thing I remember is that

[26:39]

When I woke up, when I opened my eyes, I was on a small bed surrounded by white walls in a room. I was hospitalized for a total of three months and had to further take a rest at home for another three months after that. My parents... friends, training fellows, let's say practice fellows, all worried about my physical conditions. They also wondered if I was going to die or if I would have brain damages or physical disabilities at the very least. Six, Months later, I returned to the monastery.

[27:42]

One evening, I was sitting in the meditation hall alone. All the windows and doors of the meditation hall were open, and it was like I was sitting in nature and together with nature. togetherness with nature. It was in that moment that suddenly I was surrounded by the orchestra of evening cicadas, brought by a gentle breeze. It was in that moment that I was highly motivated to continue my monastic practice. I saw the point of sitting, I saw the point of sitting at the time. The whole world seemed gentle and tender and kind, like that maternal energy described often by Hakuin in his writings.

[28:58]

As I have continued my meditation practice and my work as a scholar of Zen Buddhism, I keep always in my mind my own two pillars of my practice. One pillar is the many transformations Hakuin went through. From a harsh master with a stick spewing venomous slobber to being a kind mother regarding his student with deep tenderness. This pillar reminds me at all times to be moving toward gentleness in my practice as a teacher. The other pillar is that moment comprised of cicadas and cool breeze.

[30:06]

that says that I am connected to everything. The Japanese Zen master Yamado Mumon put it this way, quote, I can tell by the coolness of the morning breeze that I am embraced by something great and vast, quote. This second pillar, keeps me listening for the tiny voices of insects and the gentle feel of a breeze. These two pillars stand as a gate in my practice that protect me from that age-old malady that Hakuin rightly called Zen sickness over zealousness and violence masking as eagerness for enlightenment and strict observance.

[31:19]

Towards the end of his life Hakuin said that Hakuin said that clearly his real Zen practice started when he devoted himself to caring for others. I hope to follow the path makers he set in his writings of his many transformations. I am forever grateful to him for leaving such a well-lit path if we only allow ourselves to see it. Thank you very much. For more information, please visit sfcc.org and click Giving.

[32:22]

May we all fully enjoy the Dharma.

[32:25]

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