Appreciate Your Life Read online

  “A brilliant, simple, infinitely subtle appreciation of this precious life.”

  —Peter Matthiessen, author of The Snow Leopard

  “With a loving heart, Maezumi Roshi carried these teachings in his two hands across the ocean to offer to the West. Now you hold them in your hands, the subtle, profound, enigmatic Zen that awakens trust in your own true nature. Enjoy.”

  —Jack Kornfield, author of A Path with Heart and After the Ecstasy, the Laundry

  “We are fortunate, with Appreciate Your Life, to finally have a volume that evokes the voice and broad-minded teaching that have meant so much to all of us in Western Zen.”

  —Zoketsu Norman Fischer, senior dharma teacher at the San Francisco Zen Center

  “Maezumi Roshi’s dharma is gentle, generous, accessible, humorous, and above all encouraging.”

  —Robert Aitken, author of Taking the Path of Zen and Original Dwelling Place

  ABOUT THE BOOK

  Here is the first major collection of the teachings of Taizan Maezumi Roshi (1931–1995), one of the first Japanese Zen masters to bring Zen to the West and founding abbot of the Zen Center of Los Angeles and Zen Mountain Center in Idyllwild, California. These short, inspiring readings illuminate Zen practice in simple, eloquent language. Topics include zazen and Zen koans, how to appreciate your life as the life of the Buddha, and the essential matter of life and death.

  Appreciate Your Life conveys Maezumi Roshi’s unique spirit and teaching style, as well as his timeless insights into the practice of Zen. Never satisfied with merely conveying ideas, his teisho, the Zen talks he gave weekly and during retreats, evoked personal questions from his students. Maezumi Roshi insisted that his students address these questions in their own lives. As he often said, “Be intimate with your life.”

  The readings are not teachings or instructions in the traditional sense. They are transcriptions of the master’s teisho, living presentations of his direct experience of Zen realization. These teisho are crystalline offerings of Zen insight intended to reach beyond the student’s intellect to her or his deepest essence.

  TAIZAN MAEZUMI ROSHI (1931–1995) was a seminal figure in the transmission of Zen Buddhism to the West. He was founding abbot of the Zen Center of Los Angeles (ZCLA) from 1967 to 1995 and of Zen Mountain Center from 1978 to 1995. He and his successors also founded Zen centers throughout the United States, Europe, and Mexico. Maezumi Roshi established The Kuroda Institute for the Study of Buddhism and Human Values, which promotes Buddhist scholarship and publishes, with the University of Hawaii Press, translations of East Asian Buddhist classics. He coauthored On Zen Practice: Foundation of Practice, On Zen Practice II: Body, Breath and Mind, and The Hazy Moon of Enlightenment. He also provided the commentary for The Way of Everyday Life: Zen Master Dogen’s Genjokoan.

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  APPRECIATE YOUR LIFE

  THE ESSENCE OF ZEN PRACTICE

  Taizan Maezumi

  EDITED BY

  Wendy Egyoku Nakao AND Eve Myonen Marko

  FOREWORD BY

  Bernie Glassman

  SHAMBHALA

  Boston & London

  2013

  Shambhala Publications, Inc.

  Horticultural Hall

  300 Massachusetts Avenue

  Boston, Massachusetts 02115

  www.shambhala.com

  © 2001 by White Plum Asanga, Inc.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

  The Library of Congress catalogues the hardcover edition as: Maezumi, Hakuyu Taizan.

  Appreciate your life: the essence of Zen practice / Taizan Maezumi; edited by Wendy Egyoku Nakao and Eve Myonen Marko; foreword by Bernie Glassman.—1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Includes bibliographical references and index.

  1. Spiritual life—Zen buddhism. I. Nakao, Wendy Egyoku. II. Marko, Eve Myonen. III. Title.

  eISBN 978-0-8348-2819-3

  ISBN 1-57062-228-0 (hardcover)

  ISBN 1-57062-916-1 (paperback)

  BQ9288.M3 2001

  294.3′444—dc21

  00-046358

  PHOTO CREDITS

  Emmett Ho, cover

  Zen Center of Los Angeles, Part One

  Jim Whiteside, Part Two

  Zen Center of Los Angeles, Part Three

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Preface

  PART ONE

  The Essence of Zen

  Appreciate Your Life

  Endowed from the Start

  Three “Pillows” of Zen

  The Dharma Seals

  Why Zazen?

  Do It Over and Over and Over

  Close the Gap between Yourself and Yourself

  The Answer Is Simple

  Your Zazen Is the Zazen of the Buddhas

  Practice the Paramitas

  On Ceremonial Action

  PART TWO

  Clarify the Great Matter

  What Is Koan?

  Koan and Shikantaza

  Raise the Bodhi Mind

  Realize Your Life as Koan

  Pain, Fear, and Frustration

  Intimacy of Relative and Absolute

  Clarify the Great Matter

  Save All Sentient Beings

  Koans of Zazen

  Pure in Heart

  Copying Sutras

  PART THREE

  Where Is the Hindrance?

  Where Is the Hindrance?

  See the Shadow of the Whip

  The Seven Wise Sisters

  Live the Life of Impermanence

  Diversity and the “Right Way”

  Thusness

  On Becoming a Buddhist

  On Life and Death

  Blossoms of Nirvana

  Unknown Life and Death

  Shakyamuni Buddha and I Are Practicing Together

  Appendix

  Glossary

  Bibliography

  E-mail Sign-Up

  FOREWORD

  I LIKE TO TELL THE STORY of how I met my teacher, Hakuyu Taizan Maezumi, for the first time. In 1963, after several years of sitting meditation on my own, I wanted to sit with a group, maybe even find a teacher. So I went to the only place I knew of in Los Angeles that had sitting meditation, which was Zenshuji, the Soto Zen temple in Little Tokyo and home to the Soto Zen bishop for North America. The temple served the needs of the Japanese-American Buddhist community by holding Zen Buddhist services, particularly funeral services. It also had a sitting group made up mostly of Caucasian Americans like myself.

  One day our group did a zazenkai, or a one-day retreat. I noted that the abbot of the temple, who hardly spoke English, was attended by a young Japanese monk. At the end of the day we all drank tea together, and at that time I asked the abbot why we did kinhin, or walking meditation, between periods of zazen, sitting meditation. Instead of answering, he motioned to his young attendant, who said simply, “When we walk, we just walk.”

  The young attendant was Taizan Maezumi, and those were his first words to me. Those were also his last words to me for about five years, for I didn’t return to Zenshuji. Less than twenty years had passed since the time of the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II, and some of us Caucasian Americans who were interested in sitting meditation found less than a warm welcome when we entered Japanese-American temples. Cultures and memories clashed. Purposes, too. For most Japanese Americans, Buddhism meant wh
at Western religions mean to most Westerners who attend church or synagogue: ritual, the celebration of individual and family milestones, the pulling together of a community. We Caucasians, on the other hand, came for different reasons. Some of us came because we’d heard about meditation, others because we’d heard about enlightenment. We had very little interest in new forms of liturgy or ritual, not to mention that these were in Japanese, which we didn’t understand. So I didn’t go back to Zenshuji and returned to sitting on my own.

  A few years later, however, I met this same young Japanese monk again. By now he was leading his own sitting group, so I went to sit with him. Right away I knew that I wished to study with him. Shortly thereafter the group moved to Normandie Avenue, and that was the beginning of the Zen Center of Los Angeles.

  Maezumi Roshi came from a family prominent in the Soto Zen sect of Japan. His father, Baian Hakujun Kuroda, served as head of the Soto sect’s supreme court. Kuroda Roshi was expansive and enterprising, taking a lively interest in everything around him. Like most Japanese, the Kuroda family was impoverished after World War II. Maezumi Roshi later remembered that in those days they caught cicadas for food. Nevertheless, Kuroda Roshi built the family temple despite having no money and no resources. Unlike most Soto Zen priests, he had a lot of close friendships with Buddhist priests and teachers outside the Soto sect and headed Japan’s Pan-Buddhist movement. In fact, one of his good friends was Koryu Osaka Roshi, a Rinzai lay teacher who taught several of the Kuroda sons.

  Maezumi Roshi took the name of his mother’s family, for she had no brothers to keep her family name going; hence the name Maezumi rather than Kuroda. He received dharma transmission from his father, Kuroda Roshi, when he was twenty-four and then went to stay at Korvy Roshi’s dojo, or practice center, and studied with him while taking classes at the Soto sect’s Komazawa University. But he didn’t finish his studies with Koryu Roshi at that time. Instead, he was sent in 1956 to the United States by Soto headquarters, at the age of twenty-five, to serve as a priest in Zenshuji. In addition, however, he also proceeded to continue his koan study with Nyogen Senzaki Roshi, a Rinzai teacher, which did not make the parochial Soto establishment happy back home. Since Senzaki’s death, Maezumi and his students have conducted services at his grave every New Year’s Day.

  Zen Center of Los Angeles, referred to as ZCLA, grew quickly even while Roshi was still pursuing his studies. In the mid-1960s Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, a Soto priest and teacher, began to give teachings in the continental United States. Eido Roshi usually worked as his translator, but Maezumi was asked to help whenever Yasutani visited the West Coast. Maezumi asked Yasutani if he could study with him, and the latter agreed. They met each time Yasutani Roshi came to the United States, and did koan study together. In 1968, knowing that Yasutani Roshi was not going to return to this country, Roshi asked me to take over ZCLA for one year so that he could return to Japan and finish his studies with Yasutani Roshi, which he did, receiving inka (the final seal of approval) from Yasutani Roshi.

  At about that same time, Maezumi received a letter from Koryu Osaka Roshi, his Rinzai teacher from years back, offering to come to the United States so that his disciple could complete the studies they had begun in the early 1950s. Koryu Roshi came to ZCLA in June 1970, and eventually Maezumi finished koan study with him and received inka from him as well. He thus received authorization to teach from three different teachers in three different Zen lineages: his father’s and Yasutani Roshi’s lineages (both Soto), and Koryu Roshi’s lineage (Rinzai). This is highly unusual for a Japanese Zen teacher. Many study with a variety of teachers in different lineages, but very few complete their studies with all of their teachers and receive authorization to teach.

  Maezumi Roshi, of course, had to finish koan study in two very different koan systems. Not only were many of the koans different from one system to another, but the order of studying them and the method and approach used were also quite different. Throughout the time that he was completing his koan studies, Roshi would not teach even beginning koans to his students. He maintained this policy even during the last stages of his studies, when he had already worked on more koans than practically any other teacher in this country.

  Generally, Soto Zen teachers do not do koan study; it is considered by many a Rinzai practice. But some prominent Soto Zen teachers, like Daiun Harada Roshi and Yasutani Roshi, integrated koan study into their teaching, and so did Maezumi Roshi, also a Soto Zen teacher.

  Maezumi Roshi was an important member of that early small group of Zen masters, including Shunryu Suzuki and Seung Sahn, who arrived from the East to settle in this country and founded practice centers that then spread not just in America but throughout the Western world. Their role was a critical one. The writings of D. T. Suzuki describing Zen practice were widely read by the time these Zen masters came to the West, but there were almost no zendos or actual practice environments when they began to teach.

  Maezumi Roshi himself built two practice centers, the Zen Center of Los Angeles in downtown Los Angeles and the more monastic Zen Mountain Center in the San Jacinto Mountains near Idyllwild. From the beginning, however, his vision called for a large network of Zen centers transmitting the teachings throughout the West. For this purpose he had hundreds of students and easily a few thousand more who came into some contact with him. When he died at the age of sixty-four in 1995, he had twelve successors. As of this date there are at least thirty-five Zen centers and more than a hundred Zen groups in almost a dozen countries associated with the lineage he created, the White Plum Sangha, named after the white plum tree his father, Baian Hakujun Kuroda, loved so well.

  But the breadth of one teacher’s lineage doesn’t tell us everything. It doesn’t tell us about the challenges he and others met in transmitting the teachings from one vastly different culture to another. Nowadays, with practice centers sprouting up not only in major cities but also in America’s hinterlands, each with its own style and flavor, it’s easy to underestimate and even misunderstand the achievements of these Zen pioneers. Bringing spiritual teachings that were strongly grounded in Japanese social and cultural customs to an American environment was complex and full of hurdles.

  With me as well as with his other successors, Maezumi Roshi was crystal clear in his approach to this importing of Zen teachings from East to West. “Taste as much of this as you can,” he told us. “Swallow what you need and spit out the rest.” He was better aware than anyone of the difference in cultural contexts and that certain mores which made sense in Japan could not pass muster in the West. Already during his lifetime he witnessed his successors experiment with new forms and practices that he probably never dreamed of seeing in a Zen center.

  In dharma transmission ceremonies, the teacher vows to support the successor in all of his or her teaching endeavors. My teacher stuck to his word. He supported us in all our efforts and experiments; he never once asked us to teach like him or restrict ourselves only to the forms that he had created. In my experience this is unusual, for I’ve known a number of Buddhist teachers from different traditions and denominations who have encountered resistance and discouragement from their Eastern teachers when they tried new forms and practices.

  Maezumi Roshi died suddenly in May 1995 while on a visit to Tokyo. His death was unexpected and the transition was difficult. We grieved for him; he was only sixty-four. At the same time, I intuitively felt that he had finally passed on because he had done what he had set out to do. He had brought the Buddha dharma to the West and seen it take root. He knew better than anyone else that if it was to flower, it would have to chart out new courses and develop in new ways. He would not be the one to do that, he said, for he was Japanese.

  I was his first dharma successor, receiving transmission from him in 1976. Several months after that I was giving interviews during the dawn sitting period. I rang the bell to end one interview. The student left, the door opened, and in came my teacher, Maezumi Roshi. He bowed deeply to me, sat down, and sa
id: “My name is Taizan Maezumi. My practice is shikantaza [just-sitting]. Can you tell me how to do shikantaza?”

  I told him. We had a short conversation, and when the interview was done I rang the bell. He got up, made his bows, and left the room.

  As he said to his students again and again, and as he says in this book: “Your life is the ‘treasury of the true dharma eye and subtle mind of peace.’ ” Your life is the life of the Buddha. Here, in this country. Right now.

  Bernie Glassman

  LA HONDA, CALIFORNIA

  PREFACE

  DURING HIS LIFE AS A ZEN MASTER, Maezumi Roshi gave more than fifteen hundred teisho. A teisho is a presentation to the disciples of a master’s direct realization. It is not a dharma talk or lecture, not an explanation of things-as-they-are, but a direct expression of it, a direct appeal to the true nature of the student. It was often a challenge to penetrate Maezumi Roshi’s teisho. I could point to a number of factors to explain why this was so, such as the fact that he was not a native English speaker, or the cultural gap between East and West, or his use of words and concepts unfamiliar to us. But none of these reasons is as important as the fact that our true nature is for each of us subtle and difficult to realize.

  Maezumi Roshi was unshakeable in his faith in his students and their capacities to realize this truth, each in their own place and time. He did not adjust his teisho to our level of understanding. Rather, he kept unveiling this nature, insisting we stretch far beyond our self-imposed limitations and plunge into the vast universe of truth.