Author: dorakuan

The house of my Dojo used to be a shop long time ago, so I have the chance to put some decoration in the “shopping window”. People passing by often stop and look, and sometimes share their opinions with each other, or with me if I’m near the door.

Often men explain to the wife or girlfriend at their side the “Meaning of Zen” while both are looking at the window. It’s interesting to hear what “the man on the street” all knows about that subject! Once a Chinese lady came in and asked in surprise how comes that I am writing “ancient Chinese”, but she assured me she can read it all. What a relief!

I am happy many like to watch my Dojo’s window, maybe they feel touched by the simple beauty of a single flower next to some calligraphy? Some passers-by even promise to come to the Zen class and ask for the schedule. Alas, most of them never came back …

Though, not everyone seems equally pleased. Every now and then someone wonders why this “Chinese Restaurant” has no menu on display. An international group of scientists, maybe on their way back from a conference dinner to the hotel, let me know (without being asked) they really have something better to do than “sitting around doing nothing”. Last week a man came to my door, just to tell me that he is not interested in “esoteric and such” … glad to know!

I really love the children’s comments. They are often attracted by the huge calligraphy brush hanging in the window. A few weeks ago a little girl watched the flower vase for almost two minutes, and then, all in her thoughts, said “I love that little flower!”. A young boy was so disappointed his father could not read what was written on the calligraphy “I really want to know!”.  This morning when I practised Hitsuzendo after Zazen class, mother and child hand in hand passed by, maybe on the way to kindergarten. The kid pulled back “I also want to paint, please, mummy!”.

It is my fantasy maybe, but I imagine the children’s’ open eyes can see much clearer what I am doing at my Dojo. A glimpse into another world, on the way from the playground to the ice-cream shop, a promise of exciting adventures and yet-to-discover mystery and beauty. We adults, of course, already know: “In there, they shut up and sit on a pillow and just breathe, for hours, because they want to get enlightened or such. I don’t need that!”. What a pity, too late …

In the shop of the Musée national des arts asiatiques Guimet I discovered this Summer a new edition of Okakkura Kazuo’s famous “Book of Tea” (茶の本). There do exist countless editions and translations of this classic, including (copyright-)free versions on the web. This new French edition I saw in Paris caught my interest, because on the title-page a Zen-circle (Enso) was printed. Not just a random one, but one painted by my former Zen- and calligraphy teacher. An Enso, for which he never ever issued the copyright to anyone.

Earlier this year I wrote in my article Circles and Copies about the many copies and modifications of this very Enso one can find in the world wide web. This shameful collection is not only a visual proof of how little respect certain people who like to adorn themselves with borrowed plumes of Zen pay to copyright issues (well, they do, kind of … most images boast a new copyright holder). The collection of more or less tasteless (mostly digital) modifications of the original artwork also strikingly demonstrate that adding anything to the simplicity and beauty of a pure hand-brushed Enso will not results in any improvement.

All this copy and paste illustrates how difficult it might be to paint just a circle by yourself: the hand-brushed Enso fully exposes the calligrapher’s heart, your mind, your understanding of Zen to everyone who puts an eye on it. Probably it is exactly this you want to avoid by using another Master’s Enso, instead of showing to the world the one you can produce yourself?

Five minutes with google gave me more than a dozen new variations, all of them based on the one original one can find here. I wonder if one day we may witness a new version of the old tale Chushingura, a version for the digital age: I imagine 47 loyal former students will share forces to claim royalties, world-wide, from everyone who abused, modified and sold the stolen Enso.

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P.S.: Let me repeat here the copyright-notice from my January 2014 article on that issue:

Just in case you found “your” artwork displayed above: before complaining or considering to take me to court for copyright infringement, maybe you think for a moment of the modest old Japanese Zen monk who provided the basis for all that … and refund him properly for his efforts. Here is the web-page with the original Enso (including original copyright notice).

The old man passed away at the holy age of 107. I never met him or much cared about his teaching, just once mentioned his obvious misconduct in this blog. I don’t want to write much more about someone who is dead, who was in jail for defrauding money and who molested so many of his female students. If you are interested in a first-hand discussion of what had happened, I recommend the article “Some Reflections on Rinzai-ji” by Giko David Rubin, published on Sweeping Zen.

What I want to understand is: why did and still do so many Zen practitioners justify and defend his actions, appreciate him as a great teacher and condemn those who criticise or rejected his behaviour. What makes someone with more or less considerable Zen experience or just a reasonable amount of common sense blind against a repeated and obvious misconduct? Why is even a discussion on all that suppressed, holding up an ideal of silently and blindfoldly following your “enlightened teacher”? A story of it’s own tells the version history of the German Wikipedia article, in which any mentioning or discussion concerning Sasaki Roshi’s behaviour was consequently erased.

Let us try to understand …

“Mr. A was an excellent mathematician, but he stole his institutes’s money and molested his female students.”
I guess most of us can agree such thing is possible, although most likely we’d wish to hear it as an explanation for the end of an otherwise successful academic career.

“Mr. B was an excellent doctor, but he stole the hospital’s money and molested his female patients.”
Maybe we can argue: being a good surgeon and having a good character is not necessarily related. But our doctor we want to trust, not just for his or her technical skills. Possibly a case which can trigger some controversy in a serious discussion?

“Ms. C was an excellent school teacher, but stole the school’s money and molested her male colleagues.” Hard to imagine a reasonable person might seriously combine “excellent school teacher” in one sentence with “steeling money” and “molesting colleagues”. I guess we would question the discerning mind of a person judging this way?

“Mr. D was an excellent priest and good Christian, but he molested his female parishioners and stole the church’s money.”  I doubt anyone would say this, just because of the very obvious inherent contradiction of what is considered as “being a priest and good Christian”, and the other activities of Mr. D.

What would we say to a person standing up in a serious defence of Mr. D being a good Christian? Someone saying “In spite of his steeling the Church’s money, in spite of molesting the female parishioners who fully trust him, he was a good Christian!”  … someone maybe arguing “His sermon was so deep and so full of insight and humanity, we cannot account his possible occasional and past misbehaviour against such great words!” … someone proclaiming “He stands so high above us all, how dare we to judge such a person’s action we hardly can understand?” .  What would you think, not of Mr. D, but of the person speaking up in his defence as a good priest and Christian?

Likely, most of us would doubt the interceder’s ability or willingness to reason, to make a responsible decision, and some of us might want to investigate his or her potential (or imagined) benefit arising from defending Mr. D.

Is the case of Sasaki Roshi’s defenders comparable to those of our imagined Mr. D?

I would argue yes, clearly! Being ordained in the Myoshinji lineage, I very well know the Ten Precepts which should have guided also Sasaki Roshi’s life. Amongst them are (in my own rendering of the ancient Japanese) “not fooling around with female”, “not taking what has not been given to you”, “not lying”, “not harming others”, and interesting enough also “not pretending a rank you do not comply with”.

Which understanding of Zen could make it possible to rationalise an obvious conflict between these percepts and steeling money or molesting students? Which Zen practice failed to see and deal with that, over decades, a Zen practice performed by ordained Westerners holding ranks, wearing Japanese cloths, living and practising in a building shaped like a Japanese Zen temple and (I assume) meticulously performing ancient traditional rituals day after day? None of this contributed to dealing with even the most obvious! Wouldn’t that be reason enough for any serious Zen practitioner  to let go all that bullshit and get back to the roots?

If it cannot be explained in a reasonable way, we may speculate the reasons for defending what is not defensible are hidden in a maze of dependency, ego (of defending ranks and positions and a life-style based on these), the fear of destroying illusions associated with a leading figure and the unwillingness to admit major parts of the own biography consist of devoting so much life-time to a teacher who might not have deserved it.

Our Zen spirit, our understanding does not reveal itself through our words, through twisted explanations turning sexual harassment into a method of teaching and it’s rebuff into a manifestation of not yet being ready to receive the teachings. Our Zen spirit reveals itself through nothing but our actions, day by day, hour by hour. Zen is not following or worshipping so called tradition or it’s representatives, it is revolution!

Let’s look forward with open eyes and join forces to protect future victims of all those Mr. D wearing robes and holy cloth (or jeans and T-shirt) pretending to hold ranks and titles they don’t comply with. May the old Zen-man and his legacy rest in peace!
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P.S. (Oct 2014): A critical reference (in German) to this article can be found here.

In March I embarked for what I thought would be my last visit to Kyoto for a very long time, maybe forever. While saying farewell to my favourite places, my friends, “my” Temple and the old Master, I thought a lot about “letting go” and the impermanence of living … it was a happy and sad two weeks of good-bye, two weeks of leaving from the first day I arrived.

Not even two months later I was back. Completely unexpected an invitation from Tohoku University made it possible to visit Japan once more, and I extended my stay with few days in Kyoto. Standing on Shijo Bridge looking up the Kamogawa towards Sanjo Bridge and the misty mountains, I felt really puzzled. Back again, so soon! How wrong was I with my expectation of not seeing again my beloved second hometown … even impermanence is not so permanent!

Zen practice helps us to deeply realise some fundamental aspects of human life, to see things as they are. This cleared view comes along with a certain danger for our mental health, when the Meal of Zen is only half digested: after leaving behind most of the big illusions we grew up with, life as it really is might appear a bit like a threadbare patchwork of unpleasant or boring circumstances, agitated by mostly unpleasant others going on our nerves with their unnecessary and weird activities. Everything good and pleasant will eventually vanish, each cup is already half empty if not broken the moment we fill it. Possibly this is a reason why intermediate Zen students may become a bit nerve wrecking companions with all their complaints about the bad world and evil others?

I am not sure if the one coffee I recently enjoyed at Les Deux Magots qualifies me for the speculation that this is the state of mind where the existentialists got stuck: a pretty clear and illusion free view of the world, a world though, which was misunderstood as permanent in all it’s misery. A perception of the world which is maybe most clearly described in the permanent hell of Sartre’s Huis Clos.

The ultimate experience of Zen is a deep realisation that nothing is fixed, not even the bad and horrible, the depressing and boring. Seeing the world as it is means seeing the world as impermanent, as ever changing. There is no fixed me and no fixed you. “L’enfer, c’est les autres” looses it’s painful grip, when we realise that neither me nor the others have any permanent existence. This is the meaning of the often quoted and often misunderstood “Emptiness” in Zen: the emptiness of any intrinsic existence as a big relief!

That’s easier said than understood. I belief the idea of impermanence, of not having an intrinsic existence, a fixed self to discover or defend and possibly improve the one or other way is a pretty scary concept to the inexperienced mind (and for those running the self-optimisation business). Impermanence of virtually everything is not understood as a way out of all the misery until one gets ultimately rid of all the nice illusions, the “flowers decorating the chains”, and feels absolute despair emerging from an illusion-free perception of the world. No earlier the realisation of impermanence kicks in as a great relief!

The coffee and service at Les Deux Magots was the best I enjoyed in Paris, and by far not the most expensive one. I did not expect this at such a prominent location! Next to all the book shops my new favourite place in Saint-Germain-des-Prés … if I have a chance to come back one day.

Reading about someone might be interesting, but it is nothing compared to meeting the real person. Alas, most of the prominent characters of Zen are long ashes and dust. For me, the closest experience to meeting face to face one of our Zen-ancestors is through their art-work, namely calligraphy.

Studying an old master-piece, the rhythm and energy of the brush strokes, the pace or slowness of writing is almost like seeing the person in action. Maybe more than a decade of practising and teaching Hitsuzendo, the Zen-Way with Brush and Ink, helps me to imagine a person’s character from the ink-trace he or she left on the paper.

Wherever I travel, I visit museums or exhibitions having Chinese or Japanese calligraphy on display, and I feel grateful for having the chance to meet not just a few of my spiritual ancestors on my tours all over the world. Last week-end I met Ikyyu Sojun  (一休宗純), the eccentric Zen-Master of the Muromachi period. Passed away more than 500 years ago, I like him because his life and action confronted certain aspects which are still an issue in contemporary Zen, namely selling Zen for money and condemning exchange with female. Ikkyu made quite a point concerning both aspects …

I met Ikkyu just “around the corner”, in the recently re-opened Museum für Ostasiatische Kunst in Cologne. Have a look at the picture I took, can you imagine what character Ikkyu was? A smooth, easy to deal with person? Someone who liked to make a point concerning what to do and what to leave? Someone vague, or someone decisive?

The piece was displayed in the framework of the exhibition „Mitleid und Meditation“: Der Mahayana Buddhismus („Großes Fahrzeug“) in Ostasien (“Pity and Meditation”: The Mahayana Buddhism (“Great Vehicle”) in East-Asia).

I wonder who made up that title? Why link Buddhism to pity (Mitleid), not compassion (Mitgefühl)? The question was not answered … and the longer I stayed the more I thought “what a pity!” The text by Ikkyu was not transcribed and not translated, the short text (and all the others) were only in German.

Quite speechless I was when reading the explanation concerning a statue of Ananda, one of  the Buddha’s main disciples. It states, Ananda carafully listened to Buddha’s teachings and wrote down all his words. How could the curator of the exhibition ignore one of the most basic facts concerning the transmission of Buddhist teachings, that is, the strictly oral transmission for the first couple of centuries? Not just a little detail, as we all know …

No wonder in the second exhibition, a collection of old photography from the Museum’s late founder Adolf Fischer (1856-1914), Nanzenji was spelled “Nazenji” and a picture showing the Kaisando (開山堂) at Tofukuji in Kyoto was labelled as “Tofukuji, Nara”. We still know nothing about Asia, while Asia knows us so well. What a pity!

Today is August 6th. Almost 70 years ago 70,000 Japanese people died on that day within seconds in the city of Hiroshima, and the world as we knew it changed forever.
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A few days ago I was having a Cafe au Lait on my way to work at a Bistro somewhere in Quartier Latin, it is August 1st., 2014. The French lady at the other table finished her newspaper and hand it over to me with a smile, so I can read a bit in Le Parisien. Sitting close to the counter she must have heard my German accent when I ordered, yet no problem. I never felt anything else but welcome in France, our neighbour country, the country where I enjoyed the best Aikido. The country where my Grand-Grandfather’s generation killed 1,4 million people within 4 years.

Le Parisien printed the facsimile of a document in it’s centre page which on the day is exactly 100 years old, the announcement of general mobilisation of the French, the country’s begin of World War I against Germany. The whole day, nobody in Paris showed the slightest resentment against the German guest. We had another war after this, and difficult times after then. Now we are friends …
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While we are sitting on our pillows practising Zazen, a civil air-plane with 298 people on board was shot down. Day and night the killing in Israel and Gaza continues, and we just sit and breath. Desperation about the lost ones merges with increasing public anger,  in Germany we experienced public demonstrations which were openly anti-semetic just a few weeks ago.

The war, the wars arrived once more in the middle of our life and our cities. What is our response, as human beings practising Zen, maybe as Buddhists? Shouldn’t we stop sitting silently on our pillows and go out and fight for justice, against the war I had been asked?

As a father I can hardly imagine anything worse than losing your beloved child. I possibly cannot comment on the emotions and responses of those directly affected by such tragedy. One step aside, that’s “us”. Having Dutch colleagues active in HIV related research, I anxiously checked the passenger list of MH-17 and was relieved not to find a familiar name on it. Suddenly it affects “us”, not some others far out there.

What is a Zen-reply, a Buddhist answer to all this. What shall we do?

As a first action, let me suggest not putting “us” against “them”. “Us” and “them”, we are all human beings, each of us different, yet connected. The rebels with guns which we can see standing at the crash field on press pictures, possibly fathers with kids, seeing the toys lying around in the rubble, that’s “us”. The British news reporter driven by a hard to imagine black-out opening a victim’s bag showing personal belongings to the live camera, and the news agencies multiplying this hilarious scene, that’s “us”. The men carrying away the corpses who days ago were passengers like you and me, that’s “us”. The war-lord in shabby cloths on the phone and the grim looking armed man standing around him, they are “us”. Not so different as we might wish, not so unconnected from our life and circumstances as we want to believe.

“Us” against “them” means continuing, fuelling a conflict, a war. First of all, let us stop putting more fuel into the fire! Let us fight the immediate emotion “us” should now stand up and fiercely fight against “them”.

A second aspect is to understand nothing happens out of “fate” or “by co-incidence”. The principle of cause and effect shows off most cruelly when beloved ones die.

We continue making a fortune by producing and selling killing technology (called “weapons”) while ignoring the fact they will be used for killing human beings, sooner or later. When it hits “us”, we cry out loudly … and continue business as usual. There are reasons for what happened and what will happen. Whatever we do today has a consequence in the future, necessarily.

Let’s sit on our pillows and breathe, let us deeply investigate ourselves and thus understand what is going on: we are not separated, and all our actions have consequences!

In May I opened my new Dojo, and luckily without further advertisement nice people start attending the “Zen Introduction” and regular classes. I very much do enjoy exchange with the interesting characters who found their way into my Dojo the past couple of weeks. Not much of a chance the place will ever become a dulled “House of Silence”, there is plenty enough Sound of Silence when we sit on our pillows …

The other day a mother of an eleven years old son told me she had difficulties explaining to him what she is actually doing in the Dojo. Just sitting on a pillow, not talking … and the “teacher” is also silent most of the time.

“Zen-teacher sounds like a pretty cool job” her son replied, “even I can do it!”. “Let’s decorate our garden hut with some drapery, and people coming will pay me for doing nothing!”.

If running a place to study Zen was just that easy … a bit of decoration, and anything else to do is making people sit down, shut up (and pay). Said that, sometimes I get the impression certain Zen Dojo operate exactly that way: a place like a silent torture chamber with a pay slot, and all you can learn over the years is suffering silently in a prescribed posture. Well, you get what you pay for …

What then is “teaching Zen”? My approach after studying with and assisting good teachers over a long time, making many sorts of good and bad experiences, is: I can allow others to observe and participate my Zen-Way. Not just passively, as an onstage show-case which could as well be recorded and presented on youtube or TV, but actively, in a communicating fashion. When you come through the Dojo door, when you sit on your pillow, I see you, I see who you are … and if our communication succeeds, I have something to show to you which might help to improve your life!

My wish is this … not “teaching”, not “lecturing”, but an invitation to “participate” and “study” what I gratefully received and experienced with my teachers over decades of Zen-practise. The message might not arrive at first glance, we are so used to titles, authorities and other people cramming information into our over-full brains. Studying Zen is different, it starts with creating an empty space to allow growing something new. A garden hut is maybe not a bad place, I seriously thought about this alternative … just for the ambitious smart-pants: forget the drapery and the donation box for the time being!

This blog became rather silent. The reason is: I am very busy at my new Dojo. After searching, waiting and negotiating a specific location in my current home-town (Mülheim an der Ruhr/Germany) for more than a year, I am happy to announce that the Doraku-An Zen-Dojo has a new place to practice Zazen, Hitsuzendo and soon Aikido and Iaido!

Although I am still setting up the Dojo, regular Zazen as well as weekly introduction classes are already offered from the first day I got the key for the house (and visited by people who happened to find and hopefully like the new Dojo). From July on we will have a fixed schedule with Aikido and Iaido included into our regular exercise.

Practice hours can be found on the Dojo homepage (currently in German only) and on the Dojo’s facebook-page (German/English). We will also offer one-day seminars on Zazen and Hitsuzendo every first Saturday of a month (from July on).

Guests are always welcome, the location is easy to reach by foot from Mülheim an der Ruhr Central Station.

larger view

Every now and then I write about my Zen approach towards photography, for which I coined the term Shazendo (写禅道). As I outlined in previous posts, I believe photography can be practised as a real Zen Art or Zen Way (Zendo 禅道), similar to Hitsuzendo (筆禅道), the Zen Way with brush and ink.

Recently I had the idea to extend Shazendo beyond just taking pictures by including certain steps of post-processing to completely change the look of the finished imagery. What sounds pretty technical and maybe far away from any direct and simple Zen approach is actually the opposite: I use modern digital techniques to get even closer to the images I have in mind (or, poetically speaking, I see with my heart) when pressing the shutter. It’s not just those accidental rays of light which happen to pass through my camera’s lens in a fraction of a second at some coincidental day and time that I want to communicate. It is the whole way of experiencing a certain location, a certain atmosphere, and it is also a dialogue with my artist ancestors’ past attempts to visualise the same subject.

Concerning Japan, a very popular traditional method of image creation is woodblock printing. Once considered a cheap craft for mass production, the artistic qualities of certain prints are nowadays beyond question, not just because of their strong influence on Western artists like Vincent van Gogh and others. While taking pictures in Japan I every now and then realised my view on a subject was pre-occupied (or sharpened) by certain woodblock-prints I had seen before, and from time to time I wished to capture a scene more in the coarse style of such a print rather than producing a high resolution digital image.

Recently I visited an exhibition of the European artist Emil Orlik, who went to Japan at the beginning of the 20th century to improve his skills in woodblock printing. What I saw inspired me trying to carve out this certain view from my own images, yet with 21st century digital technology. I am not really sure the modern process is anyhow easier to accomplish than the ancient craft, especially when considering that the artist designing the plot, the wood carver and eventually the printer used to be three different people. After various trial and error I eventually found a work-flow which allowed me to achieve some satisfying results, which come closer to what I actually saw and experienced than any plain photographic image.

A collection of my first tries with “woodblock-print photography” can be seen on my facebook page in the album “A View from the Outside”. Please enjoy!

Cherry blossom was at it’s peak when I returned from a five days Zen-practise at Joutoku-ji in the countryside North-West of Kyoto. Once a great party appreciating impermanence under blooming trees, hanami of the digital age appears to become more and more a picture-hunting event. Not a single beautiful tree without masses of people watching it through the displays of their mobile-phones or more expensive photography equipment. There must be a billion pictures of cherry blossoms taken by the Japanese and tourists every year! Unable to simply enjoy the fleeting beauty, I couldn’t withstand the temptation of adding not just a few digital blossoms to the virtual cherry orchard.

Obai-in, a sub-temple of Daitoku-ji in the North of Kyoto had a special opening these days. The temple is famous for it’s beautifully maintained garden, one of the finest in Kyoto (designed by Sen no Rikyu), yet photography is strictly forbidden. What a relief, to enjoy the beautiful place for more than an hour until it closed, without even thinking about taking a single picture! This experience made me once more realise how much my camera sometimes obstructs what I actually could see and experience, if it was not just through a viewfinder or display.

In this week’s “ZEITmagazin” I read an interview with Elton John. I don’t know much of his music, but part of the interview addressed a similar point:

What’s all that nonsense with mobile-phone pictures? What kind of people is that who come with iPads to the concerts and shoot everything? They don’t watch the show at all, but only stare at their iPad! That’s sick!  Elton John (1)

For me it remains a tightrope walk to find the balance between photography as a Zen-way and true Zen-practise, or experience taking pictures as just getting in the way of any real experience.

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(1) Interview with Elton John, “Das beste Bett aller Zeiten”, ZEITmagazin Nº 16/2014 (the English quotation is my back-translation from the German text).