Zen Training In Japan

Marie B. Byles

In Journey into Burmese Silence* Miss Byles gives a delightful and attractive account of meditational practices in a Buddhist centre open to the laity in Burma. In the present article, which is to form part of a book under the title Paths to Inner Calm, she describes what she has seen and experienced at Zen meditation centres in Japan.

Miss Byles is also author of Footprints of Gautama the Buddha**, a fictionalised biography and The Lotus and the Spinning Wheel, a book of reflections on the life and teachings of Buddha and Gandhi.
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* Allen and Unwin.
** Rider & Co.

For two months I lived in a Zen temple in the Daitokuji compound on the outskirts of Kyoto, the chief centre of Buddhist learning in Japan. Every evening I meditated at the zendo or meditation hall established especially for Europeans and conducted on almost identical lines with that of the zendo of the monastery a few minutes away.

From the scenic flagged roadway the monastery looked like any other of the beautiful temples in Daitokuji, except for the pillars on either side of the gateway announcing it to be a centre for Zen training. There are two training periods, one from the beginning of May to the end of July and the other from the beginning of November to the end of January. At other times most of the monks go home.

Before the commencement of the summer training period, the roshi, or spiritual teacher, delivered an informal sermon which lay people might attend. About eight or nine lay people came; we sat on the tatami mats with seven monks dressed in dark blue cotton gowns in front of us. The smiling roshi entered dressed in dark brown with a small curved stick and a rosary over his wrist. He, too, sat on the floor. In front of him was a reading desk exactly the right height to hide his lips and he spoke in a very low voice. I should not think anyone heard and I was told that this sermon is generally regarded as an opportunity to make up for arrears of sleep. Two of the monks were availing themselves of this. From the end of March, monks in residence had been arising at 3 a.m. and meditating previously during a portion of the night.

To understand the nature of a Zen monastery today, it must be borne in mind that it resembles a theological training college rather than a Catholic monastery. Nearly all the young men who come, are there to be trained as temple priests. Perhaps they have inherited a temple. The monastery teaches both the art of meditation and of temple management.

The method of meditation varies according to the sect. In the Rinzai sect it commences with concentration on the long outgoing breath and then allowing the in-going breath to flow in naturally; the breaths are counted up to ten. When proficiency has been obtained in this breathing method, a koan is given as the subject for meditation. This is a question like a riddle and nonsensical on the face of it. There are said to be seventeen-hundred koans. The correct answers must be found intuitively. One of the first is, "What was your original face before you were born?" (This is more or less the same as Ramana Maharshi's question, "Who are you?") The meditation is broken at the end of every half hour when stiff limbs may be stretched. As well it may be broken by the monk or priest in charge who strides silently round the zendo with a wooden baton known as Manjusri's sword, which he uses to strike over the shoulder (twice on each shoulder in summer and four times in winter) any meditator who appears sleepy or who for some other reason he thinks would benefit by being whacked.

Zazen or meditation is considered the essence of Zen training, but in practice temple-management plays nearly as great a part. This requires proficiency in many varied matters book-keeping, repair-work, care of priceless picture-scrolls, cleaning, cooking, growing vegetables, caring for the exquisite gardens with their moss-lawns, shaped azalea bushes and espaliered pines. Most of these temples in Kyoto are 'national treasures' and the Government pays 70% of the cost of repairs. But other than this they have had no regular income since the Meiji Restoration took away their lands and revenues. They must therefore depend upon donations and in Kyoto mostly from tourists. By and large the temples are not wealthy and the priest and his wife, for he is usually married, must be able to do most of the work themselves without paid labour.

The religious side of the training includes meditation, but also the conduct of the various ceremonies principally in honour of the Founders and departed spirits; and sutra-chanting is an art all to itself.

It is obvious that not all who inherit a temple, or for some other reason need to train as Zen priests, are suited to the training, and whether suited or not, nothing is made easy for them. The monk's life is austere and without intentional friendliness. Its object is to turn them out 'tough as nails', I read somewhere. They must be prepared for the bitter cold of winter without artificial heating and with open windows and snow blowing on shaven heads, scanty clothing and prohibition of overcoats and socks indoors. The food is strictly vegetarian and poor vegetarian at that, and the hours of sleep are deliberately curtailed. Japanese life is harder than ours, but at the monastery it is made harder than it need be. And the method of training in meditation and Zanzen interviews with the roshi aim at creating fear and tension — "You must be cruel to be kind", I was told.

Unless a man has a definite vocation he must face the ordeal as he would an operation without an anaesthetic, knowing that at the end of four years he will be free. But even then it is not an easy life he faces. Now that there are many and varied avenues of employment open to promising young men, fewer and fewer resort to the Zen monastery for training. The priest at the temple where I stayed, told me that at the monastery where he trained there used to be fortysix monks and that now there were only sixteen. At Daitokuji the numbers had fallen to seven. He foresaw the time when temples would be cared for by those who were not Zen-trained. "Like caretakers of a museum," I suggested and he agreed.

Most Europeans who have been at Zen monasteries have been there only as guests for a limited period. But one evening the European lady who established the European Zendo, herself a Zen priest, Mrs. Ruth Sasaki, told us of an American who had been accepted at one of the most austere monasteries. He would be there for perhaps ten years, and at least for sixteen months. He had a wife and two small boys. His wife had given her consent, and still wished to help Zennists.

As is required by this monastery, the young man had crouched with his head on the ground before the gate for three days seeking admission. This is never granted easily. By the third day he had worn a mark on his forehead and up till the very last he was afraid he might be refused. He was accepted, but not into the bosom of a friendly family. Monastery life is always hard and cold and this moreso than most.

I met his wife before I left Kyoto. She was planning to let her house and return to America for a year.

"Only for a year?" asked one of the Zen members. "Why come back at all when you can't see your husband?"

"But I have seen him," she said. "He had a free day and came home recently, he would hardly leave the larder, he was so hungry. They get only three hours sleep a night. At the end of a year he will decide whether to stay for only sixteen months or for an indefinite period. That is why I shall come back then."

People who wish to train as Zen priests must put up with this austerity, but why should a European who has no need to? I came to the conclusion that this was like the question, "Why do people climb Mount Everest?" and the reply, "Because it's there." Whether it be a mountain or a monastery, it is a challenge and some will always be ready to take it up, no matter what the physical and mental suffering entailed, and no matter what the risk to health and even life.

Zen training "turns them out tough as nails". A picture rose to mind of the Samurai warriors who were calm, serene and also tough as nails, and not afraid to kill themselves if honour demanded it. Zen and the military had worked together, and the spirit of the soldier still runs through Zen training. But what I queried was whether the world today needs the Samurai. I suggest that the future is rather with the spirit of Mahatma Gandhi, and loving kindness and nonviolence.

I visited the monastery three other times. The first was for a very elaborate ceremony at the commencement of the summer training period. All the Daitokuji priests came dressed in their splendid robes, and a few lay people as well as the monks. The roshi preached a sermon to the shrine, not to the audience ranged on each side, and once again several bent over books, and appeared to be taking the opportunity to make up for arrears of sleep! It was a very beautiful ceremony in the midst of austerely beautiful surroundings.

The second time was for meditation in the shrine room, for lay people are not allowed to meditate with the monks in the zendo — I was a trifle nervous because I had been warned that the monk who wielded "Manjusri's sword" to whack the meditators, had a very heavy hand, and when over the age of sixty one's bones become brittle! The stick is not used in the European Zendo, though why I do not know for it is used in all Zen monasteries of all Zen sects. "You have to be cruel to be kind," I was again told. The monks sit lotus style on the high wooden platforms on either side of the zendo, and I could hear them being whacked. Carrying the sword of Manjusri, the Bodhisattva of wisdom, the monk in charge cannot err. And the whacking is carried out with proper bowing and ritual. All the same I was glad he did not come to the shrine room while I was there!

Part way through the meditation session, the bell rang for Sanzen, and monks and lay European trainees lined up for interview with the roshi. On three occasions there was what seemed to be a frantic stampede among the monks. It was occasioned by a young monk being told to return to the roshi's room, and being terrified to do so. Blows and angry words was rained upon him to force him in, and one of the monks had to be taken by his leg and shoulders and thrust in.

The last occasion I visited the monastery was to interview the roshi. It took me seven weeks of persistency before I was at length granted an appointment.

I asked him, "Why are your disciples so afraid of you. You look, smiling and gentle enough now."

"Ah," he replied, "a teacher has to have two faces. You see my visitor's face. But my disciples see my teacher's face. I have to be stern to them. That is the only way they can learn."

And so, in addition to the physical austerity, the monk must expect to meet mental and emotional cruelty deliberately inflicted. You and I can never see the roshi's other face except in pictures. There was an especially striking picture on the wall screen of one of the Daitokuji temples. It showed a stern faced roshi with a sinister glint in his sideways-looking eyes, and his stick uplifted; slinking in at the back was a pale shrunken and terrified monk. Even the convinced European trainee must expect for at least a year to feel his knees trembling each time he goes into the roshi's small room. How much more the young Japanese who must train only so as to become a temple priest!

And then at the end of it all, will you have found enlightenment? None of the Zen priests I met appeared to have outward signs of any deeper enlightenment than the average of one's well-intentioned friends at home. I often used to think of simple-minded Brother Lawrence, a cook in a Christian monastery, who merely practised the presence of God; it seemed to me he probably knew more about satori, enlightenment and his 'original face' than Zen masters who found the answers to the seventeen hundred koans.

But what about the idea of the Western exponents of Zen, who say all you have to do is to be spontaneous, and then one day the roshi twists your nose, and you have Realization?

Well, that is just a Western idea. Westerners import some things that are not there.

And now, leaving aside Zen training, let us turn to its poetry and art and some of its pithy stories. I do not think Zen has anything to add to Mahayana Buddhism, Shintoism and Taoism. But it has gathered wisdom from all these, and long after its training has been forgotten, some of its stories, its poetry and art will live.

Here is a story that might have come from the Buddha himself. It is of a nun going on pilgrimage who came to a village at sunset and none would offer her a night's lodging. She went into the fields and lay at the foot of a cherry tree. At midnight she woke and saw the cherry blossoms laughing to the misty moon. Overcome with the beauty, she rose and bowed towards the village saying:

Through their kindness in refusing me lodging,
I found myself beneath the blossoms on the night of the misty moon.

And listen to some of the profound truth as well as beauty in verses like these

You remain silent and it speaks.
You speak and it is silent.

When you are not in antagonism to it,
It turns out to be the same as complete awakening.

The wild geese do not intend to cast their reflections.
The water has no mind to receive their image.

The same applies to Zen art and the ability of the artist to identify himself with nature. And then there is the superb symbolism of the ox-herding pictures. The man catches sight of the tail of the ox, his own self; this is satori; he follows it, tames it, rides it, loses both himself and the ox, and then returns to ordinary life spreading a beneficence.

We can learn from Zen poetry and art, as we can learn from Catholic mystics. To do this there is no need to become a Zennist or a Roman Catholic, nor to undertake practices alien to our thought and temperament — nor to expect that Zen or Roman Catholicism will bring us enlightenment any better than other religions and ways of training.