Tradition

With respect to all,

Yesterday I was talking with two of my students over pizza. The subject of my teacher,  Rev. Ken Hogaku Shozen McGuire Dai Osho came up.  I miss him dearly even though we sometimes fought like cats and dogs. He was a strong, centered, mountain of a man. We were alike in many ways, we were also different in as many ways.  I found myself talking much like him. I can be both a strong-willed teacher and a softy. Mostly the latter, yet people tell me I’m somehow intimidating. Go figure. We rarely see ourselves in the same way others do.  

There seems to be a perennial discussion in the American Zen world regarding ritual  and ceremony. Ought we wear robes, shave our heads, offer Dharma names in Japanese?  Or ought we simply sit and devout ourselves to our various practices off the cushion? Some of us are fully one way or another.  Fortunately, I am from a lineage whose founder, Rev. Dr. Soyu Matsuoka Dai Osho, thought to leave Temple Zen as practiced in his homeland in his homeland in order to develop a Zen practice us Westerners might be able to both understand and practice.: a sort of middle way. For him, Zen was practice. And while he retained much of the Japanese Soto school’s practices, he streamlined them here in the United States beginning in 1939.

So, we might say he offered a hybrid sort of practice.  Decidedly not the high church style some are accustomed to seeing.  He wore robes, shaved his head, and practiced Zazen.  He also did engaged practice through his many, many talks in schools, dojos, and, well, any place that would have him.  My teacher, likewise. 

When my teacher authorized me to create my own Order he told me I had permission to change what I thought was necessary, but not to embarrass him. So, too, I have given those instructions to the priests I have ordained.  What is important here, I think, is authenticity in practice. If you will not do san pai (three prostrations) with your whole body and mind, don’t do them.

If you do not have your heart in the Great Heart of Wisdom Sutra as you chant it, don’t chant it. 

We have a saying in Zen, “When walking, walk; when sitting, sit.  Above all, don’t wobble.”  The choice regarding ceremony and ritual is intensely personal, but must be informed.  One ought not change a tradition just because one doesn’t like it. Once one is inside it, realizes it, then, maybe then, change may come.

Be a blessing today, listen to someone you do not agree with.

Yours,

Daiho