Category Archives: Eastern Teachers

Teachers primarily of Japanese, Chinese, Korean cultures

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tribute to nanao sakaki

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Poet Nanao Sakaki died a year ago today. December 21, 2008. If I remember the stories, he died as he had lived: a free spirit in universe, resting for a moment in the mountains of Nagano prefecture, who stepped out into a star-bright night to use the porta-potty and fell over dead from a heart attack. No drawn-out agonizing death – so typical from what I’ve read of Sakaki: wandering scholar, voracious reader,  living teacher – did you know he identified the B-29 that was on its way to bomb Nagasaki? He wandered the islands, mountains, and deserts of the world. Even at 86 years old, all he had were belongings in  two backpacks.

The introduction to his book Break the Mirror says:

His poems were not written by hand or head, but with the feet.  These poems have been sat into existence, walked into existence, to be left here as traces of a life lived for living – not for intellect or culture.

His life, a

Love Letter

Within a circle of one meter
You sit, pray and sing

Within a shelter ten meters large
You sleep well, rain sounds a lullaby.

Within a field a hundred meters large
Raise rice and goats.

Within a valley, a thousand meters large
Gather firewood, water, wild vegetables and Amanitas.

Within a forest ten kilometers large
Play with raccoons, hawks,
Poison snakes and butterflies.

Mountainous country Shinano
A hundred kilometers large
Where someone lives leisurely, they say.

Within a circle one thousand kilometers large
Go to see southern coral reef in summer
Or winter drifting ices in the sea of Okhotsk.

Within a circle ten thousand kilometers large
Walking somewhere on the earth.

Within a circle one hundred thousand kilometers large
Swimming in the sea of shooting stars.

Within a circle one million kilometers large
Upon the spaced-out yellow mustard blossoms
The moon in the east, the sun in the west.

Within a circle ten billion kilometers large
Pop far out of the solar system mandala.

Within a circle one million light years large
Andromeda is melting away into snowing cherry flowers.

Now within a circle ten billion light years large
All thoughts of time, space are burnt away
There again you sit, pray and sing
You sit, pray and sing

Thank you, Nanao, for practising,

Genju

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enso & mu

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We end the week of enso traces in Enso: Zen Circles of Enlightenment with No. 55 Mu by Kojima Kendo who was one of the leading Soto Zen female monastics of the 2oth century.  She was 97 and in the last year of her life when she traced her Mu Enso.  The calligraphy combined the enso and the regular script for mu off-set to create white space for the mind to fall into.   Kojima Kendo dedicated her life to social service and creating equity of practice opportunities among monks and nuns.  In her time as abbess, she fought for moral and financial support of the order of nuns whose ordinations and transmissions were not recognized.  Sadly, not too much different from today.

In preparation for my precepts ceremony, jukai, at Upaya Zen Center, I became engrossed by the matriarch lineage I had to prepare.  The penetrating influence of Dragon Lady teachers like Roshi Joan Halifax and Sensei Beate Stolte intensifies the strength of being Zen Women.  Daily, I practised Kojima Kendo’s Mu Enso, starting first in the tradition of calligraphy students by copying it as faithfully as I could.

But mu and enso don’t lend themselves to being borrowed.  Eventually, Kojima Kendo’s playful and energetic enso gave way and set mine free to be just what it is.

Of course, no enso practice is complete without a bow to the ultimate process enso: the Ox Herding Pictures.  For that I defer to my dear dharma friend & a quietly irreverent teacher, Barry Briggs at Ox Herding who has challenged my no-mind since I entered this virtual realm.

I would also encourage reading John Daido Loori’s teachings in Riding the Ox Home:

Thank you for practising,

Genju