Master Roshi Quotes

The fundamental delusion of humanity is to suppose that I am here and you are out there. -Yasutani Roshi, Zen master (1885-1973)

I stole this from Zen Master Suzuki Roshi: If it's not paradoxical it's not true!

A famous Japanese Zen master, Hakuun Yasutani Roshi, said that unless you can explain Zen in words that a fisherman will comprehend, you don’t know what you’re talking about. Some fifty years ago a UCLA professor told me the same thing about applied mathematics. We like to hide from the truth behind foreign-sounding words or mathematical lingo. There’s a saying: The truth is always encountered but rarely perceived. If we don’t perceive it, we can’t help ourselves and we can’t much help anyone else.

One day a man of the people said to Zen Master Ikkyu: “Master, will you please write for me some maxims of the highest wisdom?” Ikkyu immediately took his brush and wrote the word “Attention.” “Is that all?” asked the man. “Will you not add something more?” Ikkyu then wrote twice running: “Attention. Attention.” “Well,” remarked the man rather irritably, “I really don’t see much depth or subtlety in what you have just written.” Then Ikkyu wrote the same word three times running: “Attention. Attention. Attention.” Half angered, the man demanded: “What does that word ‘Attention’ mean anyway?” And Ikkyu answered gently: “Attention means attention.”11

As the Zen master Suzuki Roshi put it, “In the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert’s there are few.

In the mind of the beginner, all things are possible, But in the mind of the expert, only a few. Zen Master Suzuki-Roshi

SHOHAKU OKUMURA: In chapter 30, Sawaki Roshi and Uchiyama Roshi talked about people who chase external things and lose sight of themselves. In this chapter they discuss how one’s own opinion is not valid. On the surface, these two are contradictory. How can we seek ourselves without having our own opinion? When the Buddha, Sawaki Roshi, and Uchiyama Roshi talk about “self” they don’t mean the image of ourselves created within the framework of separation between I as subject and others as objects. In Harischandra Kaviratna’s translation of the Dhammapada, the Buddha says, “The self is the master of the self. Who else can that master be? With the self fully subdued, one obtains the sublime refuge, which is very difficult to achieve.” Self is master of the self, but the self still needs to be subdued. In the Japanese translation of this verse, “subdued” is more like “harmonized” or “well tuned.” In Genjokoan, Dogen said, “To study the Buddha way is to study the self. To study the self is to forget the self.” To study the self, we need to forget the self. In these sayings, self is not a fixed, permanent entity separate from other beings. Self is our body and mind, that is, a collection of the five aggregates: form, sensation, perception, formation, and consciousness. These aggregates are always changing, but somehow we create a fixed self-image based on our past experiences and relations with others. We grasp this image as I. This I is an illusion, yet we measure everything based on the tunnel vision of this fictitious self. When we see fiction as fiction, illusion as illusion, they can be useful. Although no map is reality itself, when we know how a map was made, what its distortions are, and how to use it, the map can be a useful tool for understanding reality. However, if we don’t see a model’s limitations, we build our entire lives on a delusion.

This is the Way of Dōgen Zenji. For him, the Way is not simply one direction from starting point to goal; rather, the Way is like a circle. We arouse bodhi mind moment by moment, we practice moment by moment, we become fully aware moment by moment, and we are in nirvana moment by moment. And we continue to do it ceaselessly. Our practice is perfect in each moment and yet we have a direction toward buddha. It is difficult to grasp with the intellect, but that is the Way that Dōgen Zenji refers to in Bendōwa. So our practice is not a kind of training for the sake of making an ignorant person smart, clever, and finally enlightened. Each action, each moment of sitting, is arousing bodhi mind, practice, awakening, and nirvana. Each moment is perfect, and yet within this perfect moment we have a direction, the bodhisattva vows. "However innumerable all beings are, I vow to save them all. However inexhaustible my delusions are, I vow to extinguish them all. However immeasurable the dharma teachings are, I vow to master them all. However endless the Buddha's way is, I vow to follow it." These four bodhisattva vows are our direction within our moment-by-moment practice. And yet each moment is perfect. Since our delusion is inexhaustible, at no time can we eliminate all our delusions. Still we try to do it moment by moment. This trying is itself the manifestation of the buddha way, buddha's enlightenment. But even though we try as hard as possible to do it, we cannot be perfect. So we should repent. And repentance becomes energy to go further, to practice further in the direction of buddha. That is the basis of bodhisattva practice. Our practice is endless. Enlightenment is beginningless.

In the traditional descriptions of the progress of meditation, beginning practice always involves coming to terms with the unwanted, unexplored, and disturbing aspects of our being. Although we try any number of supposedly therapeutic maneuvers, say the ancient Buddhist psychological texts, there is but one method of successfully working with such material—by wisely seeing it. As Suzuki Roshi, the first Zen master of the San Francisco Zen Center, put it in a talk entitled “Mind Weeds”: We say, “Pulling out the weeds we give nourishment to the plant.” We pull the weeds and bury them near the plant to give it nourishment. So even though you have some difficulty in your practice, even though you have some waves while you are sitting, those waves themselves will help you. So you should not be bothered by your mind. You should rather be grateful for the weeds, because eventually they will enrich your practice. If you have some experience of how the weeds in your mind change into mental nourishment, your practice will make remarkable progress. You will feel the progress. You will feel how they change into self-nourishment. . . . This is how we practice Zen.11

Zen Master Dogen said that to transmit Dharma means to transmit zazen. Explaining that Dharma is identical to zazen, he writes, “Ever since days of old, only a few people have known that the purpose of zazen is zazen.”43 He means that zazen is not the means of attaining any goal other than zazen and also that zazen is not the way of learning Zen. He goes on to say, “Zazen is something which makes us want to sit in zazen.” It is hard for beginners to understand this, but it is an important point to remember. Ceramic vase (height 120 cm.), hand-built in the ceramics studio at Daihonzan Chozen-ji by Myoshin Teruya Roshi. In this photograph, the piece has just completed its bisque firing; firing was later finished in a four-chamber wood-burning kiln on the grounds. Teruya

No one ever tells us to stop running away from fear. We are very rarely told to move closer, to just be there, to become familiar with fear. I once asked the Zen master Kobun Chino Roshi how he related with fear, and he said, “I agree. I agree.” But the advice we usually get is to sweeten it up, smooth it over, take a pill, or distract ourselves, but by all means make it go away.

By the mid-1960s, students at Zen Center called their teacher Suzuki-roshi. The title roshi traditionally was accorded only to a few venerable Zen masters in Japan; however, in the West, it became customary to refer to all Zen teachers who receive Transmission as roshis.

Suzuki-roshi never wanted to be called roshi, a title traditionally accorded only to the most esteemed Zen masters in Japan; it denoted not only advanced age but experience—as a teacher and of enlightenment. He felt the term was too grand for him. He preferred to be called Suzuki-sensei (sensei means teacher). Some of his students who'd been to Japan early on did call him roshi. Several students believe they were the first to do so. However, the term was used in 1961 in the very first Zen Center newslet- ter, and then it dropped out of general use. Richard remembers that he and another practitioner used the term early on. Most students credit Alan Watts with the widespread adoption of the title. Watts was bothered by the oddity of such references as Reverend Suzuki, and he wrote a note in 1966 urging everyone at Zen Center to urge their teacher to do just what he had said he didn't want to do and accept the roshi title, as would be tra- ditional in Japan. And he did. Thus, Suzuki-roshi.

Zen masters often die in a formal sitting posture or even standing. Suzuki Roshi’s way was to die reclining. He died during the first period of the meditation retreat known as rohatsu sesshin, which celebrates the enlightenment of Shakyamuni Buddha. He died upstairs as downstairs 132 people sat upright in the meditation hall. His life flowed into the practice of his students.

KOSHO UCHIYAMA: Although Sawaki Roshi seemed manly, broad-minded, and carefree, he was also careful and behaved prudently. In contrast, although I’m his disciple and act open and undefended, I’m very nervous and anxious. I feel ashamed about almost everything. For example, in the middle of ceremonies, I often become flustered beyond control and so confused that I make big blunders. Afterward I feel so ashamed I wish I could disappear. However, because I have been very sensitive since childhood, in self-defense I finally had to settle into the stability of “Whatever happens, I am I.” After all, there’s no end to worrying about how to keep up appearances in this world, and it’s impossible to survive as such a fainthearted person. When I have butterflies in my stomach, that’s fine. When I make a big mess of something, what can I do besides accept it? There’s nothing else to do. Ultimately, the stability of “Whatever happens, I am I” is zazen as religion. Within this practice more than any other, a person like me can find salvation. I’m very grateful for this. Even if we don’t become an expert—always prepared, refined, and elegant like a veteran swordsman, virtuoso Noh actor, or tea master—we’re fine, aren’t we? What’s wrong with toddling and limping along the path of life practicing zazen?

Every day no matter what” is a gift to your soul, a gift of remembering. As Zen master Suzuki Roshi puts it: The most important thing is remembering the most important thing. Every day. The daily pause to just be present builds on itself and creates a gravitational field that increasingly calls you to presence throughout all the moments of your life.