Читать книгу Zen Masters of Japan - Richard Bryan McDaniel - Страница 18

Koun Ejo, Dogen’s close friend and heir, came to the Soto Zen tradition after first spending time in the “Daruma” school of Dainichi Nonin. This school claimed descent from the Chinese Rinzai tradition, although Myoan Eisai and others questioned its validity.

Dainichi Nonin was a contemporary of Eisai’s who developed an interest in Buddhism at an early age. He was raised and trained in the Tendai Sect. He was a voracious reader and made a careful study of the various texts available to him. In particular, he was drawn to the descriptions he found of the meditation school brought to China by Bodhidharma (Daruma in Japanese). Following instructions he was able to glean from his reading, Nonin committed himself to the practice of meditation and achieved what he believed to be a genuine kensho. He set himself up as a teacher at Sanbo Temple (Sanboji), attached to the Tendai center in Settsu, and called his new school the “Daruma School” in honor of the first patriarch of Chinese Zen.

Although he was able to gather students who were interested in learning the practice of meditation, Nonin was conscious that he lacked official recognition of his enlightenment. So in the year 1189 he sent two of his disciples to visit the Rinzai master, Zhuo an Deguang, in China taking with them a letter in which Nonin asked the master to authorize his right to teach. Surprisingly, Zhuoan sent back a letter affirming the validity of Nonin’s awakening and presenting him with a “Dharma robe,” a traditional symbol of transmission.

Myoan Eisai did not receive transmission from Kian Esho until two years later, 1191, and when he returned to Japan, Eisai was dismissive of the Daruma School. Zen tradition in China insisted on mind-to-mind transmission between teacher and student, therefore the written authorization Nonin had received from Zhuoan was questionable.

Nonin was unfazed by his critics and continued to teach. Following the traditions he had read about, he even named a Dharma successor, Bucchi Kakuan. Kakuan left Sanboji to establish his own meditation center at Tonomine. In spite of the controversy over Nonin’s status, and thus that of his heirs, the Daruma School acquired some fame, and a number of individuals important in the history of Japanese Buddhism became Kakuan’s disciples. Among these were the monks Gien, Tettsu Gikai, and Koun Ejo.

KOUN EJO

Ejo was born into an aristocratic family and received a Buddhist education in the Tendai tradition as a matter of course. He may have been an over-sensitive child and was drawn to enter religious life at an early age, driven by a sense of his personal shortcomings. This sense of unworthiness was something with which Ejo would struggle throughout his entire life. Years later, while an Abbot and heir of Dogen, he would describe himself in a poem as:

Weighted down with karma and a despicable character,

By far the first among humans in sinfulness.

Barefoot he learned to walk.

Before he wore out his sandals, he saw his original self. (9)

In 1218, at the age of 20, he received the precepts from Master Enno of the Yokawa Tendai temple on Mount Hiei. He also studied the Shingon tradition. The monks on Mount Hiei lived comfortably and were held in high esteem. There was a hierarchy within which the monks sought to rise, accumulating social status as they did so. Ejo found himself gaining stature in this milieu and did not question it until his mother challenged him. She asked him pointedly: “Did you become a monk in order to be able to hobnob with the well-to-do? That’s not why I supported your desire to enter the monastery. You should not pursue these studies for the wealth or status they can bring you. My desire is that you commit yourself sincerely, practicing in poverty, without worldly ambition.”

Ejo realized he had strayed from his original intentions, and he left Mount Hiei, turning his back on both the Tendai and Shingon communities. He worked with a teacher in the Pure Land tradition for a while, practicing the nembutsu, then went to Tonomine and asked Kakuan to accept him as a student. Working with Kakuan, Ejo resolved some of his personal problems and achieved an initial awakening. Then sectarian rivals burned down Tonomine and its students scattered. Ejo was one of several who sought out Dogen at Kenninji.

Ejo had been well respected in the Daruma School and had come to an awakening under Kakuan’s instruction. He had also had extensive training in the Tendai, Shingon, and Pure Land traditions. In addition, at thirty-one years old he was Dogen’s senior by two years; so to some extent, he and Dogen met as equals. They immediately liked one another, and spent two days in discussions about the Dharma, finding themselves in agreement on every point raised. However, on the third day, Dogen, now confident of Ejo’s sincerity, felt he could begin to speak more directly. He identified the areas where their perspectives differed. Ejo was discouraged that Dogen, who was obsessed with the legitimacy of lineage documentation, questioned the validity of his awakening experience and the practices of the Daruma School. In spite of this, it was clear to Ejo that Dogen respected him. Ejo remained certain that his awakening had been genuine; however, he also recognized that, compared with Dogen’s, his understanding was shallow. He hoped that Dogen could help him deepen it.

In a rigidly hierarchal society like that of Medieval Japan, it would have been unusual for someone older to ask a younger man to accept him as a student, but Ejo was humble enough and admired Dogen sufficiently to do so. To Ejo’s dismay, however, Dogen declined as politely as circumstances allowed, telling Ejo that conditions were not yet right at Kenninji for teaching the Dharma. He told Ejo that he would later seek a more appropriate and permanent temple where he would promote the practice of Zen in Japan, and he invited Ejo to visit him there once it was established.

After this first meeting with Dogen, Ejo went on a pilgrimage of Buddhist monasteries in Japan, and eventually returned to a settlement near the ruins of Tonomine, where Kakuan was still living. Ejo remained with Kakuan, caring for him, until the latter’s death.

The Daruma School had not died out entirely. Some of Kakuan and Nonin’s students continued to study with the new head of the school, a monk named Ekan. Ejo, too, may have studied with Ekan for a while. Among the other monks who studied with Ekan were Gikai and Gien.

Just before his death, Kakuan advised Ejo to approach Dogen once again and ask to be accepted as a disciple. By then Dogen had established his training center at Kannondori, and there, in 1234, Ejo was finally accepted as a disciple. Later, Ekan and several of his students also joined Dogen’s community of monks.

At this point in his career, Dogen was still using koans as a teaching means, and he assigned Ejo the koan: “One thread [hair] pierces many holes.” Ejo focused his attention on the koan for a long while. He remained baffled by it until, one day, as he was setting out his food bowls, he suddenly resolved it. He rushed to Dogen’s rooms and bowed ceremoniously.

“Have you understood something?” Dogen asked.

“I don’t ask about the one thread, but what of the many holes?” Ejo replied.

“Pierced!” Dogen said with a laugh.

Now satisfied with Ejo’s level of understanding, Dogen appointed him head monk of the community. Ejo also served as Dogen’s personal attendant, and, when Dogen established Eiheiji, Ejo was put in charge of the daily operations of the temple.

During his final illness, before he went to Kyoto to seek medical attention, Dogen first appointed Ejo his heir, pointing out that although Ejo was older than he, Ejo would outlive his teacher by many years. At the same time, Dogen put Tettsu Gikai in charge of operations. As Ejo had been before him, Gikai was now responsible for the running of the monastery and overseeing its religious and ritual responsibilities; Ejo, as Dogen’s heir, would be in charge of the formation and teaching of the monks.

After Dogen’s death, Ejo was formally installed as the second abbot of Eiheiji. He brought Dogen’s ashes back to Eiheiji and had them interred in a memorial pagoda. It was Ejo’s goal to preserve, as well as he could, Dogen’s Zen as it was presented in the Shobogenzo and his personal teachings. Ejo collected his master’s writings and perhaps spent too much time working on these. As a result, he may not have realized the extent to which discipline in the monastery had begun to suffer, nor may he have been aware that a division was growing among the monks that would become more serious as time passed. It is also possible that his continued sense of personal unworthiness kept him from growing into the type of leader the community needed.

TETTSU GIKAI

Ejo recognized Gikai as his own heir because he believed that Dogen would have wanted him to do so. However, although Ejo was aware of the respect Dogen had had for Gikai, Ejo himself had some reservations about him. He suspected that, like many of the former Daruma School members, Gikai held beliefs, in particular about the so-called esoteric or ritual practices, which were inconsistent with what Ejo understood to be Dogen’s Zen. Ejo reminded Gikai that zazen was the singular focus of Dogen’s teaching. Ejo knew there were members of the sangha at Eiheiji who did not believe that zazen was necessarily the only appropriate form of practice, so he questioned Gikai about where he stood on the issue. Gikai admitted that, while he valued the practice of zazen, he believed there were other disciplines that could be just as valuable to one’s religious development. Ejo pressed the issue, and Gikai at least gave the impression that his opinion was swayed.

To deepen Gikai’s understanding of Zen, Ejo encouraged him to go on a tour of other monasteries in Japan. Gikai went even further and, on his own initiative but with Ejo’s permission, traveled to China as well. He was impressed by the depth of the established Zen tradition and its trappings in the Land of Song and was awed by both the architecture and the furnishings of the temples he visited. He made detailed copies of the architectural designs of these sites and collected cultic items to bring back to Japan.

When Gikai returned to Eiheiji, Ejo appointed him abbot and retired. Ejo settled in a hermitage not far from the temple, hoping to pass his final days in solitude; however, some of his former students, uncomfortable with Gikai, visited Ejo on a regular basis. It soon became clear that there was a division between a group of monks who supported Gikai and another group that wanted Ejo to return. Gikai, this latter group complained, was less interested in the spiritual development of the monks than he was in transforming Eiheiji architecturally and making it a place of elaborate shrines. He also had never wholly given up his belief that zazen was not necessarily the only appropriate practice, and ritual elements were gradually being introduced into the monks’ daily schedule of activities. There were also questions raised about a subsidiary temple he had built for the care of his mother.

In 1272, the faction that opposed Gikai persuaded Ejo to return and resume the position of Abbot. Gikai withdrew his claim to the post rather than cause further divisions within the community, although he remained at Eiheiji and continued to work with Ejo.

Ejo tried to reconcile the divisions that had arisen at Eiheiji, but went to his death feeling that he had failed to do so and, thus, had failed in his responsibilities to his teacher, Dogen.

Just before he died, Ejo commanded his students not to build a memorial pagoda for him but simply to bury him at the foot of Dogen’s pagoda.

After Ejo’s death, Gikai was returned to the position of Abbot, but the divisions within the community remained unresolved. For the traditionalists, the final straw came when Gikai complied with a government request that Shingon rituals be carried out at Eiheiji for the benefit of the country.

The Government directive had come about because they sought divine aid in their efforts to resist the intentions of the Mongol leader, Kublai Khan, to add Japan to his vast conquests. The Khan had already taken control of both China and Korea. Eight years earlier he had sent a number of delegations to the Japanese isles demanding that they too acknowledge his leadership. After hearing what the first messengers had to say, the Japanese prevented later delegations from landing on the island of Honshu.

In 1274, when Ejo was serving his second term as abbot of Eiheiji, the offended Khan mobilized a fleet of more than 500 ships and an army of 40,000 soldiers to conquer the impudent Land of Wa. The Japanese defense force was considerably smaller, estimated at no more than 10,000 samurai.

When the Mongol forces landed in November, the samurai fought valiantly in what was clearly a hopeless cause. After the first day of battle, the samurai withdrew from the beachhead to rest and recover their strength. They fully intended to resume the fight in the morning, although it was almost certain they would be annihilated.

However, during the night, the Mongol forces reboarded their ships and sailed out into the bay because the sailors were afraid that the high winds that had arisen might drive their ships onto shore and ground them. That decision was a grave error; the Mongol fleet sailed directly into the path of a typhoon that sank a third of the boats, drowning their crews and passengers. The remaining vessels were heavily damaged and forced to retreat back to China.

The Japanese believed that the wind—which they termed “Kamikaze” or “divine wind”—was evidence that the old Shinto gods still protected the isles. Seven years later, during Gikai’s second term as abbot of Eiheiji, the Japanese learned that Kublai Khan was preparing a second invasion of their homeland. This time the Khan had amassed a force five times larger than the previous one—two fleets of more than 4000 ships and an estimated 140,000 soldiers. In the face of this armada, government officials ordered all Buddhist Temple to perform rites for the protection of the country. The rites probably had little to do with it, but once again the Khan’s forces were destroyed by a typhoon. After this second defeat, he gave up his intentions to subjugate the archipelago.

In spite of the national emergency, the traditional forces at Eiheiji resisted the inclusion of Shingon rites at their temple. Gikai, on the other hand, believed that not only should they comply with the government request but that by adding these ritual elements the Soto School would be likely to become more popular with the Japanese laity. Those in disagreement with him, however, held that Master Dogen would never have approved of these changes. There were strong feelings on both sides of the issues, and violence broke out between Gikai’s supporters and his opposers. Gikai fled the temple in remorse over the conflict he had caused and possibly in fear of his own safety.

GIEN

With Gikai out of the way, another former member of the Daruma School and student of Ekan, Gien, was appointed abbot. He was officially designated the third abbot of Eiheiji, after Dogen and Ejo. The seven-year period during which Gikai had served in that position was discounted.

Gikai sought refuge at the Shingon temple, Daijoji, where he was able to establish a community that combined both Shingon and Zen practices.

Gien, possibly because of his previous involvement with the Daruma School, was unable to resolve the factions within his community. And when, in 1297, a fire destroyed several buildings in the monastery complex, Gien did not have the financial resources to rebuild it. Many monks left Eiheiji to seek other monasteries, and Gien himself retired to a hermitage.