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Preface

This is the second of three volumes in which I gather together the Zen stories of China, Japan, and North America. As I explained in the Preface to Zen Masters of China: The First Step East, it was these stories that originally intrigued me and drew me to the practice of Zen.

Consider, for example, this brief Chinese tale:

A new student came to work with the 9^th century Chinese master, Zhaozhou Congshen. He presented himself, saying, “I have just entered the monastery, and I beg you to accept me as a disciple and teach me.”

Zhaozhou asked him, “Have you had anything to eat yet?”

“Yes, I have. Thank you.”

“Then you had better wash your bowl,” Zhaozhou told him. And we are informed that upon hearing these words, the new monk attained enlightenment or awakening.

There is a comparable Japanese tale of a nun, named Chiyono, who came to awakening when the bottom broke from the pail she was carrying, and the moon was no longer reflected in the water.

The obscurity of these stories, when I first encountered them, was what made them so compelling. They were unlike anything with which I was familiar in the realm of religious literature. The stories made no reference to a deity or to morality. There were no miraculous events. Indeed, the events described—washing bowls, pails breaking—were of the most commonplace sort.

I pointed out in that earlier Preface that the

—lore of religion begins in myth, passes through legend, and only slowly comes to verifiable historical narrative. One sees this pattern in the dominant religious traditions of the West. First there are the tales of the Bible, followed by the legends of Christian saints and Jewish folklore. And only in the later centuries do we have what might be considered objectively accurate information.

The stories of Zen likewise begin with the anecdotes of 6^th century China, pass through the legends of the Tang and Song Dynasties as well as of Japan, and continue in the records of the Zen teachers of more recent centuries, including those pioneers who brought the tradition to the world outside of Asia.

The spread of the teaching has been steadily eastward. From China, various schools of Buddhism, including Chan, spread to Korea, Vietnam, and Japan (where it was called Zen). While over time the Chan School declined in China, it continued to flourish in Japan where it had its fullest flowering. Finally, at the end of the 19^th century, Zen took its longest stride east, across the Pacific Ocean to the shores of North America. (1)

The format of this volume differs in some significant ways from that of the first. To begin with, the time frame considered is much broader, and consequently I have made no attempt to be as inclusive as I was in the book on China. Instead, I focus on a select group of Zen Masters who are recognized for the impact they had on the development of the tradition in Japan. There may well have been other masters and students whose spiritual attainments equaled or surpassed those of the individuals I include in this collection, but these are the figures whose lives, for one reason or another, achieved legendary status.

Because there is more biographical information available about these masters, we have a clearer understanding of them as individuals than we do of their Chinese predecessors. As figures of legend, however, they were also often the subjects of popular tales based more in folklore than in fact. Those apocryphal tales are included in this volume because, while they may have limited historical value, they have become part of an unofficial Zen canon—part of what I have called the “folk history” of Zen. For example, we not only have Hakuin’s autobiographical and instructional writings, we also have several records written by his students. In addition to those, there are a number of tales such as the story about the young girl who accused Hakuin of being the father of her child. While it is unlikely that these stories are based in actual events, they have become part of the folk history.

Because Zen came to permeate the cultural spirit of Japan in a way it did not do in China, more attention is paid to the setting and historical context of the tales than was paid to those in my first book.

As with that first volume, there is no new material in this collection. All the stories gathered here have been told in English elsewhere. And once more I have retained the story-teller’s prerogative of making minor embellishments.

In the first book, it was necessary to decide which of three possible renderings I would give of Chinese names. In this volume, I have chosen to use the Japanese forms of those names throughout, even in the Prologue. Where appropriate I provide the Pinyin Romanization in brackets.

Finally, I point out once again that Zen is, above all, a practice. There is more information about the practice of zazen in this book than there was in the first, but this still is not a book of instruction. For those readers interested in the actual practice of Zen, I recommend either Albert Low’s Zen Meditation: Plain and Simple [originally published as An Invitation to Practice Zen] or Robert Aitkin’s Taking the Path of Zen.