Samurai Zen

The Warrior Koans

Trevor Leggett

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2003
• eBook ISBN: 9781134452798
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Eastern Philosophy

Samurai Zen brings together 100 of the rare riddles which represent the core spiritual discipline of Japan's ancient Samurai tradition. Dating from thirteenth-century records of Japan's Kamakura temples, and traditionally guarded with a reverent secrecy, they reflect the earliest manifestation of pure Zen in Japan. Created by Zen Masters for their warrior pupils, the Japanese Koans use incidents from everyday life - a broken tea-cup, a water-jar, a cloth - to bring the warrior pupils of the Samurai to the Zen realization. Their aim is to enable a widening of consciouness beyond the illusions of the limited self, and a joyful inspiration in life - a state that has been compared to being free under a blue sky after imprisonment.

KAMAKURA KŌANS

No. 1. THE MIRROR OF ENKAKUJI

Regent Tokiyori founded the great temple of Kenchōji for the teaching of Buddhism, but the temple soon could not accommodate all the many warriors who became students (nyūdō) in order to enter the Buddhist path and give all their free time to it. So in the first year of Kōan (1278) Tokimune, Tokiyori’s son, decided to build another great temple, and invited priest Rankei (afterwards Daikaku) to choose the Brahma-ground, as the site for a temple is called. Teacher and regent walked together round the nearby hills, and found the ruins of a Shingon temple (of the mantra sect) where Minamoto Yoshiyori had once set up a pagoda of Perfect Realization. They decided on this as the place to plant the banner of the Law.

First the teacher performed a purification, and made three strokes with a mattock; then the regent made three strokes, and planted a stalk of grass to mark the spirit of faith.

In the winter of the same year, when Tokimune was having the area prepared for the foundations, a buried stone coffer was found. In it was a perfect circular mirror; engraved on the back were the words EN KAKU – Perfect Realization. So the temple was called Enkakuji.

Taira Masatsuna, a nyūdō student of Zen, at an interview with Mugaku (later Bukkō), told him this story of how the temple came to be called Enkakuji. The teacher said:

‘Leave for a moment that perfect mirror buried underground: the perfect mirror at this instant in your hands, what is it? Try and bring it out of its stone coffer. If you don’t get this, the spiritual pagoda of Perfect Realization will not be built.’

TESTS

1. When the stone coffer is broken open, what is that perfect mirror like? (Imai’s note: It is said that this question means, When man dies, what happens to his spirit?)
2. Beneath the feet of the man of the Way, as he walks, is the Brahma-ground for the temple. At this instant, try building the pagoda of Perfect Realization.

This incident became a kōan in Kamakura Zen at the interviews of Butsuju, the 21st teacher at Enkakuji.

No. 2. HACHIMAN ASKS TO HEAR THE DHARMA

When Daikaku was living at Kenchōji temple, the old pines by the lake – which is in the form of a heart – began to bend of themselves. The monks wondered, and asked the teacher about it. The teacher said:

‘The god Hachiman comes; he treads on the pines as he comes to ask me about the dharma. And so the pines are bowed.’

(Imai’s note: This has to be understood in a Zen sense.)

TESTS

1. What did Daikaku really mean by saying that the god trod on the pines and so they became bowed?
2. Right now the god Hachiman is treading on this old back as he comes to ask about the dharma, and so my back is bowed. O monks of the congregation, do you know how to hear the dharma in your spiritual experience?

This incident became a kōan in Kamakura Zen from the time of the interviews of Nanzan, the 20th teacher at Kenchōji.

No. 3. SAVING KAJIWARA’S SOUL

On the fifteenth day of the seventh month of the sixth year of Kenchō (1255), the rite of Feeding the Hungry Ghosts was being performed at the Karataka mountain gate of Kenchōji temple. When the sūtra reading had been completed, however, priest Rankei (Master Daikaku) suddenly pointed to the main gate and shouted:

‘A knight has come through the gate. It is Kajiwara Kagetoki, of many treacheries. Bring him to salvation quickly!’

The monks all stared hard at the gate, but could see no knight there. Only the head monk shouted, ‘Clear to see!’ He left the line and went back to the Zen hall.

Then the teacher berated the others, saying:

‘Look at the crowds of you, supposed to be saving myriad spirits in the three worlds, and yet you cannot save one knight – blind clods! The rite must be performed again at the main gate, and the Heart Sūtra recited in its original Sanskrit.’

So the whole ceremony was transferred from the mountain gate to the main gate, and the Sūtra was recited there in Sanskrit.

After the recitation was over, the monks hurried to the Zen hall and asked the head monk, ‘How did you see the knight?’

He replied: ‘With the eye of the crown of the head, bright and clear!’

TESTS

1. Put aside for the moment the question of Kajiwara Kagetoki’s apparition at Kenchōji, do you see the knight coming galloping his horse across the garden to the interview room here? If you can, save him quickly!
2. What was the virtue of chanting the sūtra in Sanskrit at the main gate? Say!

(Imai’s note: The point of this second test is, Can chanting the Heart Sūtra in Sanskrit bring salvation to Kajiwara, or can it not? He who says it can, shows that he will have to come under the teacher’s hammer yet again. Until one has passed this kōan, his reading of the sūtras, whether as monk or layman, is equally meaningless. The kōan must not be taken lightly.)

This first became a kōan in Kamakura Zen at the interviews of Daisetsu, the 47th master of Kenchōji.

No. 4. DAIKAKU’S ONE-WORD SŪTRA

At the beginning of the Kenchō era (1249), ‘Old Buddha’ Daikaku was invited from Kyōto by the shōgun Tokiyori to spread Zen in the East of Japan. Some priests and laymen of other sects were not at all pleased at this, and out of jealousy spread it around that the teacher was a spy sent to Japan by the Mongols; gradually more and more people began to believe it. At the time the Mongols were in fact sending emissaries to Japan, and the shōgun’s government, misled by the campaign of rumours, transferred the teacher to Kōshū . He was not the least disturbed, but gladly followed the karma which led him away.

Some officials there who were firm believers in repetition of the formula of the Lotus, or in recitation of the name of Amida, one day came to him and said: ‘The Heart Sūtra which is read in the Zen tradition is long and difficult to read, whereas Nichiren teaches the formula of the Lotus which has only seven syllables, and Ippen teaches repetition of the name of Amida, which is only six. The Zen Sūtra is much longer, and it is difficult to get through it.’

The teacher listened to all this and said: ‘What would a follower of Zen want with a long text? If you want to recite the Zen sūtra, do it with one word. It is the six-and seven-word ones which are too long.’

TEST

Master Setsuō used to present his pupils with this story as the riddle of Daikaku’s One-word Sūtra. He would say to them: ‘The golden-faced teacher (Buddha), it is said, in all his forty-nine years of preaching never uttered a single word. But our Old Buddha (Daikaku) declares one word to lead the people to salvation. What is that word, say! What is that one word? If you cannot find it your whole life will be spent entangled in creepers in a dark cave. If you can say it, with that leap of realization you will pervade heaven and earth.’

(Imai’s note: Those who were set this riddle over the years tried the word ‘heart’, and the word ‘Buddha’, or ‘dharma’, ‘God’, ‘mantra’, but none of them hit it. When the pearly sweat runs down the body, coming and going for the interviews with the teacher, the one word will be met directly.)

This became a kōan in Kamakura Zen at the interviews of Setsuō, the 151st master at Kenchōji.

No. 5. BUKKŌ’S NO-WORD SŪTRA

Ryō-A, a priest of the Tsurugaoka Hachiman shrine, came to Magaku (National teacher Bukkō, who succeeded Daikaku) and told him the story of Daikaku’s one-word sūtra. He said: ‘I do not ask about the six or seven syllables recited by other sects, but what is the one word of Zen?’

The teacher said: ‘Our school does not set up any word; its dharma is a special transmission outside scriptures, a truth transmitted from heart to heart. If you can penetrate through to that, your whole life will be a dhāranī (Buddhist mantra), and your death will be a dhāranī. What would you be wanting with a word or half a word? The old master Daikaku went deep into the forest and put one word down there, and now the whole Zen world is tearing itself to pieces on the thorns, trying to find it. If the reverend Ryō-A before me wishes to grasp that one word, then without opening the mouth, do you recite the sūtra of no-word. If you fail in your awareness of the no-word, you will at once lose the one word. Displayed, the one word is set above the thirty-three heavens; buried, it is at the bottom of the eighth great hell. Yet in all four directions and above and below, where could it ever be hidden? At this instant before Your Reverence! Is there a word, or is there not?’

The golden needle did not penetrate (the embroidered cloth of the priest’s mind), and he silently took his leave.

TEST

Say a word for the priest.

This incident became a kōan in Kamakura Zen at the interviews of Gyokkei, the 131st master at Enkakuji.

No. 6. DAIKAKU’S ONE-ROBE ZEN

A priest from the headquarters of the regent Yasutoki visited Kenchōji and remarked to Daikaku: ‘Eisai and Gyōyū began the propagation of Zen here in Kamakura, but the two greatest teachers of the way of the patriarchs have been Dōgen (of the Sōtō sect) and Bennen (later National Teacher Shōichi). Both of them came to Kamakura at the invitation of regent Tokiyori to teach Zen, but both left before a year was out. So there are not many among the warriors here who have much understanding of Zen. In fact some are so ignorant about it that they think the character for Zen – written as they think by combining the characters for “garment” and “single” – means just that. They believe that Zen monks of India in the mountains practised special austerities, and even in winter wore only one cotton robe, and that the name of the sect arose from this.’

Zen

‘One-Robe’

Daikaku listened to all this and laughed:

‘The people of Kamakura are right to say that Zen means wearing a single garment. They well understand what the sect stands for. An ordinary man is clad in layers of the three poisons and five desires, and though by repetition of the Buddha-name and reading the scriptures he tries again and again to strip them off, he cannot get out of his layers of passions. Fundamentally Zen means having no layers of clothes but just one piece. Repeating the Buddha-name – it is becoming just one piece with the Buddha; reading the scriptures – it is “apart from the Law, no I, and without I no Law”, so that I and the Law are one piece.’

This is called bringing everything to one. The warriors of Kamakura, when they say Zen means the sect of a single robe, have grasped its deepest essence.

‘Without those layers of clothes, you should cultivate the fie...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• INTRODUCTION
• PREFACE
• ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
• IMAI FUKUZAN’S INTRODUCTION TO SHŌNAN-KATTŌ-ROKU
• EXTRACTS FROM IMAI FUKUZAN’S INTRODUCTION TO WARRIOR ZEN
• KAMAKURA KŌANS
• INDEX OF CHINESE CHARACTERS