It won't mean that it was unpleasantly so. It was just, everything was tight. The feeling was good, though. The feeling was just wonderful. Absolutely tight. Didn't you say once that Don Shin Ken used to go out and do samu with milk? Oh, yes. Often did. And he had a little vegetable garden in the back of this temple where I live. And he often went out there working. And in the summer, in the vacation time, he often came down to my house and stayed. And we always had vegetarian food. You'd go back to vegetarian food for him. And he would come. I had him come in the summer. We'd hear somebody banging on the door at 6 o'clock in the morning. And it would be lunch in Canton. He'd have his little furoshiki. and an old straw hat. He just got bored at the Soto, so he'd come down for two or three days. So we fixed him up in a room.

[01:01]

And he used to run, if it was in the summertime, he'd run around just in his fundoshi. He'd run around the house. And he used to sit most of the time talking to Kato-san. He really wasn't interested in talking to me because he wasn't an intellectual in any sense of the word at all. And he wasn't especially interested in intellectual things. He read the paper. And I have to admit that he was something of a gossip. And he made me very annoyed one time because at one of the O sessions, he insisted upon my coming and having supper with him every night. And I think it was the last O session we had, and he insisted on my coming up and eating supper with him. His little special supper. His little special supper. And his little special supper was daikon stewed in shoyu and water. But I didn't mind that so much.

[02:03]

But I had to. Then he would call his essa up, and then he would begin to gossip. And that I didn't like, because this was inside the Osessian time. I got very cross about that, but there was nothing I could do. I had to eat that darn thing. Cover a piece about this big around about that thick, you know, boil it, show you on water. That I feed every night. Did he ever say anything or express any curiosity or interest in you as a boiler being interested in him? Did he have any... particular feeling about Zen in the West? No, not at all. I would say not at all. He was very devoted to me, and he was very wonderful to me. When we would have sanzen, he never talked much. His sanzen was always very, very short.

[03:05]

And many times he wouldn't even let the boys come in. I mean, he would, and sometimes they tell me, this I have no way of really knowing myself, but that if he didn't like the way Sanzen was going, he'd just shut it up, he wouldn't have any more. And the boys used to, the good boys, who really wanted to have Sanzen, really had to hustle to get the front seats, because with all of these people, and he used to have Sanzen five times during Osashinkan. Five times a day. Five times a day. And during the rohatsu, for instance, he never went to sleep. Of course, nobody went to sleep in rohatsu. We had seven solid days. I was the only one that was allowed to sleep one hour. But he sat up the seven days himself. He never laid down either. But he would get bored if the Sanzen wasn't going good, and he'd just shut the door and the rest of them would be out, you see.

[04:10]

So there used to be considerable competition for the front seats in the Sanzen line, because they never knew when he would lose his temper, because he had a quick temper, I should say. And he would lose his temper, or intentionally. He would say, well, something's no good tonight, and he'd just slam the door, and that was it. Nobody else could come in. And they all raced? To the line? Yeah, they would all race to the line to get there, so they could get there early. I mean, to get to the front seats, so they'd be sure to get in. Did any boys ever stay behind and not be thrown out? There were always, on those nights, a few, two or three. Who stayed behind? Well, who tried to stay behind. Did they ever let them stay behind? Never. Because, you know, in theory, Dokusan is supposed to be voluntary, in theory. Yes. And I've heard that at some places, some monks go and some monks don't go, and the ones that don't go aren't made to go.

[05:13]

Well, I... Okay. I think I had to characterize Nan Shinkan. the two most important elements in his character were his sincerity and his earnestness. I think he had no wish or no will to be a big man or a great man or an important man. He had only a wish to train monks and to train them well. He was meticulously neat and clean. and uh... so that he would come over every two days to the Senkouan, this little temple because though the monks were supposed to keep it clean come regularly and sweep it and dust it and everything he would go around just like the woman in the story with his finger and literally

[06:31]

And when it came to the butsudan itself, which was fairly large there, he always took care of it himself. And he taught me how to take care of such a butsudan. And this goes here, and this goes here, and not here, not there, there. And everything was in absolutely perfect order, in absolute cleanliness. Later, a few years ago, I went to Hofukichi in Okayama. I hope someday you go to Hofukichi. Esan's place. And it's a very grand place. temple that belongs to the Tofukiji line. It's a sub-sodo of Tofukiji. And there, it's the temple where Setsuo, not Setsuo, what is the Japanese painter? Setsuo lived as a boy.

[07:33]

And where on the screens of which are supposed to be his rats, you know, the rat that, I don't know, the rats came out, he painted the cat or whatever it was. Anyway, it's that temple. And they have the screens that he later painted also. And it is no longer a Sodo, but Ehsan, being a Roshi, is very interested in lay people, have large lay groups, and has since, in recent years, built a layman's zendo there. But they have a very, very large hondo and an enormously long butsudan. And the first day that I went there, I went in to look at the butsudan, and I said to Mashino-san, it is only one of Nan Shinken's disciples who would have a butsudan that looked like this. Because it was just like his. I mean, everything. And it was such a long one, and there were so many things about it.

[08:37]

But nothing cluttered it, and everything in exactly its place. everything shining, everything, every bit of lacquer, absolutely dustless, and absolutely beautiful care. And that was what Manchin taught all these months. Now, many of the younger ones who hadn't been with him so long, who thought it was a nuisance and thought it was boring and tried to get out of doing that sort of thing. But the older ones who stayed with him learned it and appreciated both him and what he taught them. His clothes were always old, always old. Even when he was dressed up for a ceremony, his kesa showed no particular taste or that sort of thing. He had no artistic ability at all, in a sense, and no appreciation of art, I think.

[09:42]

He was purely a Soto man, a monk's man. He was a monk to the last grain, last air of his head, which he didn't have. But he was very sweetly devout, and how much of this devoutness was a little on the, what shall I say, superstitious side, I wouldn't really know. But I always remember him when we would have teisho, and the hall, the hondo at Nanzenji is rather long, or broad, I should say. And the lay people, and I among them, sat over on this side, of course, and the hondo was in the middle, and the other boys sat on that side. And coming from the sodo, the zendo, which was beyond there, they used to have to come in and in a row, and they would be silhouetted against the shoji, you know, in the early morning the light would light up the shoji.

[10:51]

And we used to have a taisho seven o'clock in the morning earlier during old session times. And I would see the silhouette of this line of boys, first the monks themselves coming in, and then the head monk who carried his book, and then the roshi, and then the boy who carried his teacup following after. And he would come in, and he would stand beside of his seat. And then he would go and make his raihai to the Buddha. And that I will never forget. his hands as he came in, the silhouette of his little head and his little body, and these really lovely hands he had. And the sweet, simple, really I think one could say devout even, way that he entered the hondo, and his bowing,

[12:06]

was like the bowing of a child. It had no fuss to it, no arrangement of kesa, no arrangement of robes or anything like that. He just came in and, just like a child, put his head and his hands together and made his raihai. That this sweet, simple, Devotion, rather, maybe than devoutness that he showed, was very, very touching. I used to always get a little jerk in my heart when I would see him come in in the morning that way. First the silhouette against the shojin. and then coming around and he took rather small steps and the pattering feet and then the way that these hands were put together and very very sweet touching way in which he uh in which he did his right before the golem very very sweet now for his uh of course he came quite directly from hawking

[13:20]

And his nioi, he, a nioi, I don't know nioi, I don't know whether it was one he always used or not, but a nioi. he had was one which Hakuin had used. He showed it to me one day and said that that was the sign of the transmission to him. Now, I don't know who got that meoi after his death. I have no idea. Interesting to know. Yes, but he had it still when I was there in, what, 32, 33. He still had the meoi, and he showed it to me and told me it had been Hakuin. Now, the robe that he wore for Taisho, and I'm trying to think, not Taisho, but for Sanzen, and I'm not sure that he didn't use it for Taisho also, except when he had grand ceremonies or something like that, was the most awful old robe you ever saw.

[14:28]

Koromo. Koromo. Yes. uh... it was made out of hemp and rather closely woven hemp and it had been was kind of um... sand colored or dark sand color And it had belonged to his teacher, and it was several sizes too big for him. I should think that it must have belonged to his teacher's teacher or somebody else, because the ancientness of it and the bulk of it, when the little man sat down, when you saw him for Sanzen, There was this bulk of this old, dilapidated, rough, because it was not a fine piece of hemp, it was a rough rope. And I don't mean one of these transparent things at all. And this was summer and winter. I never saw him in anything else for Sanzen except this one rope. And it was many, many sizes too big for him. And he always had just this rather small head and this big, big mass of koromo that certainly had been made for somebody five sizes bigger than he was.

[15:41]

And old and old. And I never really saw that it was tattered. And I never saw that it was really dirty. because I never got, the times that I saw him wearing it, I was never in any position to make any careful examination of it. But you just got the feeling that this thing that he was wearing was, certainly had come down from two or three generations, and it must have the sweat and everything else of two or three generations of teachers in it, you know. It was such an old, old piece of material and so forth. But to my mind, it was perfectly charming. It was one of the things that endeared him very much to me, was this old robe. And it was just what you expected the old Chinese people to be doing. One robe, summer and winter. And the same old robe, summer and winter. And I remember the last time I had Sanzen with him, the first time I was over.

[16:44]

It was a very hot night. And we had all the shoji open to the garden. He was giving sanzen in his yozashiki that night because it was too hot in his little ordinary sanzen room. And I remember his sitting there with the garden all open, and it was so hot that night, and he had the big old robe on just the same. And the perfectly marvelous way he talked to me that night And his saying now, you must go back to America, and what you can do is you may teach people how to sit. Of course, he wouldn't let me sit cross-legged. I was still sitting in favor in front of him. The concern and the sweetness, you asked me, if he was, not exactly if he were fond of me, but if he were interested in me.

[17:50]

Yes, I think that I was one of the joys of his life, of his later years. And he got very angry at me one time, which had nothing to do with Sanzen or that. But that same year, that same summer, they had the usual farewell tea party for everybody. And I was invited to that. And I was asked to give the monks a talk, say something. at the Tea Party. And so I thought about it. I was asked some little time in advance. And I thought about it. And I wrote about in English what I wanted to say. And I had put it into Japanese for me. And then I read it in Japanese. It was very short, maybe a page or a little more. And what I said was, what my message was, was that there was one thing that I had felt in living there in the Sodo and that I wanted to speak about.

[19:15]

that everybody was very much concerned and correctly with getting their own enlightenment, and that they must never forget that Shakyamuni had gotten his enlightenment only in order to help all sentient beings. and that in their eagerness to get their own enlightenment, they must never forget that what they were working at was an enlightenment which was for the benefit not of themselves alone, but everybody else. Then I presented them with something none of them had, which was Japanese language copies of the Dhammapada. Well, if you don't think I was given hell for that.

[20:21]

In the first place, the shoujo business had no, books had no business there, you see. And I really, of course, don't know exactly what all I was accused of, but at any rate, that was not an acceptable, he was very acceptable. For the speech or for the books or both? For the speech or speech, books, I don't know. All together, because when I finished the speech, I then had the bunch of books and I proceeded to send them around to everybody in the great big circle that was there. But that didn't go down at all. But in the end, I mean, it didn't make any difference in our relations, but he was very angry about that. whether it was that I criticized the attitude in Minnesota, but it was true. It is absolutely true. It's still true, I suppose. I suppose so. I think it's very much true. I just think they're not taught that, you know. I mean, taught that, it's not... They say it, how many times a day, should your muhen say gando?

[21:32]

And it doesn't mean anything. They like to think that you don't have to say it at all, that it's taken for granted, I think. Well, they were all kindness itself to me. Nobody could have been kinder than all the monks were in every way, shape, and manner. And they liked to play little tricks on me sometimes, like they gave me rice with mochi in it and tried to choke me. And if you, you know, that was just a big joke, a general joke. But, because they just considered me one of them. They didn't, they were really wonderful to me. Those were, I suppose that, Those two years, or that year and a half actually in the Soto, was the most completely satisfactory time I ever had in my life. Oh, it was wonderful. Just wonderful. Just wonderful.

[22:34]

And I never saw anything but kindness to myself. As I say, there was no sake drinking. There were no women hanging around the place. Now, occasionally, because Nan Shinkan had, the Sodo had a number of geisha people, geishas and geisha houses who were adherents of the Sodo and had been. From time to time, I would see that some old former geisha lady was up there visiting with him. But it was the most circumspect, clean. Well, it was famous for that. And then she said it was the way you had it. And this shows the kind of person he was. He had one thing that he liked to paint. And that was what was known as onadanuma, woman danuma.

[23:41]

And that comes from the story of a certain nobleman, a warrior rather, who had a very beautiful courtesan as a mistress. And he used to carry her around the camp with her. with him. And one night he came into his tent, or what have you, and she had taken a red cloak of his and thrown it over her head like this, you know. And he said, oh, Onodarama. And so Nan Shinken proceeded to give me one of these Onodarama paintings. Then the problem came as to how to explain the story to me. And my secretary then later, translator, told me it was very amusing because Nan Shinkan didn't want me to know that the lady was the warrior's mistress.

[24:46]

that the story must be told so carefully, in such a way that I wouldn't understand that she was his mistress. During that period that you were studying at Nuns End here, during the first two trips over here, did you have any chance to see anything of the other sodos in Kyoto or around the country? I didn't see any sodos, no. I was on excellent terms with the old Roshi of Sokokuchi. Do you know he's dead? Oh, Yamazaki. Yeah, it was like he died. Yeah. It doesn't surprise me now that I remember. Well, he died only about two weeks ago. Oh, really? Yeah. And it's been a big, not exactly a nice show, but at least they never had a service for him. And they will have eventually, but Dana, they sent Dana up here to tell me.

[25:49]

and tell me not to tell anybody. There was a little tiny note in the acai paper, that's all we know. I mean, that's all outside now. And they would tell me when I was to come and pay my respects, but I was not to do it now. He was a great friend of mine. But I never saw the Sodom, and I never sat in any of it. Well, let's put it this way, then. The Zen world as a whole in Kyoto, not just non-Zenji, but whatever you saw of it as a whole, how did the whole Zen scene in Kyoto seem in those days, especially compared with today? Well, now let me see. Eson took me to see Tofukuchi, and I met Tofukuchi Roshi. And he was something of a scamp. Ehsan's line, Kemper line, was Tofukuchi. That was that connection. I went to a party at Myoshinji at which the President Roshi of Tofukuchi was given for him when he became Assistant Roshi at Myoshinji.

[27:08]

Of course, I met Shokokuji Roshi. Who else did I meet among the Roshis? Keninji, I didn't know. You see, Daitokuji Roshi, I barely met, that's all. Barely met. And I did at one time go to Kamakura Island and met Asahina Roshi. But you see the problem here. Japanese people are not keen about your knowing anybody else than themselves. And that was very carefully taken care of. Mrs. Suzuki took me to Sokoku-ji.

[28:15]

But in the meanwhile, Sokoku-ji Rose should come around in the back door and come in my own house without her knowing it. And I was invited to that party. What else is there? I didn't know anything about. And Nan Shinkan was something the same way also. This was his private preserve. Well, I had talked perhaps to Dr. Suzuki. You might have visited some other temples and maybe even looked into Minnesota. Well, I did M. Pukuchi out here. M. Pukuchi. M. Pukuchi. Where is it? M. Pukuchi is at a place called Yawata Hachiman. It's about maybe 30 minutes on a train.

[29:17]

You've never been there? Well, it isn't anything today. But Ampukji I went to quite often. I never sat in the zendo, but I knew a number of the monks there. But that was because The Suzuki's were interested in the foreigner's Zendo that Kozuki Roshi had built there. That's the reason for that. And so they were interested in my being interested in it. Dr. Suzuki was not... really lived a life very much to himself, even in those days. But Mrs. Suzuki, who was starved for friends, So they were interested in my being interested in it.

[30:21]

Dr. Suzuki lived a life very much to himself, even in those days. But Mrs. Suzuki, who was starved for friends, grasped under every straw and clutched it. And she was the one who made the connections, I mean, who would take me and introduce me to people. But they were very few, partly because I only had Sundays to go and sightseeing. Now, Nan Shin Ken, I have two things that he did for me. in introducing me, but they were not sold out. The first was that he took me to Ryoanji. And I think you've heard me say that the priest of Ryoanji in those days, the old priest, was one of Nan Shinken's disciples.

[31:30]

He was not an heir, but he had been in Nansenji Soto. He was a very nice man. And Ryo-Wanji was a very deserted temple. And so we made a little trip there one day, and he introduced me to the priest. And the priest said that any time I wanted to come up there on one of my resting days, because I used to take always one resting day, I was free to come. He was glad to have me. So a number of times I went up in the morning with a nice big bento and slept out on the Roka half the day and had lunch with him and then slept some more in another one of the rooms and then he'd fix a bath for me and then we'd sit and have tea and then we'd have supper and sit out on the Roka and look at the moon. There wouldn't be one human being what country it was, not one.

[32:35]

That was in 1932, 1933. I could go there any time. And I would do the same thing to the mosque temple here. I've forgotten who introduced me there. At any rate, I would go, and they would give me one of the tea houses. And I would just go to sleep in the tea house. I'd have my bento. They'd bring me a hibachi and tea and so forth and sleep all day out there. Nobody, not anybody, not a soul. That was really wonderful. And Ogarasan took me a few places. I expect Ogarasan took me to Myoshinji to meet this, when this Roshi had his party, or the party given for him. But there was always a feud between Mrs. Suzuki and Ogarasan on the question of who introduced who. to whom.

[33:36]

And they were both concerned about who was getting into the other's territory. All of that had to be very, very terribly happened. And then another thing that Nan Shenden did for me that was very interesting, he conducted a jukai. Do you know what the jukai is? It's a three-day, well, you would have to write something about this. This is a three-day kind of revival. in some big country temple. And we went to a place called Inuyama, which is in Gifu-ken. And one of the monks came from a temple near there, and I slept in his temple because there wasn't room exactly at the place where Nan Shinken was giving me this thing. Well, what happens is they have a great big matsuri at which people from all the district come.

[34:49]

And they have tents and things set up for them so they can sleep. And the other temples in the place bed them down, or the farmers bed them down, or the townspeople bed them down. Maybe 2,000 or 3,000 people come, at least they did this time. And one of the leading dankas, Ed Keynes, the roshi, or the head of the leader of this chukai, And it goes on for three days. And the temple serves meals, food, and they have big cauldrons of food and all that sort of thing. But I remember the first day we got there for this, the first thing that happened... Oh, I've got some pictures of it someplace. They must be in America. I don't remember. They had a parade through the town. And the parade was... The leading priest, because Nan Shinkan had only one thing he was going to do.

[35:54]

He was the head of it, but he had only one real serious duty. And there were any number of preachers who came, specialists in preaching. And the preaching went on all day long. One man would sit here and he'd start to preach and he'd finish. And then the next man would begin over here. The next man would begin. They were really preaching. Oh, they were really preaching. Talking. Oh, really preaching. But the big thing that Nan Shinkan had to do was to read the, what, 10,000 or 30,000 or 50,000 names of Buddha. But about the parade, so all of these dignitaries that were going to, and their attendants, and everybody else who were going to take part in this as preachers or what have you, were provided with Jim Rickshaws. And they were all provided, not all, because the lesser ones were not. The lesser ones had to walk. The great big red umbrellas and an old man in a happy coat coming along behind the rickshaw holding a great big red umbrella.

[37:04]

And the procession was led by the mayor, and he wore a hakama and a haori and a derby hat. He walked through the center of the Main streets of the town with Roshi in his red, red, you know, red and gold. And he's one of these funny hats on his head, you know. And then the lesser people with a big red umbrella over him and the little man behind and the little man ahead pulling him in the rickshaw. And then several rickshaws for the major priests behind. And then all the other people. priests walking behind and they parade through the town. Well, they had, I think only once a day, or it may have been twice a day, that they had this reading of the names. And it seems that there's a big book in there, or some sutra, in which lists all the names of Buddha. And I can't tell you how many there are.

[38:05]

50,000 maybe, anyway. It's a very, they had a very grand edition of it. And Roshi would sit up there, and this was the biggest job, or the most important job. He would sit up there and he would read, Namu Samanda Dada Dada Dada Buddha. And then, Everybody in the audience, because the place, everybody, that's what they mainly come from, they would all bow down. And then he'd read, B, shaman, da-da-da-da, da-da-da-da, because it went A, B, C, or something like that. And everybody would bow down. He'd get through about 25 or 30 in a sitting. Mm-hmm. And then he'd have to stop, but then the sermons would begin and the people would be running around and the food would be coming in and so forth.

[39:12]

And then he'd go home and sit in his little hojo for a little while and then he'd come back again and start reading again. And then everybody that went there got some kind of a, that attended and did all of this, bowing to all of these, whatever thousand names it was, got a paper very elaborately folded and printed paper, which said that you had attended the Chukai and that you had raihied all of these buddhists. And it went on for three days. Did you meet Nakamura Kanyu? I didn't meet him in the beginning. I met him after the war. I met him in Amudpan. Because he came for... He was Kanjo Kenji, you know, for a while, too. At that time, he came up to Nanzenji for one of the services, a memorial service for Nan Shinken.

[40:19]

And I was considered one of the boys, and one of the six or seven boys, and we all sat up, and there were eight of us, but there were six boys and I, and Nakamura and Shibuyama Roshi. We sat up in Nan Shimken's room around his old kotatsu and talked about the old days. Would you say... Well, let's see... Do you feel that Zen was clearly stronger in Japan in those days as a whole, in terms of the respect it received from the public at large? Oh, I think there's no question about that. No question about it. No question at all. Yeah, in terms of sheer numbers of monks and followers and dhamkas. I think certainly the numbers were greater, very much greater, And the caliber of the people of the Dankas and so forth was very much better, as well as their number.

[41:31]

And the monks, as I say, what I've said before, I don't know that their caliber proportionately was much different. But the Dankas, yes. And I don't know, I can't tell you about the lay societies, because Nan Shingen never took me to any of his lay meetings. He had a society in Osaka that he went to once a month. And the month of August, he spent all of his time in Akita. He'd been doing that for many, many years, and he had a big layman's group in Akita. And they would take a temple for the whole month of August. And he spent the entire month of August up in Akita with this group up there. Just what they did or who they were or how many or that, I have no idea at all. Now, I'm afraid I've just talked, and I haven't given you any opportunity to ask questions, but you can do that next time.

[42:40]

Well, no, I've been asking questions all along. What about Sokatsu-roji? Well, that's another story. Since we're talking about different rojis. Well, I'll tell you, but I'll tell you another time, because it's at last nine now.

[42:57]

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