Well, let's see, I wonder if to finish what we were talking about last time, that general line of discussion was first about Sohyan Chakra and then about Sokhatsa Roshi and Maggota Roshi. If you would like to say a little bit about Sokyan as a teacher and his ... Well, I would have to think a little bit about his ... exactly how to say it. I think if I begin with your first remark and speak about it, your last remark, and speak about it first, I should say that Sokyan was very traditional in his viewpoint, very traditional. Certainly that he had gotten from Sokhatsa, there's no question about that. As I've said earlier, the matter of Zazen, he was not strong at all, because I've said

[01:20]

earlier what his reasons for that were. But when it comes to the actual Sanzen matter, he was convinced that that was the heart of Rinzai Zen and it should be carried on in the old way, as much as possible in America as he could. And he was a most remarkable teacher in Roshi and Sanzen. I think I've said, at least you personally, if I haven't said it over this tape, that he was the powerful teacher. He was what one would dream of having as a teacher in Sanzen. He was utterly transported out of himself when he sat in the Roshi's chair.

[02:27]

And you had the feeling before him that you were talking, that you were, this was not a man, this was an absolute principle that you were up against. I mean, it never changed with me in the years that I knew him and worked with him, and how ever intimately, in a sense, I might have known him and did come to know him. In Sanzen, I never had any different feeling at all. It was up against, I was face to face with an absolute state and I never saw it any different in any of his Sanzens. He was, at least with me, he was always very strict and, well, of course I don't think

[03:39]

anybody ever went into Soke-On, perhaps they don't do any other Roshi without their knees shaking to death and absolutely paralyzed with fright in front of it until you get there. And his intuition of what was going on in your mind and how to force you to crystallize for yourself what it was that you were coming toward, well, it's hard to speak about it, but as I say, I think from my standpoint, he was the ideal Roshi. Perhaps with, of course, with Nan Shinken, I had always to have an interpreter present

[04:50]

and it was only on rare occasions when he and I were alone at Sanzen, and on those occasions he usually spoke to me as a teacher to a disciple. So I'm sure that I am not, I have no right to speak about him really as a Roshi, and the way he must have affected his Japanese students, you know, who, I mean, his developed ones who could really... You had some Japanese students in New York? Well, no, I say, no, I'm talking about Nan Shinken. Nan Shinken, yeah. The way his Japanese students could face him and what they meant in him.

[05:51]

Goto Roshi was always the more, always something of the intellectual, and he had many, I should say, moods in Sanzen. Some of them very beautiful and his reaction to the handling of a koan that if there was a certain beauty in it, this would reflect in him in some way. If there were other qualities that were in the koan, he would in a certain way reflect. I never saw that quality in Soke-yan. Soke-yan was always this absolute thing, this absolute thing. You said, you just mentioned it a moment ago, that Soke-yan made some special allowances

[06:59]

in the matter of Sanzen, because he felt that American people wouldn't bring themselves to do Sanzen in a traditional way. Did he, in other ways, make any significant adjustments in his teaching methods to Westerners, do you think? Or any, you know, transpositions or developments in the Western mind and thought, the Western thought and mind? No, I don't think so. He gave his Teisho, of course, he gave Teisho twice a week, and he used, he gave it in certainly the old traditional form, reading, translating a certain portions. We'll say he began with Rinzai Roku, he did Rinzai Roku, he did Engaku-kyo, what other big ones? He did Gokyo Shikan, which is a Kegon text.

[07:59]

But he did it in the old-fashioned way. He began his Teisho always with chanting, which he himself did. He didn't expect the audience, because he had rather an audience. The students were few, and maybe six or seven students would come to a lecture, which he gave Wednesdays and Saturday nights, but there were likely to be 20 to 30 other people in the audience. So he didn't expect his students to chant sutras, he didn't ask the audience to chant. He himself always performed a small ceremony in front of the Buddha and did a, and chanted. And then, let me see now, let me think, how did that go?

[09:06]

And he would always, he had songs in first always. He would ask people to, his students to come early, and he would have them, and there would be about a half an hour before he began Sanzen, and he would be in the shrine room, and when he was ready for Sanzen, he'd ring his little bell, and then the students would go in order for their Sanzen. And when that was finished, then he would perform this, he'd open the doors of his Sanzen room, and he would perform his service in front of the altar, and then he would come take his seat and give his lecture, which was all, most of the time based upon some one of the texts. When he got to the, when he got over into the 65th Street,

[10:14]

he gave Sanzen up on the, in his own study, on the third, on the second floor, and he did the same thing. He had, the students came early and sat quietly for about a half an hour, and then he would ring the Sanzen bell, and they'd go up, and then it would be after that, after their Sanzen was completed, he would come down and do the bowing, and he used to have all of us, of the students, and anybody else who wanted to, when he finished his bowing and his chanting, in front of the altar and burning incense, he would take his seat, and then his oldest student would go and bow, gassho, and burn incense, and the next oldest, and the next oldest, and the next oldest, and at the end of the line of students who had bowed and burned incense

[11:21]

would come any of the audience who wished to do the same thing, and when that was finished, then he would sit down and he would begin his gassho. That was the way it, that was the general routine. What about in Sanzen itself? Was he making any kind of creative adjustments to Westerners? Well, he was giving koans in English. He was giving koans in English, and one problem that his students had with his English translations was that he would sometimes vary the English translation of the same koan so that if you went one week, he would give you the koan, and then the next week he would change the English translation a little bit. That was sometimes confusing.

[12:22]

As for the physical situation in Sanzen, he had one of these, he had, he owned two of these chairs such as roshis sit on with the... The kishu-type chairs? Mm-hmm. Those hondo chairs that they... Yeah, with the rounded back, and he had two of those, and he sat in one, and the student sat in the other, and facing him so that he did not get down on the cushion, and the student did not get down either. The student bowed outside the Sanzen door and rang the little bell, and entered and closed the door and bowed, and then stood before him and bowed the third time,

[13:22]

and then back sat down in the seat facing him, two chairs face to face. And he always carried a nyoi in his hand, and to this, over this side, he had his little bell. That was the physical situation. Mm-hmm. That was the adjustment that he made. Did he modernize his translations in new ways at all? Like, for example, sometimes the sailing sailboat koans changed to the train or the cars? No, he never modernized. It was whatever he did was either to... Perhaps he thought he improved it a little bit or something like that. But he stuck very, very, very closely to... as closely as he could to the English... I mean, to the traditional koan itself.

[14:25]

I never knew him to give any... and I took a good many koans from him. I never knew him to give any adaptation. He told me about the adaptation. It was Søren himself who made the adaptation of the train one. I mean, the sailing boat to the train. And with almost tragic results, you know. The man went and laid down on the tracks, one of his sons and students, a layman, some boy, and... to stop the train. And they'd stop the train without running over him, but it was a very close shave. He was very literal about it. But he did not, for a long time, ask for jakugo.

[15:27]

Even koans that should have had jakugo, he did not attempt to. And then he did not attempt to use zenrin kushu, because none of it was translated. And when he asked for jakugo, of his older students or more experienced ones, he would ask for something from English poetry, or he often suggested Alice in Wonderland. He was very fond of that, and he felt that there were a number of lines in that that could be used as jakugo. Did he have any particular favorites in English poetry that he would suggest? Any authors or periods? No. He used... he suggested nursery rhymes, too. Nursery rhymes and Alice in Wonderland,

[16:33]

or the others were what they had to find themselves, but, I mean, those two sources, his nursery rhymes and Alice in Wonderland were things that he felt had suitable lines in them. But I never knew him to use anything from zenrin kushu, or to ask it, because we had no copies of it. Nobody knew anything about it over there. But I think this is interesting about Soke-yan and Soke-yan's teaching. We used to find that, continuously, that he came always back in almost every, not every lecture, but so many lectures, he would repeat himself. And what he was repeating himself on

[17:37]

was the way of explaining or trying to make people understand what the dharmakaya, or absolute state, or the experience of that was like. And he used to say, when I had questioned him about it and said, well, you start out with a lecture, we'll say, on a technical term, which has nothing to do with it, because he did give a series of lectures on technical terms, just as he gave a series of lectures, some 40-odd agamas, which he felt could be only, in which the Buddha's teaching could only be correctly interpreted through Zen teaching. At least, shall I say, the teaching in the agama itself,

[18:38]

or the nikaya, was exactly what was being taught in Zen. The teaching was analogous. But he was constantly coming back to describing, explaining, trying to make people feel what the dharmakaya state was. And asking him about it, as I say, which I did two or three times, I would say, Sokhéon, you start out tonight with a technical term, and you were explaining that, and you were going along beautifully. And then, before you knew it, you were back in the dharmakaya again. And this had, tonight's lecture, theoretically, had nothing to do with dharmakaya. How is it that you're always getting back to the dharmakaya? And he said, Well, he said, You know, there's one thing which the West knows nothing about, as yet,

[19:41]

and that is the dharmakaya, that there is an absolute state which they can experience, and which must be experienced. And I don't expect, in my teaching life, to ever do any more than to inculcate some people in America with either the feeling or the understanding or the realization of this dharmakaya state. That is the basis, he said, for our Zen study. And until they come to realize that, or, first of all, to know about it, and then to understand it, and then to realize it, they cannot go on into real Zen study. That's the basis. And because nobody knows about dharmakaya state in the West, it's absolutely an unknown realm, therefore, I must come back,

[20:42]

I must come back, I must come back and teach it to them, talk to them about it. And as a matter of fact, he would become so lyric, his spoken, or his copied down notes don't show it very clearly, because most of us, when he would really come to work himself up to the high point of this statement on the dharmakaya, would be himself so completely transported that everybody there thought they were experiencing the dharmakaya state with him, and you couldn't possibly, everybody's pencil stopped. That was a continuous phenomenon. I mean, it happened constantly. And that is the kind of power he had. I mean, he could take an audience

[21:42]

and his English was not awfully good, you know, but as a poet and a writer, he had a capacity for a happy choice of words. And when he would get really going on the dharmakaya, he would become literally a lyric poet. And he himself would just, well, he would just actualize that state, and everybody in the whole audience would be caught in it. And when it was over, everybody that they had thought, I mean, they felt that they had been, that there was somehow an extension from him of this state

[22:43]

that he either was experiencing or lived in all the time anyway, it was really remarkable. Really remarkable. I've never seen anybody else do anything like that. I suppose like a great theatrical performance sometimes, but this was quite different. And of course in Sanzen also, when he was really completely engaged in Sanzen, it was as if there was no man there at all. The room was just completely filled. It was very interesting. He was very remarkable in that aspect of things. His scholarship was not too good. There were many deficiencies from the standpoint of accuracy and pure scholarship

[23:48]

and his ability to read Chinese and that. But I think there is nobody who ever listened to him through one lecture ever doubted that he was not a thoroughly enlightened man. That was so clear that you couldn't forget it ever once you had heard him and you had seen him as he used to sit there because he would become so beautiful that it was almost hard to look at him. Of course I have great personal affection for him, but it had nothing to do with that and I'm not alone by any manner of means in speaking about it because if you wanted to see a person transformed,

[24:51]

a physical body transformed and really glowing with what he was experiencing, where he was living, that was so beyond an imitation. It was remarkable, just remarkable. Of course not every time because some days he'd be very tired or the material in his lecture would be poor and it was too scholarly a section or a passage for him. He wasn't equal to it from a scholar's standpoint. But let him once get going on the Dharmakaya and anything related to experience, then experience. And he was really something out of this world and I really mean something out of this world. I've never seen anything like it.

[25:52]

I'll never forget the effect he made on our family lawyer the first time we ever met him. And he came down the stairs in that house on 65th Street and he'd been up in his room and he came down to meet Mr. Winston and he was a big man, you know. He was 5'10", which is big for a Japanese. And when he was well, he weighed about 185 pounds. And a man of, you saw him, he was power. That was, he really was, he was power and personified. And Mr. Winston said, well, he said, that's a man, he said, that's a man. That's a man.

[26:57]

He looked so little beside him. I had just exactly that feeling, a few weeks back. Oh, really? And the thing that struck me most, again, that he's a man. The choice of words and the way he hits things. Yes. A real man. Yes, he was a man. A real man. And he didn't want to be anything but a man. The last informal talk he ever gave, and I think it's the last talk that he ever gave before he was, on the 15th of June, before he was taken by the government, was what he had gotten out of Zen, what Zen had meant to him. And he said, there is only one thing. He said, I got nothing. But there's only one thing I want,

[27:59]

and the only one thing that matters, and that is to be a human being. It's a very lovely lecture. I've got about 15 or 16 of those that really someday should be edited and published. They have their creaky points, and I'm always shy about turning them out where more or less, I mean, scholars could find the mistaken dates and things like that, and disparage him for it. Because he just would talk about historical things off the top of his head. Yes, oh, very often, very often. He didn't bother about that, because he was, first of all, he was an artist and a poet, and those things were all right, but he didn't have time for too much. What was more important for him was the exact word that he needed to use to get over what he wanted to say, you know.

[29:00]

That was much more important than whether the man's dates were right or that sort of thing. And that's what he would spend time with, on that word, finding that word that he was going to use. That brings me to another question, which I think is kind of important, especially from the standpoint of the experience we've had with later Roshi's going to America, and that is, how accurate and how deep do you think Sofyan's insight into the Western mind, the American personality was, finally, and into that society, and into the kind of people that society produces? Did he come to understand America, do you think? Or to what degree? Well, he was hardly Japanese at all. He had nothing to do, particularly the last ten and... Wait a minute while I think. Certainly, the last ten years of his life,

[30:06]

from the time before I knew him, he had little or nothing... he had nothing to do with the Japanese community whatsoever. And he didn't like Japanese people. He didn't like Japanese ways. He loved America. He had, of course, tramped the West, and that's what he loved. He loved the freedom of Oregon, Washington, the Columbia River Valley. He tramped all that country. And he tramped Utah, and perhaps I'll tell you more, give you a little story of his life next time, and you will see. And he used to say, when I would come back to Japan, I would feel as if I was lifting the ceiling of the house with my head, and my elbows were sticking out through the shoji. And he was a very completely free man.

[31:11]

He had no... he insisted upon no special decorum or patterns of politeness or that sort of thing in the Japanese sense at all. Not at all. But he was very quick-tempered. He could become angry very quickly, and I remember his telling once that old man Goddard came to see him. Was it old man Goddard? Yes, for the first time, I guess, old man Goddard came to see him. And that was early in his... having his own place on 71st Street in New York, 70th Street on the west of Central Park. He had a great big living room.

[32:08]

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