Kobun Chino Otagawa

Kobun Chino Roshi is Abbot of Jikoji 
(Los Gatos, CA), Hokoji (Taos, New Mexico)
and Kaikyoshi of the Soto School in the USA.

Every year he visits Puregg Zendo in the
Austrian Alps, where he leads sesshins.
Teishos are quarterly published in "Jikoji News".

Aspects of Sitting

I'd like to reveal the natural nature of sitting fully as it is. If I put some concept on this, and make you understand what I think is an ideal way to sit, I would be a kind of special gardener who fixes boxes and lets you go through to become square bamboo. Or I would be an automatic newspaper man who runs a newspaper - whoever comes, I would just put you in the machine and make you flat, and you would come out a squished being, or something like this!

Too much talk about zazen, or shi-kan-taza is not so good for you. It's impossible to teach the meaning of sitting. Until you really experience and confirm it by yourself, you cannot believe it. It has tremendous depth, and year after year this gorgeous world of shi-kan-taza appears. It's up to you to cultivate it. Because you are Buddhas yourselves, you can sit. Dogen named this sitting "Great Gate of Peace and Joy". Simply, it is peaceful, eternally peaceful, pleasurable and joyful. Shi-kan-taza doesn't have the name of any
religion, but it is, in its quality, a very true religious way to live.

Kobun Chino Roshi

Thanks to Barbara King for supplying text from Kobun Chino Roshi's talks.
First published in "JIKOJI News", Winter 1997

Who Is Your Teacher?

The real purpose of practice is to discover the wisdom which you have always been keeping with you. To discover yourself is to discover wisdom; without discovering yourself you can never communicate with anybody. In everyday life, we can pick up some glimpse of wisdom, like the polished tool of the carpenter expresses that there is wisdom in the arm of the carpenter. It is invisible, you cannot draw it and show it.

Wisdom doesn't come from anywhere; it is always there as the exact
contents of awakening--it is always there and everywhere. What you can do is to uncover it, like going to the origin of a river, you take off the fallen leaves. Have you been to the source of a river? It is a very mystic place. You get dizzy when you stay for a while. An especially big river has several sources, and the real source, the farthest point which turns to the major stream, is moist and misty, with some kind of ancient smell, and you feel cold. You feel, "This isn't the place to go in." There is no springing water, so you don't know where the source is. Actually, such place exists in everyone; the center of us is like that. From this place, the ancient call appears, "Why don't you know me? Living so many years with me, why can't you call my real name?"

Unfortunately, we cannot travel into such place with this body and mind, but we feel there is such an origin, and from there everything starts. From that place you have come, actually, and whatever you do is returning to that spot. In one lifetime you can meet with other people, at least one other beside yourself. So, in other words, two of you discover. This is why you are continuing to live so hard.

The way to discover your origin is to listen to the one with whom you feel, "This is it!". It looks like you can do it by yourself, without others, but actually, by yourself alone you cannot discover that origin. Reaching to that point, you never believe, "This is it." But pointing to another's origin directly and saying, "That's my origin." at that moment another finger appears, pointing at you, and says, "No, that's my origin." And you get dizzy. "Wait a minute, are you my teacher or are you my student?" And both say, " No, it doesn't matter. I can be your student; I'll be an ancient Buddha for you." The student says this to the teacher. Without throwing your whole life and body into others you can never reach to your own true nature.

The more your understanding of life becomes clearer, and more exact, and painfully joyful, the more you feel, "I'm so bad." The one who appears and says, "No, you are not bad at all, that is the way to go." That is your teacher. Don't misunderstand, this teacher is not always a person. It can embrace you like morning dew in a field, and you get a strange feeling, "Oh, this is it, my teacher is this field."

How to go with your true self is to deeply bow to yourself and ask, "Please, let me know about myself." Because we cannot do it alone, we have to do it with someone who is able to accept our vow. Letting such an occasion occur is what supreme awakening is. It is not your creation, you just admire the place where you are and be with it, and that place is the place to meet with your teacher. It doesn't need to be some special kind of place. When you are a little bit mindful about yourself you can create such an opportunity . . . between your children and yourself, between your parents and yourself.

Kobun Chino Roshi

Thanks to Barbara King for supplying text from Kobun Chino Roshi's talks.
First published in "JIKOJI News", Spring 1997

Udumbara

I have many things to think about, and to discuss, about how to live a really useful life in this new age. We'd like to look into and welcome the next century.

Always think what to begin with. When we sit . . . sitting is always pointless, you know. Obviously, we touch the sitting with this body, like putting a thumb on paper: "This is it." Body feels like that: touching Time/Space, creating matter in Time/Space-- that's how I feel when I sit. And the more sitting gets still, almost stopping, the more it feels like stopping time... time stops. At that point there is no more distinction of this body, but actual things which feel like body, extend all over. And, not the frozen kind of realization, but a very powerful presence of the sensation that you are really there as what you are, what things are, without naming each thing. Even not what you are is also there. I mean, the thing which holds the phenomenal, experiencing phenomena as your own body, is also yourself. You may say "Time/Space," or "Space/time," or simply "Void," or something like that. "Phenomenon/ Nuomenon" together, is there.

A slight move of mind causes lots of insights out of past experience, out of images you have been making towards future: imaginations about the present relationship of all people and situations in this present time. There is no distinction between past, present, and future, just the enormous dynamic of where you live, what's there... all as yourself existing.

But this body is a very fine thing in such time, continuously pressing this sitting spot. Dogen Zenji said, "To master the Buddha's way is to master, to clarify, your own self. Through that, you can clarify the own-selves of all others." So he mentioned that the focus is to clarify your own life and death matter, birth and death matter: living this subject.

The subject is so close, pointing to yourself like this. If you point outside, we can study pretty well, but when you start pointing to yourself it is almost impossible. A fresh eye is opened toward outside, so the same eye cannot be used to see the interior realm of yourselves. We turn around and make our interior world as the external object, and analyze what's happening, which is usually called psychology, or religious studies. But that kind of study, with objectified self, is not what we are. So, a very important point is to be with the self who rejects analysis of any aspect.

Gary Snyder spoke of this same kind of situation as trying to grab an avocado seed. It slips... you cannot grab it! He got this American version from the famous painting, Chasing the Slippery Catfish with Gourd." Have you seen that picture? A young man, a bushy, hippy-like person, is chasing the catfish with a gourd, which has a very teeny entrance! Impossible to catch that fish! Japanese catfish have huge heads and long, long whiskers, and a tail-part that goes very teeny. The whole body is so gooey and slippery. The teeth very, very sharp, like a saw. The catfish usually lives in the pond. We call it "Master of the Pond." When you try to catch it, this causes an earthquake! Leave it alone! If you seek the truth, this causes an earthquake! That's how, some biographers say, many powerful people appear. When they finish their tasks and pass away, always earthquakes appear. It's not earthquakes though, it's people's sleeping minds.

Blossoms -season of blossoms- not the regular season of blossoms, but off-season blossoms, bloom when such people appear and disappear, and that which is the (earthquake) sensation of people's mind's, see that kind of blossom; they are the mind-blossoms of people who appear. We call those blossoms-of-mind "Udumbara." They bloom every five-hundred-year-period like that. And around here we have five-hundred-year-period meetings.

Kobun Chino Roshi

Thanks to Barbara King for supplying text from Kobun Chino Roshi's talks.
First published in "JIKOJI News", Summer 1997

The Other Side of Nothing

We don't do this practice expecting to obtain something by doing it. This is a very different kind of action. In one sense, it's quitting human business and going to the other side of the human realm. Have you noticed your face changing, moment after moment, when you are facing the wall? When you pay attention to exactly how you feel, you feel how it changes. It is such a slight change that no one would notice if someone observed you. It's like one flame of fire is sitting on the cushion. Every moment the texture of the flame is different. You experience this from morning zazen to night zazen. In every sitting there's a very different feeling. Each breath, all is different.

We experience some kind of dying in sitting, which relates with what's true and what's not true. What's not true dies, so we suffer. We wish to hang on to the self which we believe exists. The contents of what "I" means, or the pieces of the idea of the self, are consistent, but when you sit you observe no substance in those pieces of self.

If we try to achieve some awakening or enlightenment, it doesn't succeed. We hear that sitting is to clarify the true nature of the self, but it seems nothing is clarified, nothing happens. You just spend the time and have lots of pain and a stumbling mind. If you sit all day you have a good sitting once or twice, but when you compare the good sitting with the rest, you have a very regretful mind. "What was I doing? Drowsy, powerless sitting."

Doubt arises in this. What is it? Is this all right? Are you okay? Your mind is in a different place than sitting. I wish you would sit alone sometime for several days. If you sit alone, although there are many dangerous situations to fall into, you feel you can clarify your right intention, your strict attitude about taking care of yourself. If we sit together like this you think, &quotBecause other people sit, this might be alright! This must be the way! If something more important than your concern about yourself occurs, of course you quit sitting and plunge into taking care of that. Actually, for each of us, the opportunity of sitting is the same as sitting alone.

Student: For years I always preferred to sit by myself, and every time I had to sit with a group, it was always more difficult. I had problems I didn't have by myself.

Kobun: The difficulty wasn't sitting together; the difficulty was yourself! Wanting to be alone is impossible. When you become really alone you notice you are not alone. In other words, we stop our vigorous efforts towards ideal purity. Purity is just a process. After purity, dry simplicity comes, where almost no more life is there, and your sensation is that you are not existing any more. Still, you are existing there. You flip into the other side of nothing, where you discover everybody is waiting for you. Before that, you are living together like that--day, sun, moon, stars, and food--everything is helping you, but you are all blocked off, a closed system. You just see things from inside toward the outside, and act with incredible, systematic, logical dynamics, and you think everything is all right. When noise, or chaotic situations come, you want to leave that situation to be alone. But there is no such aloneness!

It is very important to experience the complete negation of yourself, which brings you to the other side of nothing. People experience that in many ways. You go to the other side of nothing, and you are held by the hand of the absolute. You see yourself as part of the absolute, so you have no more insistence of self as yourself. You can speak of self as no-self upon the absolute. Only real existence is absolute.

Kobun Chino Otogawa Roshi

Thanks to Barbara King for supplying text from Kobun Chino Roshi's talks.
First published in "JIKOJO News", Winter 1998