Question
Hello,
Master Deshimaru appropriated Master Kodo Sawaki’s kesa AFTER his death and then claimed he had received it from him while he was alive, using it as a symbol of transmission.
That was where I wanted to lead you with my question, and I did not dare deliver the blow out of sympathy for your deeply sincere message. So please remove my response from your website, which was intended to be kind and polite but does not fully reflect my thoughts, or else add this supplement for your readers.
Indeed, my response as published suggests I agree with your account, which is not the case, despite, once again, my very great sympathy for you.
With all my sincere feelings,
Anonymous
Answer from Master Kosen
You question my master’s word and sincerity without having met or known him, and without knowing the kesas you speak of either. How unfortunate and sad.
I wonder what could inspire such negative and complicated thoughts in you. But I very willingly forgive you. And if you wish, I even agree to allow that what you say could be true, and that in this supposed case Master Deshimaru would be a thief.
But the use he made of these kesas was tremendously remarkable, because through them he transmitted Zen in Europe and elsewhere and introduced thousands of disciples to the practice. If what you say were true, then it would have been Master Kodo Sawaki who made the mistake of not transmitting them to his disciple before his death, through a great lack of intuition. In that case, his fault toward the Dharma would have been even more serious than Deshimaru’s. But the reality is that neither master nor disciple was mistaken, and everything was in its proper place. Know that the kesa has very great power and always goes where it must go. Remember the story of the sixth patriarch, pursued by the fierce general who believed he had stolen the kesa of transmission.
The sixth patriarch said to him:
- Take this kesa if that is what you came for.
The general tried to take it but could not lift it from the rock, although he was strong and brave, as Master Deshimaru was.
Know also that later my master received from Hiwamoto Zenji, abbot of Sojiji temple, a kesa belonging to Master Menzan, one of the founders of Buddhism in Japan. He did not steal that Japanese national treasure either.
And further, at the Val d’Isère summer camp, Master Narita Roshi, also a disciple of Master Kodo Sawaki, gave Deshimaru the twenty-five-strip kesa he had received from Master Sawaki when the latter gave him shiho. Here again, Deshimaru did not steal it; the kesa simply went where it had to go.
Kosen