Question
Is Master Kosen’s sangha recognized by the Sotoshu in Japan?
Anonymous
Answer from Master Kosen
Without wanting to say yet again that I am my master’s true spiritual son, for better or worse, one must unfortunately acknowledge that in practice only one remains who continues to practice Deshimaru’s lineage, believe in it, and create it. Today all have betrayed it, in the sense that they have adopted, point for point, precisely the model Sensei described as one that above all must not be followed. Yet our master always explained very clearly the conduct to adopt toward the Sotoshu and Japan.
Shortly after his death, I remember very clearly that Roland, Étienne, and I were in complete agreement and harmony on this subject, both regarding the European disciples and the Japanese masters. The latter, moreover, showed us the greatest respect when they saw our loyalty to Deshimaru. Broadly speaking, Sensei asked us to harmonize with the Sotoshu and maintain good relations with it, but under no circumstances to follow it or Japanese Zen, which for Deshimaru already belonged to the past. He said, “The great majority of my disciples who go to Japan subsequently go astray. This is because they see a Zen of church and hierarchy there. It is no longer the true transmission.” He added, “You must create the Zen of the future from my teaching, rather than turning the living Zen I taught you into a byproduct of the Japanese Buddhist church. You are more important and greater than the Japanese masters…” and so on.
You can see that I did not form this opinion by myself; I received it from my own master, who had himself received it from his master, Kodo Sawaki. The latter, unwilling at any price to risk his disciple becoming a Japanese monk rather than a monk of the transmission, refused to ordain him for nearly forty years. Kodo did not belong to the Sotoshu. He usually criticized it and always managed on his own, even though he was godo of Sojiji temple for many years.
When Master Deshimaru came to teach true Zen in France in 1967, only his master, Kodo Sawaki, had authorized him to do so. For Sensei, that was the true transmission; there was nothing to add. At the beginning of his mission, the only help he received came from the heads of Rinzai and Obaku Zen, both of whom were his friends. Only later did the Sotoshu, admiring his work in the West and around the world, offer its support, both administrative and financial. Why would he not accept it? Beyond the material aspect, one must understand that, as a Japanese person, official recognition by his country mattered to him. Later the Sotoshu proposed that the ordinations he gave—and there were more and more—also be registered in Japan, making them even more official. Sensei accepted. Still later, when the Sotoshu proposed that the senior disciples helping him in his mission receive the rank of Dendoshi missionaries, Sensei accepted that too. Note that it was always the Sotoshu making proposals, never Deshimaru asking. The Sotoshu never demanded that he change his teaching, the way he conducted ceremonies or gave the kyosaku, sewed and wore the kesa, prepared genmai or ate it, and so on. Because the Sotoshu understood his power and strength, it always respected him. The Sotoshu is like the Vatican. You do not say, “My religion is the Vatican.” However, because it manages the entire material, hierarchical, and dogmatic side of Japanese Zen Buddhism, it has immense power in Japan. Sensei always used it but never followed it.
There is a great misunderstanding in trying to equate transmission with the Sotoshu. Let us first discuss ordinations. Before Kodo Sawaki and Deshimaru, the situation was very simple: if you were not a monk’s son, you could not be ordained, except in very rare cases and with great difficulty. Now that having European or American disciples is fashionable among Japanese prelates, things have changed greatly. But what can they teach apart from their local rules, their endless hierarchy, and their church, which is dying in Japan? As for shiho, within the Sotoshu it has scarcely more value than a high school diploma and is only one step among many in the hierarchy of the professional monk. Nothing to do with Bodhidharma and Eka, Buddha and Mahakashyapa. Yet it was precisely these figures Deshimaru spoke to us about, not the Sotoshu, which is, in short, merely a state organization formed at the end of World War II at the request of the fascist government of the time to administer a form of Zen spirituality in Japan. He spoke to us of transmission, not of the Japanese church.
After his death, once again, Japan’s major religious authorities, in agreement with the Sotoshu, wished to certify Deshimaru’s mission as one of the most important events in Zen history. It was in this context that I, along with Étienne and Roland, was certified as Master Deshimaru’s official and spiritual successor by the greatest Zen master of the time, Rempo Niwa Zenji. This is a historical fact that can never be erased, including from the Sotoshu’s own archives.
A few years later, I was invited to continue the Sotoshu curriculum by attending a sesshin. Since all my old AZI friends were also invited, I looked forward to going and practicing with them. But I learned that the master teaching at this event was none other than Harada Roshi, a man who had spent his life envying and criticizing Kodo Sawaki and later Deshimaru, which had led me to quarrel with him and leave his temple with a bang some years earlier. It seemed obvious to me that this choice was intended to humiliate cowardly disciples who had betrayed their master. How could a disciple worthy of the name accept such a compromise without at least cutting off his little finger? Yet that is exactly what all my former companions did. For my part, I saw it as a sign that this direction was wrong and that Deshimaru would not have accepted our participating in it.
I think the Sotoshu is the past, and we must think about the Zen of the future. Unfortunately, the AZI disciples, lacking sufficient self-confidence or sufficient awakening within themselves, felt the need to go begging to the Sotoshu again, and individually at that, for recognition and power they lacked. The Sotoshu took advantage of this to impose its rules on them, appropriate La Gendronnière temple, and turn them into hybrid monks who will spend their lives trying to approach the Japanese model without ever truly succeeding. And even if they did… they would only succeed in imitating a Zen that has long been obsolete. In any case, they can no longer claim to follow Deshimaru’s Zen, since they have clearly lost faith, body and soul, in his transmission. For my part, I have not lost faith in recognizing disciples as authentic monks, nuns, and bodhisattvas of the lineage of true Buddhism transmitted for 2,500 years, of which I am the 83rd patriarch. If some prefer the Sotoshu, which indeed offers a totally different vision and perhaps a future in its Japanese hierarchy, let them at least acknowledge that it no longer has anything to do with Deshimaru’s Zen, the Zen of the “Bodhidharma of modern times.”
I am told that Roland, Rafou, and perhaps others are reordaining disciples who have already received ordination from me or Étienne. They tell them my ordinations are not valid with the Sotoshu because I am not a Sotoshu monk, but a master of the transmission, a disciple of Deshimaru. And because the AZI betrayed Deshimaru to sell itself to the Sotoshu, they too must swear allegiance to it if they want to practice. This second ordination will therefore not be based on faith, as the first was. (No one forgets a historic moment when we committed all our sincerity, shaved our head, sewed our kesa, said goodbye to our family, cut off that last lock of hair, and received, at La Gendronnière temple, the most beautiful ceremony, making the vow that would build our future.) No, this second ordination Roland proposes will be based on doubt and denial. He will make you a renegade, to use the appropriate term, and more in the form of a pact, if you see what I mean.
I quote the Buddha’s words: “Support for all Buddhas’ vows of aspiration is possible only with the blessing of their fundamental vows.” If these people’s approach runs contrary to the Buddha’s teaching, how can anyone think they will help disciples free themselves when they use doubt to bind them ultimately to their own persons and add a name to what they consider their collection of disciples? What a disgrace! I have a disciple who received bodhisattva and monk ordination from Roland and has followed me for ten years. Never has the slightest word or doubtful insinuation been uttered about it. In Argentina, disciples ordained by Michel asked me to reordain them. I always refused, telling them they must never doubt their ordination. Why superimpose a lesser vow on our fundamental vow? It is truly a very serious mistake! Do not tell me they believe in it themselves, or think they are helping their late master by acting this way.
Kosen