Question
I would like to know whether registration in the RIZ you created could be
open to people who were not ordained by you.
This question has been bothering me: lately, people have been receiving ordination again
in the name of a spiritual connection with a teacher, against the background
of the argument that after twenty years we are removed from the Sotoshu’s
computer records, as though we no longer existed as an ordained
bodhisattva or monk, and if we go to Japan we are not
recognized as such.
For me, whether I am recognized in Japan is very secondary.
If my zazen practice is not valued at a practice center there, I will simply wonder whether zazen is really considered important there, and go sightseeing in the temples! I may never go to Japan anyway.
On the other hand, I think it useful, even necessary, to develop tools
that let us become independent of this whole system. Even though
my ordination is inscribed first in my Heart, the original place
it comes from, I want to formalize that act in the West, where
Master Deshimaru brought Zen, where I received it, and participate in
this development. I know others may be interested, and I am convinced
this tool you and your disciples created can help Zen
develop here, independent of any institutional involvement.
That way, if someone wants to be ordained again by someone, their choice will
clearly be motivated by a relationship with that Dharma teacher, not
some vague story about their Sotoshu registration expiring.
My heartfelt wish is for this to be possible for everyone who wants it,
regardless of who ordained them.
This summer I saw someone be ordained again, and his motivations did not
seem clear. I wondered, and asked him,
what value this left in the ordination he had received from
Master Deshimaru. At the AZI general meeting, some replied that it took
nothing away from a previous ordination.
But if we can be ordained again as easily as changing
shirts, I simply wonder how the meaning of a commitment expressed
through this ceremony can avoid becoming diluted or lost. All these reasons
put forward seemed unclear to me, so the RIZ’s existence and its
openness to anyone wishing to register seem like an answer.
And also an opportunity, a broad pretext I do not want to deny myself,
to open or reopen a wide dialogue between different sanghas.
I simply hope your answer will be yes, yes, yes, and that in any case
we can work toward this.
With my greetings in the Way.
Laurent
Master Kosen’s answer
Of course. That is precisely our idea.
Kosen