Question
Why are you on bad terms with the other Zen masters?
Isn’t it necessary for you to set an example?
Anonymous
Master Kosen’s answer
I finally understood that the Japanese Soto Zen school had little in common with the authentic teaching of the patriarchs and the transmission I studied through Master Deshimaru and Master Kodo Sawaki.
If ranks in a school gave access to the status of patriarchal successor, Bodhidharma would not have said no to the emperor and would not have gone to Shorinji.
Encouraging competition and hierarchy among sincere practitioners, leading them to despise those of lower rank and be humiliated by those of higher rank, is an ineffective and diabolical method.
That is not what Master Deshimaru Zenji and Master Rempo Niwa Zenji taught me.
Master Niwa, as much as Master Deshimaru, accepted me, barbarian though I was, and patiently made me divine for future generations. They saved not only my life and soul, but those of all humanity as well.
Do you think I would now agree to wear a rank higher than my own Dharma master’s?
A rank higher than Dogen’s himself?
When all I would have learned was well-rehearsed choreography.
I think pursuing an ecclesiastical career in a Japanese church and following the Way of the masters and patriarchs are two different paths. All the more so because the term Soto refers to a transmission that lasted no more than two generations, since it was actually Ungo Doyo who continued the true transmission.
None of this prevents me from maintaining diplomatic, courteous relations with the Soto school and those who have chosen to follow it.
Kosen