An American Monk’s Japan

by Jiryu Mark Rutschman-Byler

from San Francisco Zen Center’s Sangha-E

also excerpted in Buddhadharma: The Practitioner’s Quarterly

I’ve been back in the States for almost a year, but Japan still lingers in me. My year and half of training in
temples there continues to inform me, and though I can’t say exactly what I “got out of it,” I can try, even as I share
my concerns about the approach there, to express my deep gratitude for the chance to have experienced it. I could
say Japanese Zen taught me how much I love American Zen, just as American Zen continues to point me towards
the depth of my respect for the Japanese Way. Each answers my frustrations with the other.
I went to Japan because I wanted to get closer to the source of a tradition to which I was finding myself
increasingly connected and devoted. Mixed in with my motivations was, I confess, a periodic feeling that the Zen
Center style had translated and adapted the tradition more than was necessary or even responsible. When
comparing our approach to that of the early Japanese Buddhists, whom I have heard copied the Chinese style
painstakingly, to the extent of importing even Chinese carpenters to build the temples for the first two-hundred
years or so, the characteristic American certainly with which we had re-created the tradition seemed careless to me.
I looked back towards Japan to see for myself whether we were too quick in assuming that the transmission of
Buddhism was complete.
What I found in Japan was at the deepest levels no different from what I had been exposed to at Zen
Center—as though the transmission was in fact seamless. The teachings on shikantaza, the inner diligence of non-
grasping, releasing, and totally accepting all things as Buddha just as they are, were fundamentally identical. The
context and emphases of the teachings—the forms and energy of the approach—was, however, very different.
There was unequivocal monastic dedication, a feeling of being at the pulsing heart of the timeless “Ancient
Way”—Zen seemed to be lived not with innovation, but just as the great Ancestors had lived it.
When I first arrived at Bukkokuji, for example, where I was to spend a year of my time in Japan, I met a
monk whose hands and ears were deformed from the extreme winter cold of the unheated temple. His swollen,
cracked hands and ears embodied for me the intense and total devotion I found there to the formal practice. In Zen
classics like Shobogenzo Zuimonki we read about detaching from our bodies; flinging ourselves into the pains and
rigors of monastic life, in an assembly under a single teacher; pursuing zazen exclusively; and living in radical
simplicity and by takuhatsu begging. When I met this monk whose commitment to temple life had physically
damaged him, and who in spite of his seniority was ever a disciple and would never dream of teaching, it struck me
that at Bukkokuji those ancient principles were being lived literally. I realized that I’d always read another layer
into those kinds of teachings, spiritualizing or abstracting them onto a plane where they referred to my inner
orientation more than to my physical life. I was refreshed and inspired by the literal understanding—it addressed
my frustrations with Zen Center life, although eventually it became a source of frustration in its own right. I came
to question the narrow and narrowing view behind it, and what seemed to me to be the adverse effects it could have
in the minds and bodies of practitioners.
The teacher at Bukkokuji, Tangen Harada Roshi, is very much an “ancient” Zen master, and his example
inspires the diligence there. He believes with incredible certainty that total, physical dedication to single-minded
practice will lead a person to realize the truth, as he feels it has for him. “If you set out to accomplish it, you will
accomplish it; if you don’t set out to accomplish it, you will not accomplish it.” he would always say, pushing us on
to completely abandon ourselves to the practice. For him, if we had truly “set out” to realize the Way, we would
not indulge ourselves in any way whatsoever: would never leave the temple grounds for town, never talk amongst
ourselves, not read or write. His admonitions, the stories of the insanely rigorous training he underwent as a young
monk, and the undeniable intensity and presence evident in every meeting with him, all confirmed and ignited my
sense of “Ancient Practice.”
Tangen Roshi has a vicious streak and overwhelming kindness. When I first saw him entering the Buddha
Hall for morning service, I was amazed and disarmed by his kindness and joy. In that moment, I understood that
the strictness for which he was famous was absolutely in the service of his profound kindness. Even when he used
the kyosaku stick with great force, shouting tremendously and once even smashing it explosively against the altar,
terrifying the seated assembly, it was clear to me that his severity emanated from his kindness. Although I never
doubted that in him, as my experience in Japan progressed, I encountered a new frustration—maybe also relevant to
us in American Zen—that the form (of severity, in that case) was far easier to embody than the great kindness, and
that a practitioner could learn the habits of severity without developing the same foundation in deep kindness.
It was hard to go from American Zen into Japanese Zen—it was like starting from zero. I was treated as
though I had never heard a word of the Dharma or sat a minute of zazen before and I couldn’t help feeling like it
was true. Whatever Zen persona I had cultivated at home was invalid—the Roshi berated me for my poor posture
and the other monks, who it seemed to me were always sitting more than me, indulging less, and working harder,
either ignored me or offered their candid, scathing assessments of Western Zen and Western Zen teachers. Practice
there was in that a great gift: I was a “beginner” again. No matter how much I progressed or learned, when I
compared my own diligence and determination to Tangen Roshi and many of the other practitioners there, any
pride in my attainments would vanish, and I was left again in the fruitful if uncomfortable discouragement of the
perpetual beginner.
After about a year at Bukkokuji, I went to Hōkyōji, an ancient temple set in a dramatic mountain location
near Eiheiji (Dōgen-Zenji’s home temple), to practice under the precise, demanding and sincere guidance of
Shinkai Tanaka Roshi. Practice at Hōkyōji was more mainstream Sōtō Zen than at Bukkokuji, and was for me a
deeper immersion in Japanese culture. While the Bukkokuji community averaged about half Westerners, at
Hōkyōji there were two to four Westerners in a community of about twenty. The daily life at Hōkyōji was a
continuous ritual, a “living mantra” as a good friend of mine beautifully put it. We slept in the sōdō (meditation
hall), on the same spot we sat zazen; we practiced elaborate ritualized face and foot washing; we participated in
frequent ceremonies far more complex and choreographed than even the highest Zen Center events; and we
followed a super-formal Eihei Shingi version of oryoki. Nowhere have I experienced more strongly the Zen that is
entirely a body practice.
It was accordingly a hard on the body practice, and the pace there was mind-boggling and relentless. I was
constantly exhausted—though it sometimes took the form of giddy exhilaration—and I remember that the demands
on even the day before Rohatsu Sesshin were rigorous enough to leave me falling-down tired. “Where I come
from, we rest before sesshin!” I thought, exasperated.

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 But at Hōkyōji, exhaustion is a tool. The practice paradigm there, and throughout Japanese Zen, is that by
being run ragged through lack of sleep and intense busy-ness, abandoning personal time and private space, and
submitting to the whims of those higher up in the all-pervading hierarchy, a practitioner’s egocentricity is broken
down. I glimpsed this functioning—some freedom from the perceived “needs” and indulgent preferences of the
self—even as I sometimes resented and still question the excesses and underlying assumptions of the approach.
The frustration I’d had with my suspicions of the laxity of the “break and comp-day obsessed” American Zen now
met an equal frustration with the relentless, ascetic style that seemed to equate nourishing rest with self-indulgence,
as though under the unspoken motto: If it isn’t painful, it isn’t practice.
Japanese Zen for me, like American Zen, was a life of ambivalence and paradox. Frustrated though I was
with my exhaustion and the austerities of the life there, my heart was also turning deeply towards practice, and the
purity and beauty of the Way was vast and incontrovertible.
It’s easy in the million frustrations
of this life
to overlook the beauty,
stunning stark simplicity.
The joy of straw
mats & gongs, iced mornings,
rustling robes and shuffling feet.
Great freedom, and great wonder.
Great annoyance—another 4&9 rest day,
cutting daikon greens all afternoon.

The last months in Japan for me were looking for “affinity,” what the Japanese call “go-en,” and I’m still
driven by the theme. Maybe everything I think or feel about a place can come under “affinity”—and any idea I
have about a temple or a style being “good” or “bad” for practice is nothing like a “truth,” but is finally just a
function of my karmic affinities. So, while I think I have been sorting through Japanese and American Zen,
looking for the real Way and the right Way, perhaps I’ve just been scrolling through my own mind, uncovering my
own predispositions.
In any case, I will say at least that the pendulum in me is swinging now back towards the more open
American style of Zen Center, and I am grateful to be back in its language of practice. I have at times believed that
formal practice takes care of everything—an impulse to which Japanese Zen is well suited—and, although in a real
sense it does, it seems to me that as my intention is to become a mature person, I should work on maturing all
aspects of my being. To imagine that formal zazen would resolve all that I need to resolve (if I could just do
enough of it, or do it properly) seems a narrow view. This leads me to appreciate the broad and inclusive
perspective that Zen Center takes of practice. Whether or not it is orthodox Zen, it seems more natural and
beneficial than trying to imitate or conform to a strictly Japanese style. Some aspects of Zen Center that once
frustrated me in their divergence from tradition I now see as vital re-presentations of a practice being translated to
our culture.
But Japan still haunts and inspires me: I still see the rainy streets and brotherhood of takuhatsu begging
days, ringing our bells on narrow paths through rice paddies, and holding out our bowls at village and town
doorways. I still shiver at the beauty of the teacups rippling down the table during morning tea, as each monk waits
respectfully just an instant for his senior to drink first. I was transformed by experiencing the depth of the Zen
tradition in Japan, and to commune with the intense powers and people within that ancient energy. It helps me still
to understand my place as an American priest, and to clarify my own vision of American Zen.

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 My hope for we heirs of Japanese Zen is that, whether or not we finally choose to follow in its ancient
forms, we all study, honor, and respect the Japanese roots of our tradition.