In Memory of Shinkai Yoitsu Daiosho - newsletter article

 

Memories of Shinkai Yoitsu Daiosho

Introduction

by Rev. Kenzan Seidenberg

Shinkai Tanaka Roshi, “Shinkai Yoitsu Daiosho,” Taihaku’s teacher, entered final nirvana on February 21, 2022. He had been a well-respected Zen Master in Japan with a powerful presence. Most of us at Shao Shan Temple knew him as “Dochosan” from Taihaku’s stories of him. (Dochosan means "Beloved Abbot.”) He was cared for by his students following a severe stroke in 2018 and passed away at age 83. When Taihaku visited him for the last time in 2019, she told that when he was asked about what was the most significant experience in his life, Dochosan responded: “The most significant experience in my life was meeting my teacher. If I had not met my teacher, this would not have happened” (indicating Taihaku and himself). Thanks to Dochosan meeting his teacher, Taihaku met Dochosan and it is thanks to that that Shao Shan Temple is what it is today.  With deep gratitude to the lineage that has provided us with this tradition and these teachings.

Prior to his stroke, he was Abbot of Hokyoji Monastery in Fukui Prefecture, Japan, for several decades. Hokyoji is where Taihaku did her priest training for several years (and Kenzan trained there for a couple months). Taihaku told how when Dochosan became Abbot of Hokyoji it was like a whirlpool of energy that attracted sincere dedicated students to the monastery to be his students and to train there. Before Hokyoji, he was at Saikoji, a small Soto Zen Temple in Kyoto. It was there that Taihaku met him for the first time and there that Deb Burke met him.

 

My Memories of Dochosan

By Deb Burke

Kenzan asked me to share some memories of Taihaku’s teacher, Shinkai Tanaka Roshi, since few in
the sangha had known him personally. Perhaps, though, you do know him or the feeling of being with him. There would be a warm glow in the room and a sense of peace, contentment, and harmony, like a seabird bobbing on the wake of a calm sunlit ocean. Conversation would be generous and respectful while everyone shared the oneness of moments together.

In 1978 I arrived at Dochosan’s temple, disillusioned by the emptiness of happily ever after childhood dreams. Dochosan asked me to write why I had come and had another young visitor translate what I’d said. It was a difficult task entailing back and forth communication to suss out my meaning. Dochosan was waiting for a formal meeting in another room and began calling for me to come. We were almost finished with the translation and basically ignored him, frantically working out the details amidst his growingly impatient shouts. Finished at last, I rushed into the room like a freight train barreling down a mountain. He met me with equal force, commanding me to kneel and bow to the floor before I entered the room. He taught me to surrender. How nice it is to surrender the noise inside our heads to the peace and harmony within.

When you come to a foreign country, you are like a child learning the customs of the culture: how to say please and thank you, how to eat, how to bathe, how to say good morning and good night. Even more so in a temple with all the rituals of daily life. So, although I was 21 years old, I was a toddler in many ways. I trusted Dochosan as my father with all my heart. I remember seeing him leave with some people in a car. I ran up towards him shouting, “Dochosan, where are you going?” like any four-year-old would do. He spoke to the people briefly and the next thing I knew I was traveling with him to a hot-spring resort and wonderful meal for the night.

Dochosan was particular about details. He asked someone to teach me how to sit Zazen. I remember him calling out to him, “I told you to teach her to sit,” and the translator replied, “I did.” Dochosan asked, “Then why isn’t she doing it?” He got me straightened out.

He was also fun. After the hard work of weeklong Sesshins (multi-day meditation retreats) each month we would have a party to relax. It felt like you could continue the practice as the constraints of temple life were not so far from what we’d known.

How did we communicate all the things we did with his limited English and my poor Japanese? It didn’t seem to matter. Some of the things he said still resonate to this day. Before our first Sesshin together he directed, “No miracles; look what happened to Jesus.” When we all took an outing together and a Japanese woman was curious about the foreigner in his company, he said with a big warm spirited smile, “Isn’t it something that foreigners are following our traditions, and Japanese people have forgotten them?” I didn’t get the full meaning of his comment until I saw her embarrassment on behalf of all Japanese non-practitioners. When he was making a point about attachment, he described me as spaghetti, connecting every which way. When I wanted to drop out of college because it was meaningless, he said, “It is meaningless, but you have to do it anyway. Write about us,” and so I graduated college and learned to live in this world.

I remember once when we were chatting in the sitting room before evening meditation. A moth batted in against the light creating quite a commotion. Dochosan happened to walk by and asked what was the matter. He had us turn out the light inside and turn on the light outside. The moth fluttered out and peace returned as a lesson in working with nature.

Sometimes he would just show me, asking me to follow him in kinhin around the temple hall during a Sesshin or sitting with us all in meditation and guiding us along the way through the unbearable resistance of our minds to a place of indescribable peace.

As much as I never wanted to leave there came a time when to Dochosan’s great relief, I decided to go home. I remember him saying, “You wouldn’t fit in as a nun.” That’s when he mentioned that he was coming to the United States and introduced me to Gretchen (Rev. Taihaku before her formal training). Over time I thought that he cared about me less because I wasn’t a monk. It wasn’t until I described Dochosan to my son that I was moved to tears by the incredible gift he’d given me. Besides taking me in all those years ago and guiding me towards awakening, he just happened to come to America when I was about to fall off the rails in my marriage.

The first day of that Sesshin with him at Shao Shan Temple, I had this notion to walk the couple miles in the predawn darkness to the temple. It was scarier than I expected and took longer than I thought. I was late for the early morning meditation, so I sat outside the temple doors. During kinhin Dochosan spotted me and directed me to sit beside him during meditation.  When the Sesshin ended, he looked at me and said, “You look better now.” Twenty years or so later, I haven’t fallen off the rails yet. Perhaps I’ll find my way to carry on without creating the karmas that trap us in the cycle of birth and rebirth, thanks to him. Or, perhaps he’ll guide me once again if I forget.

All these kindnesses from one who asked nothing in return: no conversion or no money. This is Dochosan to me: boundless and selfless love.