In order to appreciate the unique character of Yamada Roshi’s translation of the Gateless Gate and his teishō, we need to understand two basic instructional tools used in traditional Zen training.
The first of these is the koan, which is much more than a paradoxical riddle designed to prod the mind into intuitive insight. The koan is quite literally a touchstone of reality. It records an instance in which a key issue of practice and realization is presented and examined by experience rather than by discursive or linear logic. It serves as a kind of precedent, like a classic legal decision. Just as a legal precedent is cited to guide one in clarifying the law, so the koan (literally, “public case”) establishes a baseline of insight to help us penetrate more deeply into the significance of life and death in order to diagnose our blindspots and remove obstructions to our vision. To the student of Zen, the koan offers an opportunity to measure one’s understanding against that of the ancient master whose understanding of a given point is embodied in the case.
By entering into the spirit of a given koan, which is usually a dialogue or saying from Zen history or from the sutras, the Zen student is obliged to shed his limited perspectives and to see through the eyes of the Buddhas and patriarchs. Doing this systematically year after year under the close guidance of a qualified successor to those very patriarchs, one can move far beyond the opinions and conditionings of his own worldview and gain the precision, clarity, depth, and breadth of enlightenment.
A second instructional device of Zen is the teishō (literally, “to take in hand and speak out”). Unlike a sermon or lecture, the teishō does more than exhort or inform. Its basic aim is to present the Dharma directly. Teishō is enlightenment or Buddha nature revealed directly, a living experience of the point in question. The teishō thrusts its meaning in the face of the listener, challenging him to grasp it and make it his own. Usually based upon a koan, the teishō may raise many more questions than it seems to answer and leaves its audience with renewed determination to answer those questions themselves from their own living experience.
The teishō is characteristically pithy and penetrating. It presents a formidable challenge to the Zen student. The skillful Zen teacher can detect where the understanding of his audience is unclear or stuck and can use the teishō to confront students with the need for greater clarity of vision. The teishō is aimed almost exclusively at an audience already involved to some degree in the personal practice of Zen. This is not to say that teishō are necessarily incomprehensible to the non-Zen student. They may actually provide a gateway to practice. Once through the gate, the discovery is made that “the gate” is actually not a barrier or opening through which to pass but is simply reality presenting itself.
This book is not only Yamada Roshi’s translation of the Mumonkan, or Gateless Gate, the most basic koan collection in the literature of Zen; it is also a collection of teishō delivered by him to Western Zen practitioners under his guidance at San’un Zendo in Kamakura and during sesshin which he held in Germany, Hawaii, and the Philippines. They demonstrate lessons that are beyond boundaries of culture, race, and history, though they emerge from a particular cultural and historical context.
The function of the book is properly twofold: for Zen students already working with a teacher, the cases are offered as useful tools and encouragement; for general readers, it is hoped that their reading will inspire them to seek out guidance and to embark on the journey of Zen practice.
The reader will note that Yamada Roshi repeatedly stresses the necessity of personal experience of enlightenment, or kensho (literally, “seeing one’s true nature”). This emphasis clearly refutes the mistaken notion that one need not experience kensho or that some vague faith in the enlightenment of others will suffice for oneself.
Mumon was the fifteenth successor of Master Rinzai and was also the eighth successor in the Yōgi school of Zen. Although he had no direct connection with the Japanese Sōtō school, Mumon’s influence is important and pronounced. Despite the current emphasis on seeming differences between the Rinzai and Sōtō schools, there have always been great masters and patriarchs in both whose vision has freely crossed such artificial boundaries.
Master Mumon’s Japanese successor was the priest Shinji Kakushin (1207-1298), who was first ordained at age twenty-nine under Vinaya Master Chugaku of Tōdaiji Temple. Shinji Kakushin later went on to receive the Bodhisattva Precepts from the founder of Sōtō Zen in Japan, Dōgen Zenji (1200—1253). Although Priest Kakushin and Dōgen Zenji never actually studied together, the very fact of receiving the Bodhisattva Precepts from a teacher indicates the existence of a special kinship. In 1249, seven years after his meeting with Dōgen Zenji, Kakushin journeyed to Sung-dynasty China. He visited various monasteries and finally received Dharma Transmission in 1252.
When Shinji Kakushin (also known as National Teacher Hōtō) was about eighty years old, he was visited by Keizan Zenji (1267–1325), who was then in his late teens and had just received permission from his teacher to go on pilgrimage to other teachers as part of his training. Keizan Zenji went on to become a co-founder of Japanese Sōtō Zen and the founder of Sōjiji Monastery. Thus one of the two founders of Japanese Sōtō Zen, at a most impressionable age, studied with Shinji Kakushin when the Rinzai National Teacher was at the peak of his accomplishment. The influence of this encounter on Master Keizan can be traced quite clearly throughout his later work. Significant as this encounter was, a still more important link exists between the great teaching lineages of the Sōtō and Rinzai sects.
A successor of Shinji Kakushin named Kohō Kakumyō received the Bodhisattva Precepts from Master Keizan soon after the latter opened Yōkōji Monastery in Ishikawa Prefecture in 1312. Ten years later, having gained the confidence of the Emperor Godaigo, Priest Kakumyō conveyed ten questions about the Dharma from the emperor to Keizan Zenji, then residing at Sōjiji. The emperor was so impressed with Master Keizan’s reply that on August 8, 1322, he formally made Sōjiji chief monastery of the Sōtō sect. I feel there was a rapport and profound mutual respect that bridged the gap between the two seemingly different traditions of Sōtō and Rinzai Zen. Later when Keizan Zenji resigned as head of Daijōji Monastery to move into Jōjūji Temple, he asked another successor of Shinji Kakushin, named Kyōō Unryō, to succeed him as third abbot of Daijōji.
In these days of sectarian rivalry, we can be deeply grateful for Keizan Zenji’s profound sense of appreciation for and benevolence towards the Dharma, which went far beyond mere personal friendship.
Master Mumon’s teaching lineage was not allowed to die out. His great successor Shinji Kakushin had two major successors of his own: Bassui Tokushō (1327-1387) and Ji’un Myōi (1274–1345). The former established Kōgakuji Monastery in Yamanashi Prefecture, and the latter, Kokutaiji Monastery in Toyama Prefecture. In both these monasteries Master Mumon’s lineage is maintained to this day.
A continuity with the great traditions of both Dōgen Zenji and Keizan Zenji has been established in the United States through the twentieth-century teachers Daiun Sogaku Harada Roshi and his successor Haku’un Yasutani Roshi, the latter one of my own teachers. Both Harada Roshi and Yasutani Roshi exhibited the clarity and openness of vision which characterizes the legacy of Masters Keizan and Dōgen. Their deep devotion and realization led them far beyond sectarian concerns.
Yamada Roshi was born in 1907 in the town of Nihonmatsu in Fukushima Prefecture in northeastern Japan. His early life was profoundly influenced by his grandparents. His grandfather was a former samurai who became a pioneer in Japan’s silk industry by introducing mechanized techniques from America. His grandmother was a reflective lady steeped in Chinese classics.
He attended the prestigious Dai-Ichi (the First) High School in Tokyo, where his roommate was the future Rinzai Master, Nakagawa Sōen Roshi. The two friends attended university together, where Yamada specialized in law. Still later, they traveled to Manchuria, Yamada as a young married businessman, Nakagawa as a young monk and attendant to Yamamoto Gempō Roshi.
In Manchuria at age thirty-eight Yamada began zazen training. Three years later he returned to Japan and settled in Kamakura with his wife and three children.
Once set on his course in Zen, Yamada pursued his goal relentlessly. Although he was managing director of a large Tokyo firm, he went twice a day to dokusan with Asahina Sōgen Roshi. After his first kensho was approved, he engaged in koan study for three years and then continued his studies under Hanamoto Kanzui Roshi.
In 1953, Yamada invited Yasutani Haku’un Roshi to Kamakura, and together they organized the Kamakura Haku’un-kai. In November 1954, Yamada experienced the unusually deep satori recorded in Three Pillars of Zen under the initials K.Y.
In 1960, Yamada completed his study of 600 to 700 required koans and received his new name in the Dharma. To his great surprise and joy, it was Kōun, his grandfather’s name, which Yasutani Roshi had unknowingly chosen.
In the early 1960’s, Nakagawa Sōen Roshi was directly responsible for bringing Yasutani Roshi to the United States. The leading representative of the Harada lineage in our time, Yasutani Roshi was a seminal influence in establishing a strong American Zen practice which draws freely from both Rinzai and Sōtō roots.
In 1961, Yamada Kōun became Yasutani Roshi’s authentic Dharma successor, and in 1970 he became president of the Sambō Kyōdan, which Yasutani Roshi founded.
Yamada Roshi lives with his wife in Kamakura. They commute daily to Tokyo where he is administrator and she chief of staff of the large Kembikyōin Public Health Foundation. They have built a small zendo, called San’un Zendo, on the grounds of their home which is open every day to disciples who wish to sit. Zazenkai (meditation meetings) are held there bimonthly, and sesshin are held five [from 1987: four] times a year.
My elder Dharma brother, Yamada Roshi, progressively continues to ripen his understanding and accomplishment although past his seventieth year. Despite an extremely busy schedule, he guides the practice of numerous students, including many Roman Catholic priests, monks, nuns, and laypersons from the West. He also makes periodic teaching visits to Hawaii, the Philippines, and Germany.
Yamada Roshi’s teishō on the Gateless Gate are the embodiment of his compassion, arising from his crystal-clear understanding. May they lead us not only towards and through the gateless gate but onto the open road which extends endlessly beyond.
Taizan Maezumi
Zen Center of Los Angeles