Explaining the circumstances that led to the printing of the Sokkō-roku Kaien-fusetsu
In the twelfth month of the third year of Kampō (1743), after the evening meal at the conclusion of the Rōhatsu sesshin [the intensive meditation period beginning on the 8th day of the 12th month], I [Genshoku] had a visitor who said:
I understand that Hakuin’s Dharma talks are soon to be published for students of Zen. In some quarters people are saying that his real reason for publishing them is to establish his reputation as a Zen teacher. They are jealous of him, and their criticism of him is so intense they will do him real harm. But surely they are wrong. The real reason these Dharma teachings are being published must lie elsewhere. As his attendant, don’t you feel that you should speak out and save your teacher from being hurt by these allegations?
I replied to him: Ah! I know what’s being said. Some people like nothing better than to spend their time disparaging others. But when they direct their insinuations at someone like my master, they miss the mark completely. If he had been motivated by such unseemly aims, do you suppose for a moment eighty outstanding monks, the mainstays of tomorrow’s Zen school, would be camped in huts around his temple? Shunning the mundane world completely because of their deep veneration for him? Why would they stay there, undergoing all those hardships? It was perfectly clear to me from the moment I first met the master that he had absolutely no interest at all in making a reputation for himself. But inasmuch as you have requested it, I will for your sake explain how the publication of this work came about.
In spring of the fifth year of Gembun (1740), the master yielded to persistent urgings from students far and wide and delivered a series of lectures on The Records of Sokkō. He beat out a tune that instilled fresh life into Sokkō’s [Hsi-keng’s] ancient melodies.
Preparations for the lectures were set in motion the previous winter. After the meal at the anniversary of Bodhidharma’s death, on the fifth of the tenth month, the score or so of ragged monks who lived in huts around Shōin-ji held a consultation and decided to get the temple ready for a lecture meeting. They worked together to make necessary repairs to Shōin-ji so it could accommodate a group of visiting students.
They shored up rickety old buildings. They reopened the shaft in the old well. They mended doors and windows. They strapped up broken roof beams. While brothers Taku, Tetsu, Sha, and Sū worked enthusiastically at these difficult tasks, Brother Kyū went searching far and wide to collect a store of grain and beans, and Brother Chū made the rounds of neighboring villages begging vegetables. The rest, working in shifts, labored feverishly through the days and long into the nights.
The master kept his distance while this was going on. Taking his attendants Jun and Kō, he slipped off and sought refuge at the Genryū-ji Temple in Kashima. He stayed there about ten days, then moved on to the Myōzen-ji Temple in Fujisawa. Finally, he went to Yoshimizu in Suruga, where he stayed with Ishii Gentoku, a layman living in seclusion there. He remained with Gentoku almost a whole month. All the time he was there, except when called upon to receive visitors, he devoted to sessions of deep and blissful sleep. His snores reverberated through the house like rumblings of thunder. They shook the foundations. They sent dust storms gusting through the rafters. He slept face to the floor, lying curled up like some great, well-fed snake. Visitors gazed on him in wonder.
Attendants Jun and Kō were greatly distressed. They pleaded with him: “Brother Chū has entrusted us with a grave responsibility. We must see that you dictate some Dharma talks that can be used to encourage the younger monks in their practice. We are supposed to write them down and take them back to the temple so they can be read to the brotherhood. It will offer them some relief from the work they’ve been doing.”
The master nodded, a faint smile crossing his lips. But then he just turned over and resumed his snoring. Jun and Kō came again and again, like little children begging their parents to make good on a promise, pleading with him to forgo his slumber and begin dictating the talks.
Finally, he sat up. Shutting his eyes, he calmly and quietly started to speak. First five lines of transcript, then ten lines. He uttered them just as they came to his mind. After Kō took them down, Jun revised them. The master dictated sentence after sentence, with little concern for sequence or order. Kō’s brush traced them tirelessly down on the paper. Master and disciples labored as one, completely engrossed in the work at hand. By the time they left Layman Gentoku’s hermitage, fifty sheets of paper had been filled with writing.
Layman Gentoku remarked that “the three finest examples of Zen writing are reputed to be Wan-an’s Words of Instruction, Ta-hui’s Letters, and the Dharma Teaching of Fo-yen. But what Zen teacher until now, including Wan-an and Ta-hui, ever conjured up such an endless tangle of vines and branches as you have here?”
Then both he and the master clapped their hands and laughed loudly.
The master returned to Shōin-ji in the eleventh month. It was the day before the winter solstice. He invited us monks in for tea to show his appreciation for the work we had been doing. We were sitting in a circle around him, enjoying ourselves talking and sipping tea. Jun and Kō, seated side by side, brought out the master’s Dharma talks and began to read them to us in the lamplight. We received them with open hearts, so jubilant we felt like dancing around the room. Our elation was soon forgotten as we became absorbed in the reading, which went on for several nights.
At the end of the assembly, when the master finished his lectures on The Records of Sokkō, the crowds of people who had taken part in the meeting gathered around him making their bows to him. We took the opportunity to ask him to allow the text of his Dharma talks to be published as a book.
Immediately, he called out in a loud voice for someone to bring him fire. We were greatly concerned for the safety of the manuscript, but Jun and Kō had the presence of mind to roll it up quickly and hide it in one of their robes. We brought the matter up again several times after that, when the chance presented itself. But now he just ignored us completely. Since then, three years have passed.
In autumn of this year senior monks Chū and Yaku visited the master in his quarters and said:
If your Dharma talks are published, two things may happen to displease you. But if they are not published, it will have an undesirable effect on students engaged in Zen practice. To a person who is immersed in the practice of Zen, the Way is a vital living thing. He would not focus merely on the words when he read the work. To a person who is reading it as literature, constantly on the lookout for misused words or mistaken characters, the Way is neither vital nor alive. Such a person would no doubt be able to discover the kind of mistakes he is seeking. That is one of the things that may displease you.
A wise man once wrote that when a tree grows so high that it towers above the other trees in the forest, it is certain to be buffeted by winds. And when a person does something that sets him above other people, it is inevitable that he will become the object of resentment. If your Dharma words are printed, it will be clear to all that you stand head and shoulders above your fellow priests. There are certain to be some who will criticize you for allowing it to be published. Some, vexed with envy, will gnash their teeth and try to cause trouble for you. That is the second of the things that may displease you.
But even if it is not published, it is sure to be read nonetheless. In future, students will be vying to get their hands on a manuscript of it so they can make copies for themselves. They would continue to do that no matter what measures were taken to stop it. In the end, they would waste valuable time and energy, which should be spent on their practice, wielding their brushes. That is why I said that not publishing it would be harmful to students engaged in practicing the Way.
As for the first two concerns, they could be dealt with merely by resolving to endure the criticism. But if the work is not published, a large number of students will copy it anyway, wasting their valuable time and energy. Published, it may well draw censure from the learned. “It shouldn’t have been published,” they will declare. “You shouldn’t have given the talks in the first place!” As your students, it would distress us greatly. But it is nonetheless true that there are many ways of helping Zen students and rendering service to the Dharma. Zen master Ta-hui did it when he burned the printing blocks of The Blue Cliff Record. And you would do it by having your Dharma words published. Who can say which act would have the greater merit?
After the master had heard us out, he said:
I’m well aware of all that you have said. But those “Dharma words” you keep referring to are just a lot of foolish twaddle. I spoke them without thinking, on the spur of the moment. I was still half asleep. It contains lapses of memory. Slips of the tongue. I can’t allow something like that to be printed. People would just laugh at it. Maybe I can comply with your request later, after some wise and learned scholar has looked it over and corrected it.
These words gave us great encouragement. Brother Tōko set to work making yet another fair copy. Chō and Yaku began secretly checking the text for errors. When they had finished, Brother Chū put it into his sleeve and traveled to Tōtōmi province to visit Mr. Ono. Mr. Ono was delighted when Chū told him of our project and offered us his full support.
Chū went next to the Keirin-ji Temple in eastern Mino to see the priest Jōshitsu. After bowing reverently to Jōshitsu, Chū informed him of our plans. Then he earnestly requested him to write a preface for the work and check the manuscript for errors. Jōshitsu declined with great firmness. Chū persisted. Jōshitsu refused three more times, but finally, on the fourth request, he agreed. Chū came away feeling like someone who had obtained the priceless jewel that lies under the jaws of the black dragon.
From Mino, Chū continued on to the capital at Kyoto. On the way, by a miraculous stroke of luck, he happened to run into Inokuniya Tōbei, a bookseller from the Numazu post-station near Shōin-ji. When Inokuniya heard about the plan to print the master’s words, he applauded our undertaking wholeheartedly, and pledged to use all the resources at his disposal to help further it. With his kind help, it was not long before the carving of the blocks and printing of the Dharma talks was carried through to completion.
Chū then sent a letter from Kyoto telling us all to “offer incense, face in the direction of eastern Mino, and press your palms together in supplication”
Ah! without Mr. Inokuniya, Brother Chū never could have achieved such brilliant success, even if he had gone back and forth to Kyoto hundreds or even thousands of times. And had Inokuniya not encountered Chū when he did and gone idly on to pursue worldly pleasures in the capital, the merit he achieved—linking him directly to buddhahood—would never have been possible. What is more, even had the two of them striven together in all sincerity, unless the manuscript had passed under the penetrating scrutiny of a wise teacher like Jōshitsu, it would not have been in any shape for Chū to take to Kyoto. In fact, it can be said that the present work could only have come about through the combination of all four elements—Chū, Inokuniya, Jōshitsu’s preface, and his revision.
Back at Shōin-ji, we informed the master of the events taking place far away in the capital. He was aghast. For several days he seemed to be in a state of shock. Then he told us he wanted someone to leave immediately for Kyoto to have the printing stopped. After consulting among ourselves, we went to him and said, “It would take days to reach Kyoto, and even when we got there, it is a great metropolis—there are said to be over a hundred thousand houses. How could we possibly find Chu and deliver your message?”
“How regrettable!” sighed the master mournfully. “A fool mistake I made several years ago when we were staying at Layman Gentoku’s house. I just wanted to put a stop to Kō’s whining. Now here I am biting my navel. Ahh! It is those Dharma talks of mine that will make men know me, and those same Dharma talks that will make them condemn me.”
This is an outline of what I, Genshoku, saw and heard as I served at the master’s side.
My visitor said, “The work isn’t even published yet, and already criticism is widespread. Don’t you think you should do what you can to diminish it by writing down what you have just told me and publishing it?”
I replied, “As the master’s attendant, I have a duty to protect him, regardless of what happens to me. There is no reason to refuse to do what you suggest.”
Hence I have written this down. My sole purpose is to answer those who would criticize my teacher.
Attendant Genshoku made an offering of incense and composed this foreword after the meal at services commemorating the Buddha’s attainment of enlightenment. The third year of Kampō (1743).