Kodo Sawaki sets the tone
Okumura Roshi on Sanshin's land before building
Okumura Roshi has written much about his discovery of and connection with his teacher, Uchiyama Roshi. Following completion of his training, he spent twenty years in Japan and the US thinking about the creation of a practice place where he could practice with Western people. They would engage in his teacher’s style of zazen, study Dogen Zenji’s teachings, and work on translation of important texts. In 1975 he came to the US with Eishin Ikeda, also from Antaiji, to join other Japanese and American people in establishing Valley Zendo in Massachusetts. They followed Uchiyama Roshi’s admonition: “Do not try to collect people or money, but just quietly practice zazen and deepen your own practice.”
It was a policy inherited from Sawaki Roshi, for whom zazen was simply a practice of individuals devoting themselves to the dharma. Okumura Roshi explained, “He felt that all religious organizations without exception lose sight of the most essential spirit of practice, including Dogen Zenji’s own sangha. That was why Sawaki Roshi never had his own temple. He was always alone, traveling all over Japan to teach.”
While Okumura Roshi and his dharma brothers lived and practiced at Valley Zendo, they continued in that spirit. “We sat four periods a day and we had no ceremonies or any services. What we did was just sitting and working. Suzuki Roshi, Katagiri Roshi and Maezumi Roshi established places in California and Minnesota and tried to transplant authentic traditional Soto Zen monastic practice and establish big Japanese monasteries. Uchiyama Roshi didn’t ask us to establish a big place but just to continue sitting. If some people came to sit with us we were to take care of them and practice with them.”
Okumura Roshi took this to heart in establishing Sanshin. “My belief was that if I continued to practice with people, a sangha would form naturally and a place would be given without my seeking after it. Continuing practice and study wherever I was allowed to do so have been of primary importance to me.”
Sanshin’s early fundraising materials describe it as “the first American Zen center devoted solely to the study and practice of Dogen’s teaching, and the first national translation center for Zen teachers who wish to join Shohaku-san in his translation work.”
Okumura Roshi went on to become a well-known figure in the world of American Soto Zen, though this was never his objective. Nonetheless, Sanshin itself has adhered to the teaching inherited from Sawaki Roshi that organizations need to pay close attention to how they grow and develop. Uchiyama Roshi recalled his warning, “Things achieved by an institution will collapse because of that institution. This rise and fall of accomplishments is nothing other than transmigration within samsara. This was Sawaki Roshi’s fundamental attitude.” [Homeless Kodo p. 233] Thus, Sanshin has not sought to be large or famous, with high-end buildings and hundreds of practitioners on campus. Our style of practice in fact works against organizational growth in some ways.
The Midwestern tradition
When it came time to establish his practice in America, Okumura Roshi gave serious thought to location. In his work for Sotoshu’s International Center in San Francisco he had traveled all over the country, visiting Zen centers from a variety of lineages and meeting American teachers and practitioners. He decided not to put Sanshin on one of the coasts, where many centers had already been established, but in the middle of the country in a place convenient to both coasts. “It seemed that Indiana was a frontier, and Uchiyama Roshi always expected us to be pioneers,” Okumura Roshi said. “I knew there was no Soto Zen center in the state of Indiana, though there was a small Zen group in West Lafayette. I thought that if Buddhism or Zen can survive in Indiana, it can survive anywhere in the United States.”
Indiana’s strong Christian tradition was, ironically, another characteristic that made Bloomington attractive. “On the West coast there are many people who never went to a Christian church, so to practice Buddhism was very natural for them. But here, Christianity is still alive and for many people, Buddhism is something strange -- at least, different from their spiritual tradition -- so they have more resistance.” That resistance, he concluded, would keep Sanshin’s practice from adapting too quickly. “I think that because of the hippie generation, Buddhism on the West coast—and probably East coast too—became Americanized too rapidly. They transformed Zen practice into an expression of their idea. In the Midwest there is no such mentality, so Buddhist practice here can have a relationship with a more conservative traditional American spirituality. If I had created my practice center in California, I might have had more people in less time, but we could too quickly have created an Americanized form of Buddhism.”
It was a policy inherited from Sawaki Roshi, for whom zazen was simply a practice of individuals devoting themselves to the dharma. Okumura Roshi explained, “He felt that all religious organizations without exception lose sight of the most essential spirit of practice, including Dogen Zenji’s own sangha. That was why Sawaki Roshi never had his own temple. He was always alone, traveling all over Japan to teach.”
While Okumura Roshi and his dharma brothers lived and practiced at Valley Zendo, they continued in that spirit. “We sat four periods a day and we had no ceremonies or any services. What we did was just sitting and working. Suzuki Roshi, Katagiri Roshi and Maezumi Roshi established places in California and Minnesota and tried to transplant authentic traditional Soto Zen monastic practice and establish big Japanese monasteries. Uchiyama Roshi didn’t ask us to establish a big place but just to continue sitting. If some people came to sit with us we were to take care of them and practice with them.”
Okumura Roshi took this to heart in establishing Sanshin. “My belief was that if I continued to practice with people, a sangha would form naturally and a place would be given without my seeking after it. Continuing practice and study wherever I was allowed to do so have been of primary importance to me.”
Sanshin’s early fundraising materials describe it as “the first American Zen center devoted solely to the study and practice of Dogen’s teaching, and the first national translation center for Zen teachers who wish to join Shohaku-san in his translation work.”
Okumura Roshi went on to become a well-known figure in the world of American Soto Zen, though this was never his objective. Nonetheless, Sanshin itself has adhered to the teaching inherited from Sawaki Roshi that organizations need to pay close attention to how they grow and develop. Uchiyama Roshi recalled his warning, “Things achieved by an institution will collapse because of that institution. This rise and fall of accomplishments is nothing other than transmigration within samsara. This was Sawaki Roshi’s fundamental attitude.” [Homeless Kodo p. 233] Thus, Sanshin has not sought to be large or famous, with high-end buildings and hundreds of practitioners on campus. Our style of practice in fact works against organizational growth in some ways.
The Midwestern tradition
When it came time to establish his practice in America, Okumura Roshi gave serious thought to location. In his work for Sotoshu’s International Center in San Francisco he had traveled all over the country, visiting Zen centers from a variety of lineages and meeting American teachers and practitioners. He decided not to put Sanshin on one of the coasts, where many centers had already been established, but in the middle of the country in a place convenient to both coasts. “It seemed that Indiana was a frontier, and Uchiyama Roshi always expected us to be pioneers,” Okumura Roshi said. “I knew there was no Soto Zen center in the state of Indiana, though there was a small Zen group in West Lafayette. I thought that if Buddhism or Zen can survive in Indiana, it can survive anywhere in the United States.”
Indiana’s strong Christian tradition was, ironically, another characteristic that made Bloomington attractive. “On the West coast there are many people who never went to a Christian church, so to practice Buddhism was very natural for them. But here, Christianity is still alive and for many people, Buddhism is something strange -- at least, different from their spiritual tradition -- so they have more resistance.” That resistance, he concluded, would keep Sanshin’s practice from adapting too quickly. “I think that because of the hippie generation, Buddhism on the West coast—and probably East coast too—became Americanized too rapidly. They transformed Zen practice into an expression of their idea. In the Midwest there is no such mentality, so Buddhist practice here can have a relationship with a more conservative traditional American spirituality. If I had created my practice center in California, I might have had more people in less time, but we could too quickly have created an Americanized form of Buddhism.”
