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By Root 591 0

takes about thirty years. By no means all Zen monks complete the whole training. This is required only of those who are to receive their master’s inka or “seal of approval” so that they themselves may become masters (roshi), thoroughly versed in all the “skillful means” (upaya) for teaching Zen to others. Like so many other things of this kind, the system is as good as one makes it, and its graduates are both tall Buddhas and short Buddhas. It should not be assumed that a person who has passed a koan, or even many koan, is necessarily a “transformed” human being whose character and way of life are radically different from what they were before. Nor should it be assumed that satori is a single, sudden leap from the common consciousness to “complete, unexcelled awakening” (anuttara samyak sambodhi). Satori really designates the sudden and intuitive way of seeing into anything, whether it be remembering a forgotten name or seeing into the deepest principles of Buddhism. One seeks and seeks, but cannot find. One then gives up, and the answer comes by itself. Thus there may be many occasions of satori in the course of training, great satori and little satori, and the solution of many of the koan depends upon nothing more sensational than a kind of “knack” for understanding the Zen style of handling Buddhist principles.

Western ideas of Buddhist attainments are all too often distorted by the “mysterious East” approach, and by the sensational fantasies so widely circulated in theosophical writings during the decades just before and after the turn of the century. Such fantasies were based not upon a first-hand study of Buddhism but on literal readings of mythological passages in the sutras, where the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas are embellished with innumerable miraculous and superhuman attributes. Thus there must be no confusion between Zen masters and theosophical “mahatmas”–the glamorous “Masters of Wisdom” who live in the mountain fastnesses of Tibet and practice the arts of occultism. Zen masters are quite human. They get sick and die; they know joy and sorrow; they have bad tempers or other little “weaknesses” of character just like anyone else, and they are not above falling in love and entering into a fully human relationship with the opposite sex. The perfection of Zen is to be perfectly and simply human. The difference of the adept in Zen from the ordinary run of men is that the latter are, in one way or another, at odds with their own humanity, and are attempting to be angels or demons.7 A doka poem by Ikkyu says:

We eat, excrete, sleep, and get up;

This is our world.

All we have to do after that–

Is to die.8

Koan training involves typically Asian concepts of the relation between master and pupil which are quite unlike ours. For in Asian cultures this is a peculiarly sacred relationship in which the master is held to become responsible for the karma of the pupil. The pupil, in turn, is expected to accord absolute obedience and authority to the master, and to hold him in almost higher respect than his own father–and in Asian countries this is saying a great deal. To a young Zen monk the roshi therefore stands as a symbol of the utmost patriarchal authority, and he usually plays the role to perfection–being normally a man advanced in years, fierce and “tigerish” in aspect, and, when formally robed and seated for the sanzen interview, a person of supreme presence and dignity. In this role he constitutes a living symbol of everything that makes one afraid of being spontaneous, everything that prompts the most painful and awkward self-consciousness. He assumes this role as an upaya, a skillful device, for challenging the student to find enough “nerve” to be perfectly natural in the presence of this formidable archetype. If he can do this, he is a free man whom no one on earth can embarrass. It must be borne in mind, too, that in Japanese culture the adolescent and the youth are peculiarly susceptible to ridicule, which is freely used as a means of conforming the young to social convention.

To the normal Asian concept