Sohaku Kobori and his Teaching of Shikan ONE

Tim Pallis

Nanrei Sohaku Kobori (1918-1992) died Friday the 17th of January 1992. Jeff Shore called me from Kyoto on Saturday and told me the sad news. I didn't expect that at all. I knew that my Zen teacher had been ill for a long time, suffering from arthritis, but that he should die so soon didn't occur to me. My first thought: So it is all too late! Too late to see him again - too late to tell him how grateful I am - too late to write my yearly letter to tell him about my practice!

It has happened several times, that death came unexpected into my life. When will I learn to be prepared for it each moment? Wasn't it one of the important things, that Kobori Osho wished me to realize - to be at one with life/death each moment in order to forget about life/death. He always said: There is no death! I didn't understand what he meant, but I knew Shido Munan's (1603-1676) verse:

While alive, be dead

Thoroughly dead

Do as you will

And all is right

When did I first meet Sohaku Kobori? It was in Kyoto 1969, I was looking for a "Zen-master" and happened to meet Mr. Nobuo Kubota, who was a Canadian nisei and an artist. At that time Nobuo Kubota was about to move into Ryoko-in, Kobori's temple in Daitokuji, to be his attendant. I was introduced to Kobori Osho, and that started a relationship, which has lasted until now.

Sohaku Kobori was one of the very few Zen teachers, who could speak English at that time. Most of the westerners who became interested in Zen Buddhism had studied the books of Daisetz Suzuki (1870-1966). Many of his readers was not aware of the fact, that Zen Buddhism was not a philosophy or a psychology of religion, but first of all a living tradition of Buddhist practice.

Before Suzuki started to write about Zen, he had been through many years of Zen training, first with Imakita Kosen Roshi (1816-1892) and thereafter with Shaku Soen Roshi (1859-1919) at Engaku-ji. Maybe it was not clear for westerners, who had not read all of the writings of Suzuki, that Zen could not be "understood", but should be a living practice, and that zazen, sitting meditation, is a most important part of that practice.

Already in l958 when Christmas Humphreys of the Buddhist Society in London was asking Daisetz Suzuki about the teachers of the Rinzai Zen tradition in Japan, who could help westerners to get into Zen training, one of the two names he gave was that of Sohaku Kobori of Daitokuji in Kyoto. Suzuki then described him as "about half way through".

As a graduate of Otani University Kobori deeply venerated his old teacher and felt a life long responsibility to guide western seekers along the narrow path of Zen training. He did that for more than 30 years. All the instruction and training took place in his beautiful maintained and aesthetic marvel of a small Zen temple, the Ryoko-in.

Nanrei Kobori was born in 1918 in a Zen Buddhist family. His father was an abbot of a small Zen temple, and a man of few words, but his behavior in daily life and his way of living influenced Nanrei deeply. As a young teenager, before he entered Otani Daigaku, he must have known Daisetz Suzuki, because he learned English from Suzuki's wife Beatrice Lane Suzuki (1878-1939).

Knowing and respecting Suzuki's wide philosophical work dedicated to introduce the Zen Buddhist culture to the West, Kobori clearly saw, that his talent could not succeed such a broad intellectual work. Therefore he decided to dive deeply into the basis of this teaching and find the root of Zen.

After graduation from Otani University in 1940 Nanrei Kobori entered the Zen training hall of Kokei Zen Monastery in Gifu prefecture, which was a part of Nanzen-ji. His father had completed his Zen training in that same monastery. Already the year after he was suddenly drafted as a soldier by the Kyoto Cavalry Troops. Since childhood he was very intimate with animals, and because he loved horses, he preferred to take care of the horses instead of going to the front.

But even though he could remain in Kyoto under fairly safe circumstances, the awareness of the horrors of the war, which came closer every day, reinforced his fear of death. At that time his main concern was how to face death. So he went to Myoshin-ji early every morning to solve his anxiety by struggling with the koan Listen to the sound of the single hand.

Kobori couldn't dissolve this koan during the war. The war ended and his life remained without death, but at the same time he felt, that he couldn't really live anymore, because all his friends had died at the front. So he decided, that his job now would be to solve his religious quest, and for that reason he remained in the Myoshin-ji Sōdō.

For 24 years he continued his Zen studies under the guidance of several Zen masters. The longest time was spent with Kikusen Shimada Rōshi and then Shonen Morimoto Rōshi. Kobori always felt, that the way his Zen training was long and tedious.

During the Sōdō training Sohaku Kobori realized the basis of religion, and that is samadhi. Zazen when matured is samadhi. Samadhi like hot spring water from a fountainhead makes the ice of the agitated and antagonistic mind melt. So all dualities like birth and death, love and hate, right and wrong and all other contradictory masses melt in samadhi. If our samadhi is trained, if all the time there is samadhi, then our wild daydreams and logical disagreements just melt like ice in hot water. This is the religious level of consciousness. And if the bottom of this religious, deep samadhi is reached, then consciousness will be regained. This is enlightenment. But before that we need the basis of samadhi.

Kobori Osho didn't use traditional kōan training with his Western students. The kōan, if it is faithfully related to, and that means, if it is existentially perceived, can be used as a hammer to break through the wall of the dualistic consciousness, which separate us from the buddhanature. Kobori's teaching method was very simple, direct and basic. First he emphasized the physical aspect of the Zen training as a foundation of the practice of mental concentration.

His way was to teach the students first of all to sit properly keeping the backbone straight. In order to train the physical posture the most important point was to be not so stiff, but straight, and endurable for a long period of sitting. A part of the physical concentration was Kobori Osho's specific breathing exercise, which I prefer to call shikan-ONE. The students were told to fix their "inner" attention on the lower part of the abdomen (tanden) while breathing out long naturally and softly.

Kobori demonstrated how to breathe out long, and this usually made a deep impression on the student, who had never believed it possible to control the breath in such an energetic and beautiful way. Shikan-ONE was the exercise to say ONE when breathing out long, and repeat it with every expiration. The delicate point was to exhale from the lower abdomen, gently and fully concentrated on the breath itself as it goes out.

When you breathe out, say ONE to yourself and draw out the consonant N for as long as your exhalation last. The student was supposed to show the master, how he was working on ONE every time he met him in the sanzen room. The practice was to associate the word or the sound ONE with the expiration by breathing WA...A...A...N quietly and slowly, until there was no more air to breathe out. Then came a natural inhalation, that just "filled up" the belly with air, and then again the long bated breath sounded with ONE. Shikan-ONE should be done silently during zazen, the air trickling through the nose.

The student was supposed to concentrate and train well in this shikan-ONE without any other consideration, just to exhaust himself breathing out long. And it took time - often many month or years according to the person - for his condition to change. "Beginners usually put ONE in the mind as an objective figure, but with the repeated exercise, it would no longer be an objective ONE but becomes his very existence. That is to say, you become ONE. You are ONE. Then the first step of zazen is achieved."

The second step was to deepen the physical concentration into a mental concentration. One day Kobori would suddenly put his first question: Where does this ONE comes from? And then the training in mental concentration and the entering into the first kōan would begin on the basis of the physical concentration.

With the first question many problems would arise, which had to be dealt with at the "magical" meetings with the master in the sanzen room. It could be a rough time. For Kobori never forgot to use the opportunity to frustrate the person, who entered the sanzen room. You have to strike while the iron is hot.

His students became disparate, left angry, but always came back again for the next sanzen, until they could melt the ice of their antagonism in their matured zazen. Then one day they might see, that they were just sitting in front of Fugen, the Bodhisattva of compassion and that the "magical" meetings with the master were just candy for the baby.

Through mature zazen shikan-ONE changes into the basis of being. First it is the numerical ONE, then the conceptual ONE, then the verbal ONE, then the sound ONE, then the breath ONE, and finally it becomes the basis of being. Before it truly becomes the basis of being, the question of what it is? Where it comes from? Or who it is? Must be put aside.

There is something antagonistic in the situation between the question and the one who asks it. Kobori's advise was to become more intimate with ONE, not just as an object of asking, but the ONE in which you find yourself, just like you and your wife become ONE. All the time be at one with ONE, and do what you have to do.

Kobori also said: If you continue to concentrate single mindedly on ONE, it will gradually deepen down from the surface of the mind, where ONE is a mere repetition of the numerical one - like a piece of dust floating on the surface of a lake - to a depth, where there is no consciousness of I as distinguished from you. The place where you are sitting disappears, and you may not know how long you have been sitting. One minute becomes endless, or the infinite becomes an instant, there exists totally nothing but the ONE.

The last instruction I received from my teacher was the following: Regarding ONE, first, Shikan ONE is enough, and next, come back with ONE to ordinary level of life and do everything in your daily life in ONE, thirdly, make effort to help people to become aware of their ONE, buddhanature".

Sohaku Kobori's small temple Ryoko-in was built in l606 by Daimyo Kuroda Nagamasa (1568-1623) and is one of Japan's treasure houses of chanoyu ceramics. The founder abbot was Kogetsu Sogen (1574-1643), who was the son of the tea master Tsuda Sokyu. Kogetsu was a dynamic chief abbot of Daitoku-ji, who rebuilt the main halls that still stand today.

He had an excellent taste in tea ceramics and added two very famous thirteenth century chinese tea bowls, a yuteki (oil-spot) temmoku and a yohen (starry firmament) temmoku to the collection of Ryoko-in.

Ryoko-in also has a collection of the finest pieces of art of the Zen culture, which include Korean Ido bowls from the sixteenth-century, paintings by Unkoku Togan (1547-1618), Hasegawa Tohaku (1539-1610), Kano Tanyu (1602-1674), and especially two paintings by the Chinese Zen monk and artist Muqi (died ca. 1340), "Six Persimmons" and "Chestnuts".

It is therefore a correct observation, when the American poet Gary Snyder, who trained and studied Zen for many years at the Daitoku-ji, in a conversation with Dom Aelred Graham says about Sohaku Kobori: Well he's a seventeenth century Zen aesthete.

Kobori was all his life living in harmony with the religious/aesthetic traditions of Daitoku-ji. Zen art and aesthetics were for him a true expression of the ONE or the budddhanature. Even if Kobori Osho superficially could have something aristocratic, withdrawn and austere about him, his life

was remarkable for the social and cultural activities he was engaged in daily.

These activities were in themselves expressions of his religious attitude. Since a true Zen man is not just an observer of life or art, Kobori hide his light under a bushel. He collected a very fine collection of ink stones too, that he appreciated very much, because he was an adept himself at calligraphy. He was also an accomplished suibokuga painter, haiku poet and a great host when serving tea. Many Westerners can still remember the years he lectured in English on some Zen theme on the first Sunday morning of each month.

To visit Ryoko-in, not only to sit or go to sanzen, was a deeply meaningful experience for all of us. To do samu or work in the garden or in the graveyard, whether we were weeding or sweeping, opened our eyes to the beauty of Ryoko-in. In the pregnant interval (ma) between two actions, two thoughts, or two sounds, something would suddenly be revealed as time stopped. A patch of moss would look at you, a stone would actualize you and an old crooked branch would make you aware of the wonder of this moment and of this place.

The interval called ma is the moment in which an activity is not yet done, and the void therefore is present. It is a moment where you can get profoundly inspired. Such a moment rarely comes when you are sitting in the zendo or are in the sanzen room with the master. But it might happen when you are all alone weeding in the garden.

Suddenly your doing is none other than the void, the very is-ness of reality is the nothingness or zero, that Zen people speak of. Ryoko-in was a place where the Zen students could be deeply inspired. Every corner of a corridor would reveal a new religious/aesthetic space, and one's movements along it could be a process of aesthetic distillation from nothing into being, from the timeless into a moment, from the unseen into the visible, from the unheard into the heard.

One concentrated step is the living action of nothingness, and when you become aware of this "awakening" or transformation of nothing into something, it is felt as omoshiroi said Sohaku Kobori.

The word omoshiroi in Japanese signifies appreciation and is usually translated as "interesting" in English. Literally, the term omo means "face" and shiroi means "white". The Noh player and creator of many Noh plays, writer of the famous guidelines for the training of the Noh actor, Zeami (1363-1443), named one of his aesthetic principles of appreciation omoshiroi.

When Noh is performed excellently, it is appreciated by the audience and they feel it as omoshiroi. According to Zeami, the term derived from the cosmogonic myth of Japan. When the sun goddess Amaterasu together with other gods created the land of Japan, there was a certain disagreement between her and one of the gods, and angered she closed herself up in a cave, so that the earth became utterly dark.

In order to entice her out of the cave, the gods performed a musical in front of the cave door. Curious to see what was happening outside she opened the door slightly. At that moment, a beam of light was reflected upon the faces of the dancing gods, and their faces were seen as "white". Hence the aesthetic term of appreciation omoshiroi.

Even if the word omoshiroi is a very common term, frequently used

in daily conversation, Kobori considered it to be the basic aesthetic principles common to all the artistic expressions of the Zen culture. The best example we can find of this kind of religious/aesthetic expression is Muqi's "Six Persimmons".

Kobori said: The white paper which is not painted is sunyata, the basis of the true nature of all existence. Each one of the persimmons is a being, but at the same time not really a being. Out of the total nothingness, persimmons are created. They are living expressions of the painter's original mind. And at the same time they are the observer's original mind. So the painting is really omoshiroi.

Kobori sees the garden of Ryoan-ji as an expression of the buddhanature too. The white gravel represents the undifferentiated Sunyata out of which appear the fifteen rocks.

Kobori said: In deep meditation, one reaches to the bottom of the mind, having removed all conceptions and sensations. There is no beauty or ugliness, no good or bad, no life, no death, no time, no space, only the circle without circumference prevails. But this circle, when it is well ripened, all of a sudden gives rise to a centrepoint. In the garden at Ryoan-ji, the circle without circumference is represented by the white space, and the rocks are the centrepoints. In other words, the persimmons in Muqi's painting are the rocks in the garden. Basho's splash of the frog in his famous haiku is also the rock, or in our daily life to say "Good morning!" or "How are you?" is the rock. Therefore this garden is omoshiroi.

The important truth of the aesthetic culture of Zen is that, when the basis of being or formlessness takes a form, so that the formless lives in a form, it is a cultural expression of nothingness. Zen art are visible representations of the world of nothingness. Zen's religious/aesthetic world is therefore a culture based on nothingness or sunyata.

The original nothingness takes a visible form as purely and simply as possible. But also the everyday activities as making food and cleaning the kitchen afterwards and putting a flower into a vase, are all acts of the buddhanature, which could just as well be called "aesthetic living by nothingness". Surely death is very much alive in a life. This is the meaning of Zen Buddhism.

Sitting at night

The sound of your mokugyo

Silence deepens

Going to sanzen

The fragrance of your incense

Exquisite presence

Shikan ONE

The is-ness of Ryoko-in

Omoshiroi