Finding Oneself

Years ago, my wife and I bought a book from Japan titled 禅の言葉とジブリ meaning “Zen Words and Studio Ghibli” (publisher link here). This book was written by a Rinzai Zen monk named Hosokawa Shinsuke (細川晋輔) who was born into a priest family in Japan, and later ordained as a priest. Chapter by chapter, he relates life lessons to Studio Ghibli movies. To be honest, the book sat on our shelf for a long time, until recently, when I finally reached a level where I can follow along (with a good dictionary, of course).

Anyway, a quick divergence to talk about “priest families” in Japan. For historical reasons that are too complicated to go here, many Buddhist priests in Japan live not in monasteries, but in local parishes and raise families. Frequently, one of the kids inherits responsibility of that parish. If you think of a local Protestant pastor, it’s the same idea. Mr Hosokawa was born into such a family, and was expected to take on the family role, so after college he trained at a Rinzai Zen monastery for three years.

In his words, these first three years were a slog. He describes how he woke up every morning at 2 – 3am, meditate long stretches, followed by incessant chores around the temple all day. Day in and day out, this continued with no free time, and no privacy. Eventually, he adapted to monastic life, but he kept counting down the days when his three year term would end.

Then, abruptly, someone close to him died, and it changed his view. He was close to this person, but they often quarreled, yet now he would never see them again. Suddenly, the issue of life and death became very important to him, and he went from “having to practicing Zen” to “choosing to practice Zen”.

Thus he stayed at the monastery another several years (nine total). Yet in spite of all this training, he writes that he never really had any great awakening or sudden burst of insight. Instead, in his own words (roughly translated by me):

禅の道場での修行に取り組めば取り組むほど、自分の中で凝り固まっていた価値観が、崩れていったのです。。。。つまりは今まで築いてきた知識や経験というものを、自然に手放せてくれたのです。　大切なものを手放して、捨てて去って辿り着いた私の目の前には、当たり前の風景しかありませんでした。

The more I struggled with ascetic practices in the Zen dojo, the more my firmly-held sense of values crumbled….simply put, the knowledge and experiences that I had built up so far I was allowed to let them go naturally. Having let go of such important things, having finally left it all behind, there was nothing left but the natural scenery that was right in front of my face.

Page 67

Later, he likens this experience to Totoro, the main character (monster, spirit, kami?) of the Ghibli movie My Neighbor Totoro. In the movie, many people in the village are totally oblivious that Totoro and his friends are there among them, because they are too caught up in their lives.

In the same way, the Dharma can be utterly hidden before your eyes, unless you take time to see it. In Mr Hosokawa’s case, it took nine years of intense monastic practice, the death of someone close to him, and gradually letting go of his ego. I can’t say whether this is the same for others (I haven’t learned to let go myself), but I think it’s an important lesson. I think the key word Mr Hosokawa uses is atarimae (当たり前), which in American English is like saying “duh, obviously”.

Chinese characters seem strange and mysterious until you learn them. Sex is strange and mysterious until you’ve experienced it. And so on and so forth. In the same way, for many the Dharma feels ethereal or mysterious until it finally clicks, and then its somewhat anti-climatic (“duh, obviously”).

Or so I believe. 😉

Namu Shakamuni Butsu