How the Swans Came to the Lake by Rick Fields

Author:Rick Fields
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala

IX

Gary Snyder sailed for Japan on May 15, 1956. Mrs. Sasaki introduced him to Isshu Miura-roshi, and he spent his first year in Japan at Shokokuji, serving as the roshi’s personal attendant, cooking, studying Japanese and teaching the roshi English. When Miura-roshi accompanied Mrs. Sasaki to visit the First Zen Institute in New York he instructed Snyder to continue his studies with Sesso Oda-roshi, Zuigan Goto-roshi’s successor at Daitokuji.

Mrs. Sasaki had been very busy in Japan, but she had not had an easy time of it. Goto-roshi wanted her to return to America and Europe as a Zen missionary, but Mrs. Sasaki had stuck by her conviction that her proper role consisted in completing the immense tasks of translation she had begun, as well as in providing a place for Westerners to prepare themselves for traditional Rinzai practice. She was, in any case, a rather aloof person and public proselytizing was not her forte. Goto-roshi, however, did not expect a sanzen student to disobey his instructions, and he expressed his displeasure. For five years Mrs. Sasaki did not attend sanzen, though she did continue to sit zazen and to send the roshi the appropriate gifts on the appropriate occasions. There was much gossip about all this on both sides of the Pacific, none of it making her work any easier. Then, unexpectedly, Goto-roshi sent Mrs. Sasaki a note thanking her for one of the gifts and inviting her for tea. His anger had vanished, and within a year Mrs. Sasaki was once more attending sanzen.

Mrs. Sasaki was ordained a priest at Daitokuji in 1958. She was sponsored by Oda-roshi, since Goto-roshi had retired. Everything was carried out in the most traditional manner, except for the fact that Mrs. Sasaki did not, as was customary, have her head shaved.

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