Zen Antics by Thomas Cleary

Author:Thomas Cleary
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Shambhala Publications

A Drunken Buddha

Suiwō and Tōrei were Zen master Hakuin’s two most capable assistants. Suiwō was known as a master of great capacity, Tōrei as a master of subtle detail. Many of Hakuin’s later successors actually received their advanced training from one or both of these younger masters.

Suiwō was already over thirty years old when he met Hakuin for the first time. Nothing whatsoever is known of his early life. The great master Hakuin saw Suiwō to be a man of exceptional spirit, and pressed him very hard to realize his potential.

Suiwō spent twenty years in Hakuin’s school, but he lived ten miles away and never came to the temple except when there was a lecture. His private consultations with the teachers always took place late at night, so no one ever saw Suiwō coming or going. On lecture days he would leave as soon as the talk was over. Thus it was hardly realized that Suiwō was Hakuin’s disciple.

Suiwō was eccentric by nature. Fond of rice wine, he paid no attention to trivial matters, and often spoke and acted outside the bounds of normal convention. He hardly sat in meditation at all and scarcely read any scripture. He had no fixed abode but would sprawl out to sleep wherever he might be, considering himself lucky if he had managed to obtain enough wine to get tipsy. He enjoyed hobbies of chess and painting and lived life as he pleased. People couldn’t decide whether he had hidden depths or was just a shallow man.

Although Suiwō did not care to live in Hakuin’s temple, when the great master was in his final illness, Suiwō came back to take care of him. After Hakuin died, Suiwō inherited the temple, but he didn’t do anything. Whenever people came to study Zen, Suiwō would simply tell them to go to Tōrei. Yet in spite of his refusal to talk about Zen, there were never fewer than seventy or eighty seekers surrounding him.

Now Daikyū and Reigen, Zen masters who had also studied with Hakuin, began writing letters to Suiwō urging him to get to work. In spite of their efforts, however, Suiwō remained serenely unmoved.

Seven years after Hakuin’s passing, Daikyū, Reigen, and Tōrei finally converged on Suiwō and insisted that he be the master of ceremonies for the traditional seven-year memorial service to be held for Hakuin by his disciples. Unable to refuse, Suiwō rose to the occasion by lecturing on the Five Houses of Zen to an assembly of more than two hundred.

Suiwō was about fifty-eight years old at this time. Now the ranks of his followers swelled to more than a hundred. They lived in individual quarters all over the area, and there was not enough time for Suiwō to meet with them all when they came to see him.

Suiwō was also invited to speak at other places, attracting audiences of three to five hundred. In later years he drew as many as seven and eight hundred listeners to his lectures on the Zen classics.

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