Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘I can’t help a human being who is not able to live without money.’ (The Zen Teaching of Homeless Kodo)

Sawaki Roshi is quite popular among some Tassajara monks, probably for his iconoclastic approach, which was very much against the grain of the twentieth-century Japanese zen establishment. Sometimes it feels like he is just being provocative, but it is coming from a place of deep practice, most of which was carried out in complete renunciation. In that sense, he made a great successor to teachers of former times like Tosui.