Shundo David Haye – Zen Priest

‘One development that greatly affected Tassajara and all of us was that in January of that year [1970] a guest teacher named Sotan Tatsugami Roshi arrived to lead the winter-spring practice period. Richard Baker (soon to become Baker Roshi and Suzuki’s successor) was living in Japan and had arranged for Tatsugami to come. For thirteen years Tatsugami had held the position of Ino at one of Japan’s most famous and ancient monasteries, Eiheiji, the ultimate boot camp\finishing school for Soto Zen priests in the mountains of Fukui prefecture north of Kyoto. The Ino is the officer in charge of ritual and discipline and tough old Tatsugami (once Eiheiji’s sumo wrestling champ) had come to shape us up. That he did, adapting rather quickly to his new environs and tuning our schedule and activities with patience and good humor. He added more form to the practice, more ceremonies, established the rokuchiji, the traditional group of six officers to run the temple, and another group under the Ino called the doan-ryo to take care of the zendo, ceremonies, chanting and related matters. I was one of the doan-ryo and well remember being drilled to the marrow on chanting and bell ringing.

Almost all of us there were, first and foremost, students of Suzuki’s and we accepted Tatsugami as a teacher whom Suzuki had asked us to study with. Some enjoyed the tighter structure, the more precise definitions, more to chant (such as the Sandokai), more elaborate forms (still rather simple by Japanese standards), the increased emphasis on position and role. Others did not like this new turn of events at Tassajara and resented the increased institutionalization and the addition of more hierarchy and so many old forms. A few people left…

It seemed right that Suzuki was lecturing on the Sandokai at that time because we’d just started chanting it during morning service. In so doing Suzuki was giving his blessing to the new forms that Tatsugami Roshi had instituted, giving them more life and relevancy. Shunryu Suzuki brought out how the Sandokai was written by Sekito to help balance some of the misunderstandings of the way of the Sixth Patriarch. He said there was a lot of bickering going on at the time between the northern and southern schools of Zen, and Sekito was trying to elevate the dialogue so that everyone would feel included and that no one side could exclude the other. It was quite related to the sorts of concerns and opposing views that had grown more pronounced due to Tatsugami’s influence. To me, one thing Suzuki was doing, was to tell us not to think of Suzuki Zen versus Tatsugami Zen, not to look for the weak points of this or that – to integrate what Tatsugami had taught us and not fuss about it.’ (from Cuke.com)

I am in discussions to lead a class on Suzuki Roshi and Tassajara for Zen Center in the new year, so I will be doing a lot of reading on the subject in the months to come. I had not come across this piece on Cuke before, but I had learned a little about Tatsugami’s transformations from the Shuso Logs (as a shuso at Tassajara, I was able to read the previous shusos’ written accounts of the practice periods) – Sojun Mel Weitsman was Tatsugami’s first shuso, and he wrote extensively about the changes.